Hidden

It’s after me.

My legs move as fast as they can carry me across the dead leaves and the muck of the forest floor, and my heart pounds against my chest so hard I feel like I could cough it up. I know I can’t outrun it for long and my lungs are on fire. There’s no use. Hiding myself behind a tree, I put my hand over my mouth in an attempt to muffle the involuntary gasping for air. I can’t tell where it is; or where I am anymore because my head is spinning and vision is blurring. Everything is black now, no noise other than a steady drumming inside me.

I sit still for the next few minutes, not because I want to wait for it to discover me, but because my knees are locked and every muscle is stiff. Attempting to remain silent, I look around to make sure it’s all clear. No sign of it. I leave the safety of my tree in search of the end of this forest, if there is one. All I can see is the thick tree line that seems to have swallowed the sky, the eerie fog that floats over the ground, hiding unimaginable horrors.

I wander for what seems like hours and everything looks the same. Everything smells wet and dead. Though it's still quiet, I’m careful to look behind me with every few steps. Suddenly I hear a loud crack which causes my head to whip around in the direction I heard it. I see nothing but I run anyway. That was more than enough time to catch my breath anyway.

I take a sharp right turn to hopefully lose anything following me, and I slip on the wet leaves, twisting my ankle. As I struggle to my feet I see a house. It's a dark, and dirty brown, covered in cobwebs and strange plants growing out of every slit. I shouldn’t go in, but I can’t run. All I can do now is hide. I walk up the stairs that creak with every step carefully opening the door, my hand pushing through a layer of webs and dust. The inside isn’t what I picture walking into. In the middle of the room is a blue light just floating. Its cold, mysterious glow reminds me of a star. It lights up the rest of the room with vibrant colors, not just blue but purple and red and orange and green and I feel safe, filled with wonder and curiosity. Wanting to touch it I reach out but before I can it moves throughout the room and I follow closely. The light wanders to the next room and I’m so absorbed in its radiance I continue along with it. It fades through a door and I hesitate to open it, just for a moment considering what could be beyond, who could be. But I just have to see it, I have to know what it is, so I enter the room and there are no walls, just an open space with old, torn up rugs and furniture ruined by rain. It’s cold and the light is nowhere to be found, everything seems so dim and lifeless now. I only see the dark, foggy woods, and hear the floor creaking behind me. Once, and then again, like footsteps, but much heavier. My throat is dry and my knees tremble as I turn around to see my bedroom door, no webs, fully intact. My mother opens it.

“Honey, did you take your medicine this morning?”

Remember

I never asked myself why Dad slept on an old, broken couch, while Mom slept on a luxurious mattress twice her size. I also never asked how two people who were supposed to be in love could scream hateful words at each other until their lungs nearly collapsed, the words pouring out with ease, when they should feel more like trying to swallowing acid. I often found myself ignoring the endless shouting, and the deafening silences, trying to keep the innocence of a child a part of me.

For years I watched them sit on opposite sides of the couch, watching the same sob story on the screen. Both wondering where the butterflies went, but neither admitting that they were dead. The love on TV seemed so distant and unrelatable . They sometimes did try. A dinner date. A movie. But it was too late. Or at least Mom seemed to think so.

Mom read Jane Austen and drank herbal teas. Dad fell asleep over a bowl of Rice-a-roni, watching the Discovery Channel. Dad’s eyes were always sunken in. Mom thought it was from the television but I knew when I looked at him that his grey hair was from his soul being slowly drained into the system. The idea implanted in his brain that it would never get better, and we were better without him. An idea that Mom didn’t put to rest as much as she proved to him everyday.

Mom cut her hair. The split, dry ends she’d carried with her for years being swept off a wooden floor and thrown away like old memories she was letting go. She never cared that Dad hated it, she didn’t need his approval. With her new self-confidence and hair style, she opened up her Better Living magazine to the sound of Dad yelling at the TV over a football game and put her feet up while he started dinner.

Mom smiled when she was at church and an old lady said her kids behave so well. She smiled when someone told a joke, just not if it was Dad’s. She didn’t like his dirty jokes as much as everyone else. Mom cried too, and I don’t remember why but she always seems to find a reason. Dad cried too sometimes, when he thought no one is watching. But I saw.

In the morning at 7am, she’d do her makeup and I’d wake up early enough to watch her. I didn’t understand what any of it was supposed to do, except the blush. I’d asked about that one before. She said that it’s to make it look like you’re flattered when a boy says something to you. I’d asked her why she’d ever need a boy to think she’s blushing if she has a husband. She didn’t answer. I always thought she was beautiful and loved to watch her braid her hair before she lopped it off. The orange locks weaving in and out and tied together with a weird scrunchy.

Then Dad hit rock bottom and Mom decided she was drowning.Tied down to a rock that was dragging her down, and she needed to cut the rope. So she cut it. I remember cleaning the torn, worn out fabrics of his couch, his so called bed. There were tons of boxes of Bottle Caps and Dots, every candy you can think of hidden underneath. I was so angry, but at the wrong person. So when I took an axe to the wooden beams inside of it to make it fit through the door, I kept swinging and swinging until it felt like my arms would snap like twigs under the weight of rage and heartbreak.

It felt good to have that blank spot in the Family Room and to have a spot on the wall that was the wrong color since we hadn’t moved the sofa in so long. She sold his fish tank and TV. And put all his ties in a ziploc bag and shipped them over to his parent’s, where he was staying. For a long time, I didn’t feel the difference of him being gone. Because he always felt gone to me. And I was glad he was, but that’s just because I didn’t ask the right questions back then. Now when I find a picture of when they were young and happy, kissing and hugging. I hide it in my drawer to keep those sweet, frozen memories safe. Remembered.

The Comfort of Company

The silence is deafening, an ear piercing hissing when everything is still and waiting. What is it waiting for? The end. That's all we can do, these four walls, the pealing paint, the wooden floors, faded by the hot sun beating down, and I. When I wake up everyday, or every other day, I've actually lost track, I check to see if the road is still empty. And each time it is, cars all still parked aimlessly from the panic of trying to outrun a pandemic. I used to keep marks on the wall to remember how many days I've been alone, but bleeding nails began to bore me and every time I saw the lines and all of their chaos, I went a little more insane. When will they come back? Maybe when the seas evaporate and the trees sink like ships into the earth, when the grass grows taller than the skyscrapers that mankind once looked up at. But no, I don't think Mother Nature or whoever calls the shots now would allow things so impossible to happen. Nothing so improbable as the comfort of company.