[What’s the One Thing You Can’t Leave Home Without?]
by Madeline Almaroad
Illinois State University
Madeline Alaroad is currently studying creative writing at Illinois State University and is expected to graduate in the spring of 2026. Originally from Mahomet, they earned their associate's degree from Parkland College before transferring. While at Parkland, they wrote articles for the school's newspaper, The Prospectus, and eventually, their writing would be featured in Illinois State University's literary magazine Euphemism. After graduation, they hope to continue writing both fiction and nonfiction.
I knew that it wouldn’t make sense to anyone. Hell, it didn’t even make sense to me. Studying and living in France confirmed it for me. There was something dark and shadowy that lived inside my chest that came along with me everywhere I went. It didn’t make sense that I spent my days lying in bed, lights off and blinds shut. It didn’t make sense that I felt so suffocated by the outside world, or that the sun coming in through my windows made me want to peel my own skin off. But I had been that way long enough for it to feel comfortable. Everything dark and fucked up inside of me would always make itself at home wherever I went. I knew that.
It doesn’t matter that it’s France and its beautiful. Everywhere is beautiful. And everywhere makes me want to hide.
I definitely noticed when the flies started to accumulate. At first it was one or two flies in buzzing around my dorm room. It seemed normal. Maybe they had gotten trapped somehow, snuck in while I was coming or going. I didn’t have a fly swatter, and my hands were always too slow to smack them, so the issue faded into the background. I didn’t start to notice there was a problem until the flies started circling me when I was lying in bed. Five or six of them would fly around, landing on my arm or my blankets. I would flail my arms above and around me every five minutes, hoping that it we be enough to get them to go away. I figured they must have been attracted to the small lamp on the wall next to my bed, but in the back of my mind I started to wonder if I should ask someone why there were so many flies in my room.
I got my answer when I opened the trash can to throw something away and a large cloud of flies exploded into my face. There were so many of them that you could hear the buzzing as they spilled into the small space, like it was the inside of a beehive.
I stood frozen, mouth falling open in horror as I saw what was in the trash can. The month old rotted food was covered by a colony of flies, buzzing and crawling. There were even more flies in the trash can than had flown into the air. It all hit me in the face at once: the cloud of flies, the smell of rotted food, and the realization that this was were they were coming from. I was face to face with three weeks worth of rotted fruit, meat, and wine bottles. I had to look away or I would puke. The sight of it was too much.
What’s wrong with me?
I was petrified, stumbling backwards as my breathing started to pick up. I couldn’t breathe. They were everywhere. All around me. Filling the air. I couldn’t breathe; any air I sucked into my lung wasn’t safe. What if they got into my lungs? I could feel them crawling on my insides. I was choking on air, swallowing it back down over and over.
I rushed out of the dorm and into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind me. My back hit the door as I tried to calm myself down. They were all over me, I could feel it. The thought made my head jerk to the side uncontrollably. I didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t a problem I could just ignore, like how I ignored the fact that I had never taken out the trash before and didn’t know how. This wasn’t something I could just wait out. I had to do something.
Before I could figure out what I was going to do my phone buzzed. I looked down at phone to see a WhatsApp message from Elise. She asked if I had any paper towels I could bring to her dorm.
I stood in front of Elise’s dorm-room door, crushing the paper towels in my fist, feeling like I was melting inside. I had run from Résidence Mansart to Résidence Montmuzard, and I could feel the back of my neck growing damp under my thick layer of long black hair. It was the last week of july in France, so we all had no choice but to let it envelop us. The only place that had air conditioning was the Musee De Beaux Arts, and that was just to protect the artwork. Although most of us had gotten used to the heat that blanketed us wherever we went, it didn’t change the fact that we were constantly warm and damp with sweat. More sweat than usual dripped down my face as I stared at Elise’s closed door, wondering how to even explain this to someone. My face must’ve been bright red when Elise opened the door.
The brightness of her apartment hit me right away. The sky was big and bright and blue outside her window. The blinds were up and the windows were open, filling the dorm with natural light and letting in a slight breeze. It was a jarring walking into a room that was the complete opposite of mine. I kept the lights off, the windows firmly locked, and the blinds shut to keep the world from spilling in. It looked like a rat’s nest in the corner of a dark basement. I stared at the bright blue sky, trying desperately not to twitch when I thought of what was waiting for me in my dorm room. I couldn’t get the flies out on my own. I couldn’t. I could barely go back in to grab paper towels without feeling the need to peel my skin off.
Elise thanked me for the paper towels and walked over to her desk. She looked like a princess in her floral chiffon dress, eating an apple in front of the big blue sky. She looked like someone who deserved to be here.
“Hey…” I started trying not to let the shame eat me alive, “can I ask you for a really big favor?”
“Of course.” Elise answered, “What is it?”
I felt a deep sense of shame as I stood in the doorway, watching Elise survey the dark room in front of her. She glanced over her shoulder at me, squinting with what I think was confusion. She asked why I had all the lights off.
I knew what she was looking at didn’t make sense. Explaining the weight of it felt impossible. That morning I skipped my French classes, choosing instead to lay in bed until late afternoon and suffocate in the dim silence of my dorm. Jason (The only other guy on the trip other than Charles) texted me during class to ask where I was. I texted back saying that I was just tired and that I just had to start taking my antidepressants again, which I had forgotten to take for a week or so. Even so, I rarely opened my blinds all the way and kept my windows firmly closed. I didn’t want to try to explain why I stayed holed up inside my room, shutting out such a beautiful new place. I lay in bed all morning, the bright yellow sunlight sneaking around the edges of my blinds making me want to peel my skin off. Sometimes the outside was too much, and the only way to hide from it was to shut it out.
I muttered out a defensive, yet weak, “I was tired.”
Thankfully, Elise didn’t push it any further. Maybe that was why she was the only one I would even dare to ask.
Elise worked through the problem with a sort of mechanical efficiency. First, she pulled the trash bag out of the can and told me to open all the windows and turn on the lights while she went to throw it out. Then, while we waited for the flies to clear out, Elise took a trash bag and picked up every piece of rotted food left around the apartment. Before throwing away each piece of trash she would turn to me to and ask, do you want to save this? Like I was a toddler whose answer she would only half believe. When I would say I wanted to save a single piece of bread that had sat in it’s container for three weeks, Elise would give me a look of doubt that shamed me into letting her throw it away. Elise never questioned it too deeply, which I was grateful for. It was comforting to have someone who understood the things you couldn’t speak out loud.
Afterwards Elise told me to let my apartment breathe for a few hours, so I went for a walk. I ended up walking to the McDonald's about ten minutes from campus. I had been too anxious to go to the grocery store by myself, and too anxious to ask anyone to go with me, so I had been living off the potato wedges at the French McDonald's for about a week now. I considered asking Elise to go grocery shopping with me, tossing the idea around in my head as I walked. There was just a simpleness to the way we interacted with each other that I really appreciated. I didn’t feel the same need to pretend with Elise that I felt with everybody else. I assume she felt the same about me, but I could never be sure. Elise was very open about being autistic. I would listen as she rambled on about her hyperfixations, never wanting her to feel like she couldn’t be herself with me. She talked to me in depth once about how the best way to hide a body was to dissolve it in this special type of acid that left no trace.
I sat on the curb outside the French McDonald's, deep in thought as I ate my potato wedges. I thought about the night we met, when our group’s flight got cancelled at 11:00 pm and we had to choose someone to share a hotel room with for the night. We had chatted a bit at the airport, so we decided to room together. Elise said she didn’t want to share a room with someone who would party all night, and I didn’t look like I would do that. Before we went to bed she said she had something to tell me. Elise pulled a worn stuffed rabbit out of her bag, telling me she had to sleep with it because of her separation anxiety. In response, I enthusiastically pulled out my own stuffed bear, saying that we matched. She nodded blankly and then went into detail about how the stuffed rabbit and her relationship with her parents. I smiled thinking about it.
I knew she wouldn’t judge me, I knew she wouldn’t coddle me, but I also knew that she would be there if I asked. And in that moment, sitting on the curb outside the French McDonald’s, I loved who she was more than anything.