It was the sun that woke her, bright and blinding, shining down the trendy rounded skylight over her bed. Futilely she rolled back and forth as if attempting to shake away the warmth, but instead her muscles stretched and strained in discomfort bringing consciousness back to her body. Shock filled her as she noticed the time. Jolting awake, her squinting, sleepy tear stained eyes bulged wide and come back into focus; the waterbed bouncing slightly with her jolt causing her brunet curls to bounce and sway with her. “Oh no! Brother’s breakf…” but then she cut short as the past week washed back into her now wakened mind like a marshy flood that dampened her thoughts with gummy mud. “Dead.” She said the word again today, but it didn’t make it any more real.
Sniffing the air she didn’t smell the familiar scents of marijuana or strange incense, instead there was just a sour pungent smell of rot, somewhere between the smell of old people and spoiled meat. She wanted to puke all over again, but the feeling was less intense, numbed and hidden, not to mention her grumbling tummy had nothing in it to decant.
With glumness replacing her former sleepiness, she slowly swung her feet out over the side of the bed, stopping them right before they lowered onto the shattered lava lamp fragments that had nestled their way into the deep shag rug beside her bed. Carefully she crawled to the other end of the bed before stepping down where it was safe. Carefully she made her way downstairs to the kitchen, avoiding any broken glass, suspicious stains, bladed objects, and general clutter. Getting to the kitchen she checked the fridge and cupboards out of habit. Her parents didn’t really keep anything stocked, so even today the emptiness was familiar, comforting. A refrigerator sparsely filled with condiments and old sauce packets, cupboards bare, with the exception of some spices and strange herbs. In the breadbox she found it, a loaf of bland and uninspired wonderbread, though by now it was down to just one crust slice. Carefully she took it out and put it in the toaster, and then when it popped up she put it on a plate and buttered it lightly.
It wasn’t that her parents were neglectful, they were never really abusive or cruel, if she had to say they were a loving family, just, absent. Her parents would sleep in past noon on any given day and she’d have to feed her brother and herself from whatever was in the house which, more often than not, was a simple plate of toast like she was eating now. The tears began streaming down her face again, unbidden. Yes, it would be just like this most days, except they’d be watching television with the volume turned way down while they ate, and, and, he’d be here with her. They’d be sleeping. Everyone would be alive and happy, or at least apathetic and distant.
The tears continued as she finished her toast. She should bring her plate to the sink; she should be a good girl and be quiet so that her parents could sleep. Even though tears continued to stream down her eyes she hadn’t made a peep. Maybe, maybe it wasn’t going to be okay, maybe she’d done something wrong, maybe she should have done something. Her eyes wandered across the dining room, three tall bookshelves one with cooking books, one with fantasy stories, and one with occult reference books. The walls around them were plastered with posters of obscure ancient diagrams. She wasn’t sure what they said, but she vaguely recalled what she’d been told they were about. There was the hierarchy of angels over there, and that was a Penrose diagram with many diamonds, and that one was a seal of Solomon, and that one was, was… She couldn’t remember.
The tears were beginning to cloud her vision, and she let them, her head tilting forward to allow them to fall onto her cloths. They were stupid cloths, when they saw other kids she and her brother would always be teased about them. They were simple cotton long pants and shirts that had been tie-dyed than embroidered with strange shapes and symbols with a golden thread. She wasn’t sure she understood what her parents believed in, but it seemed like a confused hodge-podge of any spiritual practice they’d come across. Whatever it was it was far beyond the scope of a child like her.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Thinking of this brought her back to the events several nights ago. They’d eaten dinner as a family, wild rice and a sliver of braised pork. She knew where her mother kept them, but was forbidden from touching them, and didn’t even know how to cook them anyway. “Children cannot be trusted with fire.” Her mother had once told her.
After dinner she was feeling tired so she’d asked permission and been allowed to go. Than she brushed her teeth, changed her cloths, and fell into bed. Her parents had bought some new kind of mushroom they were planning to smoke in some new ritual that night. Her brother had been mildly curious, but chances were he’d be in bed soon after, he was never good with long nights. She had slept without thinking much, dreaming pleasant dreams of a dark swirling flower swaying in the breeze. It was an old reoccurring comforting dream that left her awake and refreshed in the morning, but when she went to wake her brother she found he wasn’t in his bed. She’d begun to search the house for him until she found. Found…
The room was filled with dried crusted blood, her parents were covered in cuts, her brother had been ripped, bitten, or clawed open, still held between their mouths as the three of them lay together on the floor, as a family, all dead.
For her part she, well she didn’t know what to do, this was beyond her. She wasn’t supposed to go outside without a parent, children weren’t supposed to make calls. She’d made that mistake once, randomly pressing buttons. It was one of her earliest memories, and she’d been sternly reprimanded as well as spanked. No, there wasn’t really anything for her to do, so she just… lived. She vomited, she cried, she smashed things in her room, she ate, she slept, she went to the bathroom, and she cried. She thought she might have cried more this week than every other week, but she honestly just, just didn’t know what to do. She tried praying, she tried sleeping, losing herself in unconsciousness, she tried curling into a ball and wishing the world right, and she’d tried staring into the darkness. That terrible darkness that lay in the corner of the room her family died in.
That was the one thing she knew she could do, the one thing that would break this status quo of just existing, of breathing in the decay of her family, of trying to live on in this world. The darkness called to her, not literally, but perhaps spiritually? It felt like some kind of affinity, it felt ‘right’, familiar, comforting in a world where all she wanted to do was to scream, but she didn’t scream. She was a good girl, good girls don’t scream. Good girls stay quiet and let their parents rest.
Suddenly she noticed she was there again, she was squatting down staring numbly into the blotch of shadow in the corner. She felt lost, numb, confused. Nothing had prepared her for this, she didn’t know what to do, and she didn’t know what she could do. Her parents had warned her of this before, “A bad trip”, how sometimes experiences with drugs could end badly, but she’d never expected it to happen to her, never expected it to happen to her family. Her mind, delirious with solitude began to wonder if it was magic after all, if the drugs might have had nothing to do with it. Ultimately she didn’t know. Tentatively she reached a finger out and touched the shadow, but her hand didn’t seem to stop, further and further it stretched until her arm was stretched as far as she could reach, until her arm was stretched past where the wall should have been, but it hadn’t hit anything. Cautiously she walked forward, trying to hit something, but even after a few steps she didn’t.
Scared, she turned around, but behind her wasn’t the room with her family, just more darkness. In a quiet plaintive voice she called out to the darkness “Help. Help me. I think I’m lost.”