part i-b; your eyes open
sakura

I used to live in an empty house.

Not in the literal sense, of course. It had furnishings, obviously, things of material worth. But that was it. There was nothing else besides that. It was desolate and barren; nothing ever made it past its drawn drapery and covered windows.

Behind its closed doors, it held secrets. Buried beneath hardwood floors, it creaked and ached. It wanted to breathe, to speak so badly. But nothing would ever let its voice be heard. Everything was always kept secret, pinned beneath lock and key. Chained, and barred. As if the world would break, come to its cataclysmic end if anyone were to hear a word of it.

Except, it would. The curtains needed to stay drawn, the house empty, silent.

It needed to keep out the sun, the air, the outside world. Joy, laughter, freedom. All that was scattered and free out there, was strictly enforced within these four walls. Every rigid thought, principle and practice, everything was kept within these walls.

For seven years my father and mother lived with me inside this empty house.

They faded into shapes of red (anger, hatred, rage), green (jealousy) and of course, the most prominent, black and blue (my mother's face). The world didn't see it though, with its bright blue skies, radiant sunshine, and perpetual light. It remained oblivious to this desolate place, the rays of light ending short of a slightly opened door, or warming the cool panels of glass engraved into the front door.

Few passed between its secrets, few opened the doors, and few knew what lurked behind them.

Their shadows danced along the edges of my walls whilst I hid behind the sheets of my bed. Sometimes, a shadow would make his way past father in the seventh year. One that didn't become lost within this house, simply because they were lost to begin with. At night they stayed with me from time to time, a night or two and then they would be off, leaving me alone in the house again.

In two years, it was just me and my mother.

The house stayed the same, still holding secrets, still holding pain. Still aching, still bleeding. Still screaming, but no one heard it, no one acknowledged it. We just existed within it.

Father was on the outside, watching, knowing this was for the best. He was in the sunshine, the light, everything that wasn't allowed to come inside. I saw him in glimpses of the windows, and mirrors, but that was all it was. A fading mirage, something that wasn't solid, something that was fleeting, only allowing me to grasp it for so little at a time. It was in this place that the shadows appeared again, slipping past father and staying the night with me.

One, two, three, four, five—quattuordecim. It was on a day when I finally tried to feel the bright rays of the sun that all of it came together. It was not the empty house which held my mother, not the mirrors in which my father resided; I was in the sun, in the warmth of the outside world in which I was not allowed to exist.

And there was a reason for that.

For this was a place where I would be forced to look up at the sky, my back against the ground, spread out for all to see, the dying grass poking at my back, the sky a brilliant cornflower blue overhead. I did not have a bird's eye view; I was inessential, worth nothing but dirt. The sun was shining down upon me, and yet, I was covered in nothing but shadows. They were of the same types of shadows that had snuck past my father. They were was brief, holding me down and smothering me into silence. And then they left as soon as they had come, taking with them something I would never get back.

Everything that I wanted to see had been stolen from me in that instance. I curled up; breathing shaky, as I stared at all that was around me. After all this time, my thoughts of the world outside the house had been wrong. It was just as cold out here, as it was in there. The sun had lied to me, its promise of safety, protection, everything was false, none of it true.

And when I returned to the empty house, I opened a door that would be my prison for the next three years. There was a table, and upon the table were littered items for consumption, and on the other side, I found myself stuck inside a room full of water, on my knees, mouth wide, bowed down in front of white.

Outside the empty house, my world turned to grey. It began to storm, no sunshine ever reaching the glass panels in the front door, or slipped into cracks and crevices not blocked off by the drapery. I no longer heard my mother's cries resounding within the house, I no longer saw my father's gaze in the mirrors that I passed by, I became entrenched, routed to this new room that had been developed just for me.

It became the new sun, the new promise of safety and protection. My control, it offered me a secret place of my own. There were no shadows, nothing could wander into this room and harm me.

I was protected.

I was finally safe.