Untitled Bizarre Fiction

one

Paul and Ruth Harrison were our across-the-street neighbors forever and the only neighbors we had for blocks and blocks. And then they killed themselves. Or Paul killed Ruth and then himself, or Ruth did him and then herself. We don't really know. We found them because the smell was horrible and the cats wouldn't leave their porch or yard; they milled around, slinking along the porch furniture and shitting in the flower pots; they mewed and screamed all night and day, pawing at the doors and windows. Dad said later that all the cats are starving and they smelled a meal in Paul and Ruth's rot.
Dad and I dragged the bodies out one at a time, blue and cold, into the yard to bury them as nice as we could, each of us pulling an arm, their heads thudding heavily on the stairs as we yanked them bit by bit down the steps into the backyard. Dozens of skeletal cats crowded around in the dirt and rain and watched with their spooky, hungry eyes; they were skin and bone, ribs and spines visible beneath patchy fur. A few of the more adventurous ones tried getting at the bodies. We'd turn around to find them nipping and scratching at the pallid flesh as we dragged with all our might through the rain and they wouldn't leave them be no matter how much we shouted and shooed, not until the bodies were in the ground.
Mom moved into the Harrison's house before we could even finish shoveling the dirt back in. Dad said she had to go and that he was sick of her laying around and soaking in the tub and he couldn't take it anymore and it was a good thing the neighbors went and died and left a well-kept house behind. He said it was good because all the other houses nearby were crumbling and in disrepair and the only other option would be to stay at home with her family, but that wasn't really an option either because he was really losing his patience. He said he couldn't focus on work when a middle aged woman was in the tub for ten hours a day and he said it really ground his gears. Dad said, “that water comes out the faucet dirty, imagine what that water looks like after a body been sittin' in it all god damn day.”
The cats did eventually dig down to the bodies and ate at parts of them. Mostly they picked at their noses and fingers. I think it was the sight of those gnawed noses and nibbled finger nubs that changed my little sister's view of the neighborhood cats, casting them in a sinister, ghastly light. She stopped setting food out after that and instead set traps, or blew their brains out with a gun she'd found in a shoe box.
No one ever came by or showed any interest in where they went, Paul and Ruth I mean. Someone dying or disappearing isn't unusual enough for anyone to take notice or give a big shit. Dad said they had no one; said that our casual neighborly acquaintance was the closest thing they had to friendship in the whole world and we buried them and took their house.

Most everyone lived in the city. Our abandoned neighborhood ran right up to the edge of the city with small repair shops and factories marking the transition between old, low-cost housing and the endless, gray city. Dad said the ocean lies dark and ominous on the other side of the city; he said lots of buildings are slowly eroding under the water. That vast toxic ocean is all I dream about when I do dream; I dream about fish as big as houses under the green water, swimming along the city streets. Some of them are the color of brick and blend into the city. I dream of massive black eels poking their heads out of third floor windows and curling their way along the alleys and masses of black coral growing up the sides of skyscrapers. I dream of glowing green children playing in sunken parks and hulking mechanical sharks that patrol the depths, their porthole eyes glowing amber and their rusted fins sharp as knives.