What She Left Behind.
Audrey T. Carroll

Esme blinked at the bathroom, a scene that made it look like she’d been robbed: one threadbare towel on the bar, one bristle-splayed toothbrush in the Tenderheart Bear cup, and one plastic shower curtain unhinged in two places as though the burglar had abandoned it upon noticing the mysterious red grime on the inside. It felt like Amara had left a week ago, and it felt like Amara had left a year ago, though of course the truth was somewhere in between. Esme had lost herself in the monotony of life, the patterns of work and then home and then work and then home and then laundry, on repeat for weeks. Without Amara to complain about the dishes or water the plants every Wednesday and Sunday, time passed without markers, especially inside the apartment. Esme had entertained the idea of trying to adopt a cat or a dog, but she was gone all day and didn’t have enough time to dedicate to another living thing. Hadn’t that been Amara’s sticking point—that Esme wasn’t giving her enough attention? She’d taken every plant with her, down to the last succulent, like she didn’t trust Esme to take care of them. 

 

A yawn came on so suddenly that Esme nearly choked on it. She supposed she should start getting ready for bed, lest she pass out without even brushing her teeth first. It was a Friday, at least. At some point, she had to run to the laundromat with the dryers that reeked of weed, but at least there was no need for an early alarm. Small blessings.

 

Esme sighed as she reached for her worn-out toothbrush, like a pressure-valve had twisted slightly looser. The sound echoed against the puke-peach tile of the walls and floor. And then all she could hear was the blood pumping in her ears. Esme lifted her head. She didn’t usually look in the bathroom mirror. She could have said it was because she used the mirror in the bedroom, or because Amara always used this one, or some vague thing about the lighting. But the truth of it was that some quiet voice in the back of her head made her afraid that Bloody Mary would come screaming out, some mental mash-up of the girl from The Ring and sleepover ghost stories. 

 

Yet, for some reason, she finally looked up. 

 

She thought that Amara had taken everything of hers (and then some, if she was being honest). But there was a small motivational poster thumbtacked on the wall so that half of it hung over the mirror. It had a picture of a man with prosthetic legs running around a track. Over the top of him were the words, “What’s your excuse?” Esme had never noticed it before; she wondered how long it had been there. It made Esme feel strange and uncomfortable. She didn’t doubt that it had come from Amara, who was all about the business buzz words and self-help mottos. 

 

Amara had expected Esme to dedicate all of her free time to her, but only on Amara’s terms. They should go to the social event for Amara’s work thing, but only if Esme dressed up enough to make Amara look good. They should spend the night hanging out at home, but only if they watched what Amara wanted to and ordered the food that she was in the mood for. The one time Esme got to pick—a new club down in Williamsburg—Amara had spent the whole night and the three months after complaining about the drinks, the volume of music, and how everyone in the place looked like they were wearing the sparkliest thing TJ Maxx had to offer. (Esme had blamed herself; they were probably fifteen years older than anyone else in the place, so it had probably just been a terrible plan from the word go.)

 

Everyone was just there to serve whatever Amara needed. The words that Esme had shouted at Amara still echoed in Esme’s head all these months later: I’d say you have main character energy, but mostly you’re just an asshole. Esme rubbed the picture’s corner between the thumb and forefinger of her free hand, her arm frozen, her mind wandering the lands of dissociation. Then something moved in the mirror. Sure she was just scaring herself, Esme glanced over. 

 

What she found was a woman in white standing behind her.

 

Esme shrieked, twirled around, and flung her toothbrush. The little blur of orange and gray made impact with the stranger and then dropped. The stranger didn’t even blink in response. Not seeing things, then—or Esme was really deep into a hallucination, one or the other. As if the stranger’s long white dress weren’t enough, her dark curls were pinned to her head and she had a crown made of leaves. At best, she was some lost Shakespeare in the Park actress looking for Amara; at worst, she was some delusional and potentially violent woman. Esme figured it was safer to assume the latter.

 

Esme reached over to the drawer, yanking out a pair of rust-speckled scissors and wielding them in front of her.

 

“Look, I don’t know how you got in here, but you need to fuckin’ go.” 

 

“You can see me?” the woman asked. Her voice was calm and poised. 

 

“Of course I can see you,” Esme said. She huffed, her muscles relaxing a little. “Look, I don’t even have anything worth stealing. My ex took the TV. I mean…” She put a free hand on her hip. “My couch, I guess? If you’re able to get it down the stairs yourself. I draw the line at helping you.”

 

The woman took a step toward her. Esme reached out further with the scissors, hoping the threat of tetanus was enough to keep the woman from killing her. Esme had been around plenty of people who’d hurt her. True, she hadn’t always seen it coming. (No one always saw it coming.) But this woman didn’t seem like she was here to hurt Esme. Her stance wasn’t aggressive, and her eyes weren’t wild enough to cause any alarm. Esme lowered her weapon slightly.

 

“Do I know you?” Esme asked, surprised by how quiet her own voice was. She wondered if she should repeat herself.

 

Despite four solid and decidedly windowless walls, a wind whipped up in the room. The woman floated several inches into the air, her hem dangling below her. She wore a pristine gold cuff on her right arm where the arm ended, just above where her elbow might have otherwise been. Her voice reverberated in the small space: “I am the daughter of thunder and memory, the mother of Sirens, the inspirer of generations.” She glowed, a golden light all around her before she returned to the floor and everything seemed semi-normal again. Her voice was quieter when she spoke next, without an Echo: “You may call me Delight.”

 

“I’m sorry.” Esme tried to keep herself from laughing, which came out as a kind of snorting cough. She covered her mouth and cleared her throat. “Delight?”

 

“Is there something humorous about my name, mortal?” There was the menace in the crease between her dark brows and the tensed angle of her left shoulder.

 

“No, sorry. No. Ahem. Of course not.”

 

“If you would prefer the traditional Greek…”

 

“Not unless you enjoy hearing your name butchered.”

 

Esme sat down on the toilet lid behind her, relinquishing her scissors to the sink. This was definitely weird, but she supposed there were worse ways to have a nervous breakdown than talking to a stunning goddess, even if it was somewhere as boring as the bathroom. (The locale, she decided, could use some workshopping.) At least it saved her from another night of motivating herself to do laundry.

 

“As to how I arrived here…”

 

Esme gestured in a circle several times in Delight’s direction. “I’m gonna guess the magic glowing thing has something to do with that?”

 

“I have been here for a long time. I was summoned to work with the other.”

 

Esme glanced at the mirror again. Half of the motivational picture still dangled from the tack, the text completely unreadable from this angle. The other half had ended up on the floor. “The oth… You mean Amara?”

 

“The pale one with the golden hair?”

 

“Well, that’s a dye job… but yeah, that’s her.” Esme slid the claw clip out of her hair, shaking it loose and scratching her scalp a little just because it felt good. “I hate to tell you, but you missed her. I could give you her forwarding address, if you want?” 

 

Maybe her psyche was just helping her move on. This goddess lady named Delight was just a metaphorical manifestation of that… or something. Given how things were going these days, Esme would have bought just about any explanation of this—alien, goddess, burglar, hallucination, whatever. She couldn’t work up the energy to be shocked.

 

“You misunderstand,” Delight said. The gold charm at the base of her throat—a harp, as far as Esme could tell—shined in the atrocious LED lighting. 

 

“Understatement,” Esme muttered.

 

“I have been here,” Delight added.

 

Esme tilted her head, imitating Delight’s irritated tone: “So why are you still here?” Of course the only things Amara hadn’t taken with her were the gross motivational picture from the mirror and the weird glowing lady… demon?... thing she’d apparently summoned somehow. Esme swore that Delight watched each small movement that she made, though the goddess was trying to hide the stolen glances. “Why didn’t she ever mention you, even as something from a dream?”

 

“She wanted to use me, not see me.”

 

That definitely sounded like Amara.

 

“Okay. Well why are you still here, if she’s gone?” 

 

Delight lowered her gaze, just long enough that Esme could admire her eyelashes, dark and long. “I do not know,” Delight said. For the first time, she didn’t come off as some all-knowing goddess or all-powerful creature; she seemed coy, like she was protecting some kind of secret she wouldn’t so much as hint at. “It did not feel it was time to leave yet.”

 

“Right. Well, this has been swell,” Esme said, rising. She set her clip on the sink and shook her hair out one more time. “But I have a life to get back to, and a bed that’s definitely calling my name, so if you don’t mind, could you find someone else to haunt?”

 

“I do not haunt,” Delight said. Her expression wrinkled in several places, gentle in her condescension as though she were dealing with a small confused child. Which, fair. “I am not some common φᾰ́ντᾰσμᾰ. I inspire.”

 

“Wait.” Esme’s mouth popped open, her tongue resting on the roof of her mouth as some old poem or play or something tried to surface from a required lit class back in college. “Are you a muse?”

 

“This is what I said, yes.”

 

“Right.” Esme nodded and saluted the figment of her imagination with two fingers to her forehead. “I’m taking an extra dose of hydroxyzine tonight. Farewell. Or ciao, or whatever.”

 

Now the muse who called herself Delight straight-up glowered, her lips a tightening line.

 

“What?”

 

“You wish to simply return to things as they have been?”

 

Esme crossed her arms over her chest. A shiver shot through her, though she had no idea why. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

 

Delight raised an eyebrow, her judgment clear as she looked from one corner of the closet-sized bathroom to the next. It was empty, more than half empty, and there was no arguing that.

 

“Things are… fine,” was the thing that Esme decided to say. Lying to the gods was always a good plan, right?

 

“When was the last time you danced?”

 

“I… danced?” Probably some wedding she didn’t want to go to or a distant cousin’s bat mitzvah. Did the Chicken Dance or the Cha Cha Slide count?

 

“The joy of moving your body freely,” Delight said. Her dark eyes warmed as she spoke. “Not for anyone but yourself.”

 

“I’m thirty-seven years old,” Esme said. “And that sounds like a lot of physical work for someone in my age bracket.”

 

Delight scanned Esme up and down. Esme shrunk, knees together and elbows pressing into her ribs. “When was the last time you were happy?” Her voice was so quiet that the echo of it made Esme shiver. An electric sense of want—something Esme had almost forgotten in the past year since her relationship began dissolving—made Esme lean forward, just to see what might happen. 

 

“Come,” Delight said. She reached out her hand. “I can show you a new happiness.”

 

Esme wanted to. 

 

Esme didn’t want to. 

 

Esme was tired. Not today tired. She was all-the-days-add-up tired. She wasn’t sure what was getting her through, aside from muscle memory. Part of her wanted to run away with the muse and never look back. 

 

But it made no sense. None of it made sense.

 

“Aren’t you just supposed to inspire me to paint or take up pottery or something?” Esme, keeping her body tight, proceeded through the open door. In her bedroom, things felt off. The warmth of Delight tingled behind her, still present if out of view.

 

“That might be better suited to my sister, Erato,” Delight mumbled. She paused. “Will you not join me?”

 

Esme looked up. In her mirror, the wooden-framed one that she stared into every day, the one that felt familiar, she saw something new—the muse standing behind her in her white dress. She did not seem so godlike just then. She seemed as any other woman might, vulnerable in the space after a question. 

 

Esme should not trust her, should not trust herself, should not trust any of this. Trust was what had gotten her left after nearly five years in a relationship. But somehow, Esme wanted to, even if she got hurt, just to see what it was like again. 

 

Delight reached out her hand.

 

Esme took it.

 

And suddenly they were elsewhere.

 

Esme swayed, the world uneven and dreamlike. She clutched harder to the muse’s hand to steady herself. It was mostly dark here. It took a moment for Esme to realize that she was wearing something new—a black lace cocktail dress, something that had come from so deep in her closet that she thought she had donated it years ago. It had, at one point, been her favorite item of clothing.

 

“Well, I’m not even going to ask about that,” Esme said under her breath. The mechanics of whatever magic not only transported them but also caused her wardrobe change were too confusing for her to untangle. “What is this place?” 

 

She squinted over at the huge iron fence just a few feet away. It might have been the anxieties of the moment playing tricks on her, her mind filling in the blanks with anticipation, but she swore she heard a raven from over that way. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the shadow-outlines of angelic statues beyond the gate, the kind you sometimes saw in cemeteries. The only light here was directly in front of them. It was a skinny little building that Esme didn’t recognize. In the center of the second story was a circular window with stained glass. The image in the glass didn’t look like anything, didn’t add up to anything, but Esme wondered if it was the equivalent of her trying to read Russian—it made sense to somebody, just not to her. To her, it was nothing but a random smattering of glowing reds and golds and blues. There was noise coming from the inside, voices, too loud for this to be a Catholic church or any other kind of place that demanded quiet reverence.

 

Esme tilted her head at Delight, who she realized had been watching her. They still held hands; neither one of them let go, even now. For as profane as it felt to be touching a goddess, Esme had missed intimate warmth.

 

“I believe they call it…” The muse smiled. Her teeth were slightly too big, one of them set crooked. Esme hadn’t realized deities could have imperfections, but it only added to her appearance. Amara had always demanded perfection of everything: perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect agreement with her will. It made the world too rigid and plain. “The Devil’s Elixirs.”

 

Esme raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Charming. And not at all ominous.”

 

Delight laughed, soft and musical. She released Esme’s hand to cover her mouth. Esme wished she hadn’t.

 

“So, what?” Esme finally prompted her, flexing and clenching her suddenly cold-again fingers. “I just go in there and do a waltz and then you leave?” She hoped that Delight hadn’t heard the way that her tongue had caught on the last two words; she hated it when she was the one with her heart on her sleeve.

 

“Something like that.”

 

Esme didn’t know where she was or why she was even here. Why had she taken this muse’s hand and let her lead? She could be something evil, for all Esme knew. 

 

She took a breath. 

 

Maybe if she went home, the muse would just leave, both of them unsatisfied in her un-inspiration. 

 

Maybe if she went home, the muse would just stay. But for how long?

 

“Will you come with me?” Esme asked.

 

A faint glow outlined Delight in the dark then, and it was only by this light that Esme could see the divine woman nod. Her face, still cast in shadow, remained an unreadable mystery.

 

Esme walked in the door first. She found herself in a dark closet of a room. There were no doors or windows. She could not even see the stained glass when she twisted her neck around. But she could feel Delight’s warm breath on the back of her neck, even with her hair down. It was only when Esme lowered her head that she saw the hole in the floor in front of her. She realized that, with one more careless step forward, she would have fallen through like she was in some kind of nightmare. The hole glowed, illuminating a ladder.

 

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Esme hissed over her shoulder. “I’m not going down there to get axe murdered, thank you very much.”

 

“You will not be murdered.”

 

“Very reassuring.”

 

A pause. A bead of sweat rolled down Esme’s spine even though it was cold and clammy in here.

 

“Do you trust me?” the muse whispered.

 

Esme rolled her eyes. Still, moved by something beyond reason that she still didn’t quite understand, she started to descend the ladder. At any moment, she was certain that her foot would try to find the safety of the next rung and meet nothingness. But it was too late to turn back now. Esme had a very toxic relationship with the Sunk-Cost Fallacy.

 

It was impossible to know how long the descent took. It could’ve been a minute as easily as ten. When they reached the bottom—Esme first, then Delight—it looked something like the sewers in a horror movie. Flames danced along the stone walls of the tunnel. The hairs on Esme’s arms stood on end, goosebumps everywhere. Delight brushed a finger down Esme’s arm before taking her hand, leading her somewhere, and this small gesture settled her insides. She felt safe again.

 

Delight stopped. She dropped Esme’s hand and then more light came. A door had opened and Esme walked through. On the other side, the room was filled with laughter and more torchlight. It smelled of ash and gin. Everyone was wearing silk dresses or suits. It felt like Esme had travelled back in time, somehow, though she knew that time was moving forward, and more quickly than she would have liked. 

 

She checked over her shoulder. Delight was still there, sticking out like a very lovely sore thumb in her white gown and laurels. She smiled, a sad and twitching thing, clearly forced. Esme averted her eyes, concentrating instead on the golden cuff in the candlelight, the way it clung to the very edge of Delight’s arm before it ended abruptly. Delight reached out so suddenly, Esme hardly knew what was happening. Esme’s hand in hers, a quick kiss against the knuckles that made her heart race, and then the muse nodded to the room.

 

“Go,” she said. “Dance.”

 

“But there’s no…” The music began to play.

 

Esme was clinging at anything just to make this last a little longer. If asked, she would have said that it was because she was so confused by it all, and she was. But she knew that wasn’t the reason she wanted things to slow down, the reason she wanted time to stop forever. “Am I dead?” was the only coherent phrase that she could convince herself to speak. It certainly had the potential to be a conversation-starter.

 

“You are not,” Delight said. One corner of her lips pulled up, sad and amused all at once. Esme couldn’t even begin to interpret that expression.

 

Esme pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “So this isn’t some elaborate actually-the-Underworld scheme you’ve got going on here?” Esme had to admit, there were worse afterlives to get stuck in than ones with dancing, drinks, and pretty women.

 

Delight closed her eyes for a long moment and shook her head. “Quickly now, mortal,” she said, her voice wavering in the last word. “Inspiration doesn’t last forever.”

 

“Will you be here?” Esme took a step closer. Even with her voice so low, even with the loud sounds of strings, she knew that Delight could hear her. “When I come back?”

 

Delight combed Esme’s hair behind her ear. She rested her palm against Esme’s cheek, then against the center of Esme’s breastbone. “Go,” she whispered again.

 

Esme did as she was told. Her early movements on the dance floor among all those strangers were awkward. It took time to ease into a rhythm, and then a lovely stranger smiled at her. Esme could feel Delight watching, melancholic from the sidelines, just as she could feel the exact moment that Delight drifted away. Esme swung her hips and arms, eyes closed, memory and thunder moving her toward a new day of surrender.