Home at last.
Time had not been kind to the house I grew up in. But then again, time had not been kind to me either. Really, was time ever kind to anything? That invisible tormentor, that slow wave of decrepitness that washes continually over every thing, living and not, until it all resembles the same pile of meaningless dust from whence everything came.
The house lay in shambles, a relic of a life long since passed. Haunted by memories of lives come and gone within its walls, the house now sagged like an old mother wary of the sorrow of life. The windows were caked with dirt and mud as if those were the tears the house cried in its loneliness. The front door had warped in it's frame in a bad attempt at keeping the spirits within from escaping to the light of the outside world. The roof was missing shingles like an older man loses hair; the chimney having collapsed in on itself long ago.
It is weird to say I came home to my favorite room. But that was were I instinctively went to the second I walked in. The basement closet was like I left it. Of all the things in this house that had been ravaged by time, the basement closet was the only thing that had refused to submit to that harsh master.
I smiled.
I walked by up the old steps cautious of the sounds they made under my feet. Into the kitchen I went and placed a tool box and a book on the old kitchen table. The yellow table spread disintegrated from the action. The fabric was so moth eaten and rotted that it seemed to shred with the breeze. The table itself leaned with the weight of the objects I placed on it. Time had murdered my home but it had failed to kill my memories. I sat in one of the four old yellow chairs that lined the table feeling the seat give way. No more cushioning for me. It was more a truth than the chair probably intended and I took it as such.
It had been so long since I left this place. So long ago, so happy ago, if such a thing exist(ed)s. I reached for the book, my journal. My personal thoughts for the last uncountable years, decades even, maybe. I was not sure. I rubbed my head with my left hand as I place the journal in my lap with the right. So long ago.
Within the journal lay a list of names. I do not believe in transcendence anymore. Everyone has that time in their lives when all they see is rose colored. I too had lived in that state and as we all have to do, I became color blind. I once thought there was goodness in us all, I once thought we could overcome anything with love. I once thought the setting sun was the beginning of a wonderful life. Now all I feel is hatred for those times. No, I say I became color blind but the truth is, I peeked around the lenses and realized I was seeing a lie. The glasses lied to me, they had always been lying to me. No one overcomes, they endure. Transcendence, ha, it does not happen for us.
I looked at the list of names and then I looked around the kitchen. I saw a mirror on the back wall but from my angle I could not see my reflection. I laid the book on the table, stood and opened the toolbox. Wrenches, knives, screwdrivers… etc. I grabbed the mini-flashlight that lay near the bottom of the box. It would be dark soon and the power was out. I then walked to the mirror.
I could not believe I was looking at myself. It was me no doubt but it was me looking with new eyes. It felt like new eyes because what I saw was different from what I remembered. My hair was bleached blonde, short and layered (I had always been brunette). Faint red lipstick and a light amount of base here and there giving my face an almost bubbly sense of youth. I knew I was pretty, had no doubt but now all I saw of bubbling circles of disease and death racing across me. My white sundress fit my form yet was not so tight as to not move in a breeze.
"It's time for a few small repairs." The mirror spoke to me.
"I've come back with a vengeance that will not be sated by fixing this place." I spoke back at my grinning reflection.
"Vengeance. You know nothing of vengeance. What vengeance you have is misguided the least."
"Maybe. Maybe my whole life was misguided. Maybe it is my nature to be misguided."
The reflection began to laugh. She began to laugh at me. I was laughing at myself. I knew I would fail like I always did. I knew I was a pathetic failure. I had always been, always would be…
I smashed the mirror with the flashlight. Again and again I hit the mirror until all the glass lay in the floor and I was beating the wall. I still hit the wall, not caring the flashlight shattered. I did not care as it fell to pieces and I was now striking the wall with my fist. I was shrieking now, shivering and shrieking. My eyes began to boil, growing hot. My stomach tensed and knotted, my head growing heavy. I fell to my knees ignoring the shards and began to cry. Hot streams of water poured from my eyes as my body jerked and shook in-between the screams as I let loose every emotion the mirror had brought up.
"You're not a failure." I looked up to see my mother standing next to me.
Tears still poured from my eyes as I began hugging my knees leaning against the wall the mirror had been attached to.
"I'm proud of you. You came back, you never forgot." I was looking at the dirt covered floor, I could not look my mother in her eyes.
"I took and I took and I took and yet I never thought of you or of father or of Jane…"
"You were sick. No one could blame you but you." I felt her hand rest on my head and then she was gone.
It seems like as the days go by I'm more and more hypnotized. Like I am walking a wire above insanity and the second I close my eyes I will fly out of my mind into the fires of craziness. All through life I felt like I was on that wire. I fell off of it a couple times but I always managed to come back to that wire and try again. Not this time though. I had used up everyone around me and now the next fall would be the last. There would be no one there to give me a hand when I fell. This time the fall would kill me.
I stood and imagined that was what mother must have felt the day father told us that we would be living with his parents from now on. That he had lost everything gambling and that to pay off his debt we had to sell everything and move back to his parents. This was his parents home I walked in. We had never left and I imagine mother knew we never would.
I can not imagine what it took for her to keep herself together as I began to get sick, they lost everything and father began to drink. She had lost her home, her security, her dignity and for nearly a year, her oldest daughter. And yet she had been stronger than I and kept it together.
The kitchen was her favorite room. The table her favorite piece of furniture. The place where she would spend countless hours drinking tea and reading books I never got into. The only place she looked the happiest, sitting at this table reading.
I tried to smile as I looked at the old table but managed to only grimace.
"I miss you."
I had never said it to her, even when I had come back from the hospital. I had hated her for letting me go there. I had hated everyone for sending me away, for what I felt was them hiding their sick and troubled daughter out of sight to keep up what little appearances they had left to maintain. We may have been broke and technically homeless but we would be damned if we would have a mentally troubled daughter running around as well. I only wanted to blame them all. I never asked why, I never saw what they were trying to do. I only knew hatred for them.
"I miss you and I'm sorry. Sorry for how I treated you. Please forgive me." I placed both hands on the table and lowered my head reverently, tears falling in the dirt making little mud puddles on the table.
I walked out of the kitchen and into the laundry room. I heard the yip of my old dog play in my memories. Small white dog as sick in body as I was in mind. The only companion I could never hate, could never raise a hand to, could never forget no matter the years. Small white dog that had called this room his haunt. He had always loved the laundry room having grown accustomed to sleeping in between the washer and dryer. This had been his home for the last two years of his life.
I started to gag, it hurt to breathe. I could feel the tension rise from my stomach to my chest. My spine began to tense and I began to try to calm my breathing. I could not continue to break down every time I began to remember the attachments to each room of this godforsaken house. I refused. But refusals do not mean anything to memories. I had loved that dog with ever ounce of my being. It had been like a child to me and finding it laying there so peacefully…
I jerked my head away from the old rusted laundry machines. My eyes felt like they were being jerked from the sockets. I bit my index finger of my right hand and let the tears start anew. I could not stop the tears but the jags had eased. I lowered my right arm and tried turning back to the machines. There in between them was a small white lump of fur that looked as if it was in the most content of dream states but it was obvious it was not breathing. I lost it.
I fell to my knees and held the lump of fur to my breasts, heaving from the crying that had started all over again. The sorrow of losing a best friend washed over me. Like having a spear ran from your back and out your chest. I would never again see his beady little eyes, hear his high pitched yaps, worry about whether the throat surgery would save his life. Never again would I be awoken at night by his wet nose nuzzling my neck. Time moves on. I had not been holding my dead dog at all, it had been in my head. I sat there empty handed and stunned. Cheated.
"You endured so much my little friend. You died so happy in my arms."
I walked back into the kitchen and reached for the metal canister of lighter fluid and the box of matches. I then gave a good number of squirts to the table, broken mirror, the walls and then I left for the laundry room. I squirted the fluid on the walls and made a puddle where my dog had always slept. I then began making a trail to the stairs that led to the basement. Walking down the stairs leaving a trail behind me I traced it to the center of the room then placed the canister on my old bed. A brown, broken couch.
I made my way to the closet, my favorite place in this house, and opened the door. I was surprised at what I saw. I had at one time owned several biker jackets, a green one, a brown one and a black one. The green one had been my favorite. Ratty and worn, it had been a gift from father long ago when I was still normal and my parents had still loved one another. When I felt insecure, unsure or scared I would wear that jacket, hug myself and all my worries vanished. As time passed though, the jacket had lost some of its magic but I still wore it, clinging to the hope that it would once again set everything right in the world.
When we had to move here, I had discovered something else helped. Hiding within this closet shut away the outside world. As hatred engulfed my family and fathers' family this closet took me away to a happier time. It drowned out the yelling, it blinded me from the emptiness, it shielded me from the hopelessness. But hopelessness always finds a way to reach you. I was weak and it helped.
At first it was almost as if I did it in a joke but the more I did it the more it felt right. The more it felt like this was the escape I needed. I would never need to worry because I was not in control to begin with. I could not give up control because I never had it. I would tie my hands behind my back at first and sit in the closet until I felt normal again. But that only worked for so long until I needed something else. I tied my hands and feet.
"I thought it was part of the act." Never mind that.
I closed my eyes and walked into the closet. Sitting down on a small bench I had put in for a chair I looked up at the dress that hung from a coat hanger. Had I been married? Almost. He stood in the farthest part of the closet hidden by shadows. I would never see his face again. I would never tell him to grab the kids and bring a sweater. Or proclaim how dry weather was good but the wind was better.
"Count the years, you always knew it." His soft voice accused ever so kindly.
How old had I grown since I had last been here? I was nearly fifty now. Twenty plus years of hiding from my past and what had I gained?
"Strike a match," He spoke lightly, "Go on and do it."
He had been so kind and caring. So patient. Was he dead or was he living? I had not seen him for so long I knew nothing of him anymore. Had he kids of his own now? Did he ever think of that crazy girl he once knew who was too afraid to trust? He probably did not even remember my name. Would he speak of Sunny to anyone other then himself, once in a blue moon, in the middle of the night? I doubted it. I doubted he even cared anymore. He had let me go, had left me here. He said it was because he knew he could never earn my trust, my love but I knew it was because he had just grown tired of the whole damn thing. I don't blame him. I was sick and tired of everything myself.
I couldn't cry anymore.
I pulled a match from the box I had brought with me from the kitchen and looked at it. A good strong match meant for lighting large grills. I ran the head across the rough part of the box and watched as the flame reached out of the head in preparation of the feast that was the match itself. I threw the match at the lighter fluid on the floor watching as the flames yelled celebratorily then raced up the stairs following the trail I had left with the fluid.
I reached under the bench and found my trusty rope. Mother may have gotten rid of my jackets but she never touched the rope. I began to tie my feet together as I heard the flames igniting the lighter fluid I had left up stairs. I then grabbed a second strand of rope from under the bench and began tying my hands behind my back.
The smoke was growing thick now. The darkness was competing with the light of the flames. Consciousness competing with the poison of the smoke. I finished tying my hands and realized I was wearing my green jacket. I had not lost it, the only thing time had not been able to take away from me. I nuzzled my head down against my chest as I lay on my side atop the bench.
Days go by leaving me feeling hypnotized. I'm always walking on a wire above insanity. I close my eyes now and fly out of my mind into the fire that is quickly consuming my home. Tonight I'm lighting the dark sky of my memories and hold on tight as I look back at myself. My whole world is burning down as I lay here but I think back to him. The child we could have had, should have had. Yes, the child we did have. She is out there on her own now and she is alright.
I look to the entrance of the closet and see my parents.
"Sunny came home, sunny came home..." They repeat smiling as the smoke overtakes me.