Joel Tomfohr
Triples
Inside the heart is a chamber but not a cell. Or maybe it is a cell. A red blood cell and the whole thing a fist. Do I write a horror story about a hospital? Yes, I do. There is a walking cadaver in the corridor. He is me. He died in the hills with the coyotes and the vultures.
When I go home, I also stay in the hospital with myself. That means that there are three of me. My cadaver and I go down to the cafeteria, scavenging for food even though we are not hungry. We are entombing ourselves for the evening. We sit at a table. My cadaver looks at me and I look back at him. His eye sockets are empty. He has a bruise on his right cheek from punching himself in the face. The rays of light from the streetlamps are scimitars.
Back at home I am watching TV with my wife and the dogs. We cuddle. I feel her warm body and I would never let the cadaver come between me and her. I am in the hospital taking care of the cadaver.
How’s it going?
It is good.
What do you want?
I want your family.
Why?
I will tell you why:
See my nightmare. A litany of horrors. My stomach is a wet rag being wrung out. Save me from my pain.
I watch the cadaver walk the hospital corridors. First floor, second. Third floor, fourth. I would like to 5150 my cadaver, bit I think that one day he will 5150 me. I see him outside room B. I join a religious cult when I am four. Praise the Lord! Submit to corporeal punishment. Pull my pants down. Now my underpants. He spanks my bottom. A cadaver now hug my dad. He loves me. I tell myself in the hospital See him hug me while I wail. Take me to the hospital. I know what it’s like to be dead and live at the same time.
Back at the house, the living room is washed in blue television light and the dogs are curled up with us on the couch and we are curled up with each other and my wife has no clue that I am also a cadaver in the hospital.
Joel Tomfohr's chapbook, A Blue Hour (Bottlecap Press), was a finalist for the 2025 Orison Chapbook Prize. work can be found in Expat Press, Rejection Letters, Farewell Transmission, Maudlin House, and many others. He lives in the Bay Area.
