The Color of Stale Sugar

It was the summer the air conditioner died, leaving the apartment to stew in its own heat and the smell of old carpet. My head pounded from the inside out, a wet, brackish pressure behind my eyes that had been building for two days. I stood at the counter, gripping the edge, trying to summon the will to fill a glass from the nearly-empty pitcher of cheap raspberry drink mix. The drink had gone stale, a film of sugar crusting at the bottom, the color a queer, blood-tinged pink against the white ceramic.

I was about to turn on the tap when a voice, thin as a ribbon, slid through the room. ‘Moth.’ That’s what I thought it said. I blinked, my vision blurring, and turned sharply, the movement sending a spike of pain through my skull. There was no one there. The room was empty, the slatted blinds casting bars of light across the worn linoleum. I said, aloud, ‘I heard that. I heard what you said.’ But the silence that followed was thick, like the air before a storm.

My mind felt like it was wrapped in gauze. ‘Moth.’ What did that even mean? I looked around the dim space. There was a bag of birdseed leaking in the corner, a flannel shirt hanging on a hook, a stack of old newspapers. Nothing that could be ‘moth.’ Then I saw it—a flutter by the window. A moth, pale and dusted with grime, its wings beating against the glass in a desperate rhythm, throwing a stuttering shadow across the wall.

‘Oh,’ I said, my voice a croak. ‘The moth.’ A stupid relief washed over me, the kind you feel when a strange noise resolves into something mundane. But then the voice spoke again, right behind my ear, so close I felt breath on my neck, even though the air was still. ‘Not moth. Moth-ball.’ The words were precise, deliberate, as if correcting a child. I spun around, my heart slamming, but the room was still empty. The moth had stopped moving, pressed flat against the glass, as if listening.

The pain in my head flared, a white-hot needle behind my eyes. I gripped the counter, my knuckles white. ‘Who’s there?’ I asked, my voice thin. No answer. I looked at the pitcher of stale drink, at the pink crust clinging to the sides. And then, without reason, the memory of a smell came to me—the sharp, acrid scent of mothballs, the kind my grandmother used to pack away winter clothes in a cedar chest. A smell from childhood, from a house that had been torn down years ago.

I didn’t want to look, but my eyes dragged to the corner of the room, near the closet, where the slats of the vent lined the wall. There, in the dust, was a single mothball, white as bone, sitting exactly where the shadow from the window had cast a dark spot. I hadn’t put it there. I had never had mothballs in this apartment. The room was still, the air heavy, and the voice came again, softer, almost sad, ‘You left me. You didn’t even look at me.’

The pitch of the voice shifted, and I realized the girl was crying. A dry, rustling sound, like wings against silk. My headache pounded, and the room seemed to tilt. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the flannel shirt on the hook begin to sway, as if pushed by a hand. My reflection in the window, which I had been avoiding, showed not my face but the blurry outline of a small girl in a yellow dress, her face pale, her hair stringy, standing just behind my shoulder.

I couldn’t move. The mothball on the floor began to dissolve, melting into the wooden planks, staining them a dark, tea-colored brown, spreading like a bruise. The air turned cold, and every shadow in the room bled outward, reaching for my feet. The voice whispered, a harsh hiss, ‘You ate the pink. You drank the pink. Now you’re mine.’

The ceiling lights flickered, and I finally managed to turn, but instead of a girl, all I saw was my own face in the window, but wrong—slightly too long, the eyes black pits, the mouth stretched into a lipless grin. Then the lights went out, and the last thing I heard was the sound of the moth’s wings, thrumming like a heartbeat, before everything went black.

I woke up on the floor, the taste of something metallic and sour in my mouth. The pitcher was on its side, the pink liquid pooling across the linoleum, forming a shape—a small handprint, reaching toward the door. The air smelled of bitter almonds, and on the wall above the sink, scratched into the paint, was a single word, in letters that looked like they’d been dug by fingernails: ‘Still.’ I haven’t touched the sink since. I haven’t poured a glass of anything pink. But every night, I hear the moth, beating against the glass, and I know it’s not a moth anymore.