By: Anonymous
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them, and then closed again. Each time I could see, my view was a new location. A blinding red light. Below a weeping willow. Beside a pale, motionless body on a sidewalk. On a stretcher. Complete darkness… but I could almost see the sounds of blood-curdling screams.. One, two, three, four, five, six… A few more flashes imprinted my eyes like a branding iron on leather. The flashes had me upside down, hanging by the ankles. All the blood in my body rushed to my head and my arms bound to each other by… nothing. I writhed inside of my skin but I felt no motion from my physical body. Another switch. Six feet underground. Finally, I could move. But only a few inches on all sides. I pressed my hands against the wood that existed only a breath away from my face. Don’t fight it. It’ll be harder for it to stop. I stopped moving. My eyelids drifted slowly into being locked shut. The feeling of the splintered wood left my senses. In what seemed like split seconds and days simultaneously, I floated into an upright position. I mustered up all of my strength to pull apart my eyelids until they could eventually snap open. In the dim moonlight, I could see only the outlines of furniture in this unfamiliar room. My feet were still a few feet off the ground and my long, dark brown hair brushed softly against my arms. I was wearing nothing but a stained frock. The hem of it was splotched brown, somehow identical to dried blood. Not this again. I tried to bring my hands over my eyes before I could experience what I could never forget, but my hands remained straight down like pillars. A soft, drilling hum began to fill my head. It’s starting. I winced as the room in which I remained midair went into rewind. The dark room went light for a moment as the sun shone through the windows covered by white, translucent curtains. As everything began to settle into what must have been yesterday, the frigid air became more lived in, but panicked. Several loud thuds erupted from behind me, but I could not turn to see it. I wouldn’t want to anyway. “Oh, little sister!” called out a crazed man’s voice. He sounded young, only about twenty. As I fixated my eyes on the rose wallpaper in front of me, I could still hear the sound of small footsteps crossing the room on the other side of the wall. Not a child, please. I tried to hum to myself, tried to block the situation out from what I could, but every time, I couldn't. It’s the knowledge that this is all real that makes me worry what will happen if I turn a blind eye. The man from behind me turned back the direction he came and I could tell he was trying to find a way to get to this “little sister.” Between every slow stomp he took was a small shake of the house. I managed to turn my head slightly to find a picture on the wall to my right. “Did you think you could hide?” asks the man’s voice from the wall in front of me. Did he find her already? I stared into the photo to try and figure out who the people were. A man. A woman. A teenage boy. A toddler girl. Was this their family? CRASH. It’s really beginning now. In my frantic attempts to not hear what was happening, I scanned the photo for as much as I could. The parents in the photo were smiling, mother holding the son’s hand and the father carrying the daughter on her shoulders as she held a small rose. “GET AWAY! I HATE YOU,” a young girl’s voice screamed. My mind began to race. THUMP. The teenage boy had one hand in his pocket, holding something I could not think of what could be. The mother’s head was turned slightly toward the girl on the father’s shoulders. “Well, so do I! But only one of us can get what they want, right?” The man’s voice was gruff and exasperated. Why did he hate her so much? “Of course, they left me to watch you, but I say f*** that! Of course, they left me to watch their favorite child! Of course! Of course!” the scratchy voice howled. I could hear the girl whimper. THUNK. It sounded as if a small body was thrown against a wall. This is probably what happened. My eyes dropped from the painting and I looked back at the roses on the wallpaper. “You are always drinking and it makes you crazy. Please, just go and never come back,” the girl sobbed. “How about you never come back? It will be so much easier. Quicker too,” the brother cackled. “Please…” the girl croaked. Her voice sounded pinched, as if she were fighting for air. My heart fell. This was it. The younger ones are always the harder ones to be around for. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could and tried to focus on the white noise of the wind outside, but it could not cover up the sound of a crack and delicate thud. She is gone. My feet began to move closer to the ground. As soon as I can find a mirror, I can leave. As I let my body move in whichever direction it wished, I found myself only able to pass one room. Inside it was a small bed with more roses over the sheets’ pattern. A rocking horse was near it, closer to me, but beside the room I passed was that mirror I was looking for. In the short glance I had, I saw the sallowness in her face. I saw the grip marks over her neck. I saw the bloody lip and bruised face. I saw the tangled, dark brown hair which covered one of her light brown eyes. But all of this left and I found myself back where I always start. I sat up straight in my plastic chair across from the hooded man. The blank, white walls seemed to be speaking to me. Somehow, this episode felt unusual. The man stood up and turned away. “Wait,” I called out to him. He stopped in his tracks. “Was this one different?” I asked. The man cleared his throat. “Of course,” he muttered in a newly familiar voice. He pushed the door open and let it close. But before I could stand up to ask him, the floor left from below my feet.