Low Life by Ryan David Jahn

neighbors started calling Leonard and complaining about a
foul stench, once he had given up on burning incense and icing the body, he had driven to the store and picked up a half dozen bottles of drain cleaner. He poured the drain cleaner over the corpse,
let it dissolve the tissue, and ran warm shower water over it. He did this four days in a row (going to a different store each time). The drain had clogged several times, but he’d managed to
plunge the stoppages through. Now what was left was mostly bones and teeth and what hair hadn’t swirled down the drain. He still had to get rid of that, but he was afraid. Dental records and
so on. He would have to smash out the teeth and—
    That was for later.
    He walked to the bed and stood over Samantha. Samantha was for now.
    She was pale and smooth and beautiful.
    He had to make her believe that he was Jeremy Shackleford.
    When he sat on the edge of the bed a low moan escaped her throat. He reached a hand out and brushed the back of it across her smooth cheek, feeling the light blonde hairs on it like the fuzz on
a peach. He ran the pad of a thumb across her soft lips. His breathing grew heavier. He swallowed.
    Yes, Samantha was for now.
    He imagined lying with her, loving her. He imagined her loving him in return. It seemed like a dream. Would she know he wasn’t Jeremy? There were so many things besides appearance that
made a man – the way he closed his eyes when angry, forcing himself to calm down; the way he bit at his bottom lip; the way he carried himself when he walked – and marriages, Simon
thought, were so intimate that it would be impossible for a spouse not to, eventually, pick up on all of them. Twins, for instance, might look identical to strangers, but parents and spouses could
tell the difference in an instant. Would she be able to see he wasn’t Jeremy just as quickly? Would she look at him and just know? Would all this have been pointless?
    There was only one way to find out.
    ‘Samantha.’
    She rolled over in her sleep, mumbling something under her breath.
    He reached out and ran fingers through her hair.
    ‘Samantha.’
    She brushed his hand away.
    ‘Not right now, Jeremy,’ she said, still asleep. But a moment later her eyes opened. ‘Jeremy?’
    She sat up and there was something like fear on her face, her eyes wide and blue and beautiful, and her mouth was hanging open, and she crawled backwards, away from him, until she bumped up
against the dark wood headboard.
    ‘Jeremy?’
    ‘Hi.’
    ‘Where – where have you been?’
    ‘I – I don’t know.’
    ‘You don’t – did you have another?’ She pinched her eyes closed and rubbed at them, still mostly asleep, apparently incapable of grasping completely what was happening
when only a moment earlier she had been dreaming impossible dreams. She opened her eyes again. ‘Did you have another – spell?’
    ‘I guess I must have.’
    Had Shackleford had blackouts as well? Simon’s had been less and less frequent (six months ago he was having them often, but now they almost never came), but just a couple of days before
all this started – before Shackleford broke into his apartment – he’d found himself in the adult book store and didn’t know how he’d gotten there, couldn’t
remember it at all. He was wearing only one shoe. When he got back to his apartment, he’d found the other shoe sitting on his coffee table. What did it mean that—
    Suddenly Samantha was crying. At first Simon didn’t know what was happening – she simply looked down at her lap, and a moment later her body began to shake and hair that had been
tucked behind her small but jutting ears – flopped out like loose shutters – fell into her face and small sobs escaped her – and even after he did know what was happening he
didn’t know what to do. He simply sat and stared at her as she shook and looked down at her own lap.
    ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m back. It’s me – Jeremy.’
    She