Courage

“Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.”
Earl Wilson

*   *   *

She’d never felt quite so lost. Even in the darkest, most terrifying reaches of her memory, she couldn’t recall having ever felt more indecisive, completely and irreversibly unsure of the entire situation, as she did now. It was an odd feeling, for as many times as she’d imagined herself in the situation, somehow, she had never been as scared shit-less in those images; calm serenity, and a solemn handling of every person intimately involved, was the ideal picture, really. She had been poised, with the answers at the ready, with heavy scorn for those walking the path on which she now found herself. Somehow, actual reality hadn’t faceted itself into anything like those images.

And so she walked, as many miles as she could physically manage, to escape the grim harshness of the situation. She walked, keeping her eyes trained on the tops of her shoes, focusing only on the singular steps, balancing precariously on the curb with each passing mile. Yet each step away only seemed to take her that much closer to the time when the decision had to be made. And it would be made, had to be made, no matter the unknown consequences. 

But she didn’t, coudn’t, think about those. If she did, she would waver, and fall into the street. She would never be able to make the right decision if she looked too far above the toeline of her boots, or if she glanced behind to see the sidewalk’s beginning. She could do nothing but stare at the tops of those shoes, looking neither forward nor behind, as she made her journey away, down the many miles ahead.

Youth and driftwood

She’d been here before, though she couldn’t remember having done so—her memory didn’t stretch that far back into time just yet. She could feel it, though. It rippled though her small frame, pulling her into the grains of sand scratching the tender flesh between her toes, through the salted wind whipping strands of copper fire on her cheeks, gliding along the desperate shrieks of gulls crying in the distance, walking beside the quiet whispers of greening leaves beneath the cliff walls. Yes, she knew this place, and in that knowing, it became hers, and she set out to conquer all its splendors.

Small tide pools, bright splashes of rainbow in the dulling russet of the sand, beckoned her first, and she plunged straight in, bare feet narrowly missing the menacing quills of a chartreuse sea urchin. Reaching in, she plucked out a small, blood-red sea star, lifting it up to better see the details in the fading light. Miniature suckered feet wiggled plaintively at the exposure to air, and she reached out with one finger, stroking the leg from center to tip, surprised that it didn’t feel like the carpet at home, the one she spent so many hours lying upon while thinking deep thoughts; it certainly looked like carpet. But the legs were rubbery, knobby, and, somehow, sliding so easily beneath the pad of her finger, not quite right. Wrinkling her freckled nose with dislike, she gingerly placed it back into the water, watching as it faded into the bottom depths of its fluctuating, small world.

She heard a loud bark, and glancing up, spotted a large, chestnut retriever in the distance, loping madly for a tennis ball rolling down a dune of sand. Grabbing the ball just before it hit the water, he turned, grinning a mad, toothy grin of utter contentment, and sprinted back to his owner, spraying water with each galloping stroke across the beach. Even from the distance at which she stood, she could see him smiling, felt his unrestrained joy radiating across the space, and smiled with him, happiness filling her chest to burst as she watched him fly across the sands.

Hopping quickly out of the pool, sloshing out half of the contents in the process, she glanced back up the beach, towards the shadowed outline of her mother. Farther down the line of sight, and somewhat indistinguishable in the bleeding light of the sunset, she could see her stooping, helping her sister out of the hole into which she’d fallen. With her mother preoccupied, but nevertheless within calling range, she felt satisfied enough to continue on the adventure.

She turned again, this time to the pulsating waters, shimmering with lost fingers of sunshine. She spotted a lone gull, bobbing placidly with each crest, just a bit away from the shore. It looked just like the rubber duck that she played with during bath time, its small eyes unblinking and wings unmoving, apparently unbothered by the changes with the current. Worried and unnerved at the stillness of the bird, she picked up a pebble, and hurtled it with all her might into the surf, where it landed with a loud plop just a few feet from the gull. Startled and perturbed by the intrusion, the gull took flight, shrieking as it flapped indignantly over her head, and out of sight. Relieved, she grinned, and waved vigorously, small fist shedding grains of sand into her eyes with each stroke through the air.

Looking back to where the gull had been, she spotted white sails, running parallel with the beach, casting long shadows on the glittering wave crests. Her breath caught; the sails were moving so fast, even from her vantage point, appearing to outstrip the winds. Feeling those same winds pressing into her back, lifting her heels up and forward from the earth, her heart skipped, and she joined in the race, running full-tilt, bare feet slapping the wet, unmarred sand as she careened wildly ahead. Giddy with uncaring, the world blurred around her, tunneling until the sails were the only clear focal point within her vision. Beneath her, the sands shifted with the wind, glittering, gliding past her feet, urging her on, whispering past her ears and caressing her arms, infusing her veins with the poems and promises of so many others who had run that same path. She ran, arms flailing wildly, until the sails fell behind, becoming lost in the growing darkness at her back. And she kept running, seeing the chestnut retriever just behind her eyelids, and imagined the overwhelming joy that she felt was shining out from her fingertips, her eyelashes, her throat, streaming behind her in glorious waves from the strands of her hair, giving her wings to outrace even the dying sunset.

Abruptly, she halted, chest heaving, blood hammering loudly in her ears, and smiled broadly. Behind her, the tide swallowed up her trail with greedy fingers, obliterating completely the evidence of her wild run, but it didn’t matter; she knew. The ocean might try to take it back, cradle it gently away into oblivion, as it did with all that dared approach, but she had seen the sails, raced the wind; and she had won. She, and she alone in that moment, perhaps within the entire world, had beaten the wind, the sails, the almighty sea in all its glory, and triumphed. What an adventure, indeed.

Smiling still, she grabbed a long stick of driftwood, barely visible in the gloom of the fading sun, smooth  in her palm from many a journey out to sea, and, remaining well of out reach of the slick grasping tide, she dragged the stick purposely behind her as trotted back to her mother and sister, leaving a defined line trailing in her wake, a line that even the strong tide of morning would have trouble erasing.

California dreamin’

“Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees
Got down on my knees
And I pretend to pray
I pretend to pray.“

Mamas & The Papas, ‘California Dreamin’‘

* * *

She knew it was a dream. First off, she couldn’t, without a shadow of doubt, play the organ. Second, she wouldn’t under any circumstances find herself in a church again unless it was a major holiday requiring her attendance, or some other occasion of importance; death, perhaps. And though she’d seen a great deal of strange things in life, she knew for a fact that it didn’t rain inside church steeples.

Yet there she sat, fingers gliding across dark keys of polished wood, sounding glorious hymnal intonations throughout the cavernous steeple, with glimmering windows darkened above to the gloomy light of a sunset past its peak. The rain fell about her quietly, drops pattering onto the oiled wood of the keys, leaving fat buttons that reflected the dulled lights above. It fell into her eyes, her hair, and her clothes, yet she remained dry, the water slicking off and pooling at her feet, obscuring the pedals that her toes and heels were somehow finding effortlessly. The water and her own knowledge of her lack of skills apparently having no effect on the entire situation, she found herself staring up into the darkened ceiling, thoughts wandering with the drifting notes, body continuing without her input.

Up near the ceiling there were countless stained glass windows, encircling the entire circumference of the church. She couldn’t see them, but then again, she didn’t need to. She knew this church, and she knew every specific orifice and crevice contained within. The windows, so far above, contained a myriad of images, so familiar the needed no effort for recollection on the backs of her eyelids: Peter the traveling apostle, staff in hand for his walking journeys; Mary, hands open in benevolence to the world below; unknown saints with grotesque costumes long-forgotten by all but the historians of the church. She had once known the stories behind the images, conjured tales of their exploits during the droning hours of sermons she’d endured for so many years, but now, even in the forgiving world of muted dreams, she couldn’t recall a one.

The hymn continued, her ears enveloped completely in the autumnal, metallic sounds of the brass pipes. She could hear the lyrics faintly, ringing vaguely beneath the resounding chords: “Eternal light, shine in my heart/Eternal hope, lift up my eyes/Eternal power, be my support/Eternal wisdom, make me wise.”

Yes, she was definitely dreaming. She hadn’t heard that hymn since she was a little girl, when prayer was a regular activity before bedtime, not an angry question raised during rush hour traffic, or a plea-bargain for lost courage during hard times. Faith was easier then, unquestionable, and love was simple, forthright, and comfortable, and always worthy of a second chance, even through a grievous falter.

A finger slipped, clamoring ingloriously within the song, and even lost as she was in the graying light of the dream, she felt a deep pang of sadness, longing, and a desperate surge of panic as the notes clashed inharmoniously. She lost the rhythm, fingers coming to an abrupt halt, pipes echoing with the lost notes, the sound of the rain the only music left in the cavernous darkness.

She sat, hands fallen to her waist, and stared at the complexities of the instrument before her. Was it too late for a second chance that she never knew that she needed, wanted, so painfully? The time had managed to sneak eagerly beyond her, moving past the point where, in all honestly, she ought to have jumped eagerly and accepted the love, so freely offered, not slapped it ruthlessly aside with seemingly careless, hurtful indifference. And as the raindrops continued to fall, blinding her sight against the windows above, now thoroughly soaking through her defenses, she had to ask herself, sadly: Even if it were possible, did she really deserve the opportunity to ask for that chance?

One, then two, tears slipped out, unwilled, and she let them fall lightly onto the blackened keys, her fingers picking up the chorus once again, slicking across the wet ivories, intermingled and undistinguished from the fall of raindrops so high above.

II

The cadence of you plays thick upon my skin;
Time does little to dull the sensations in memory.

Your touch remains a caress of breath below my ear,
The constant shimmering sigh below palpitating flesh,
A fire gorged liberally with nervous indecision.

The memory of you sings gladly through my idleness;
Wandering thoughts proffer short respite from the heed.

Your voice still lilts plainly within my heart’s song,
Weaves delicate whispers through throbbing veins,
Translucent fingertips threading away straggling rhythms.

The empathy of you rests heavily within my chest,
Eyes close against the pressured rise of bare bones.

Your eyes yet burn a chilled picture behind my own,
Cerulean clarity capturing helpless my yearning visions,
Brightly out-pacing my dulled russet wishes for comfort.

The want of you strips my willpower to sheering wind;
The need of you stiffens my resolve to tearing storm.

Yet still your hands glide effortlessly through my realities,
I wake dreaming helpless entanglement within your reach,
Craving slender fingers entwined once more with my own.

Forgiveness in violation

Some things in life break easily.

I encountered a great many breakables during the arduous process of growing into my own skin: My Grandmother’s best china in the high cupboards, the dry sticks from which I took so much pleasure whacking my sister on the tender flesh behind the knee, the tail-bone cracked from falling nearly two stories out of the ancient walnut tree in my grandfather’s backyard. These things, I learned, snapped and shattered easily, faster than I could blink an eyelash, and with very little effort on my part. They existed, whole and unfractured one moment, glittering brightly, and within a breath, the essence was gone, and I was left gazing blankly at a pile of dulling debris, a mere shadow of the former, splendid spectacle.

Before, I wasn’t a breakable object; I was the cupboard guarding the dishes, the tall, strong walnut tree cradling so many fragile limbs. I was sturdy as the horses I spent so much time riding, the strong rhythm of the pounding hooves on steady earth, able to withstand hours of sun, rain, and languishing muscles in the biting winds. I dreamed of wide expanses of earth, framed by endless blue skies, and days spent without restraint, the world at my fingertips. I lost myself in those dreams, lost myself in the brightest blue skies the eye could never behold. There was never any doubt that I would always feel that way. I was young, invincible by right. But in the end, it wasn’t those biting winds or punishing rain storms that would erode away my invincibility, my effortless youth. It is only people who maintain the power to manage that magnitude of design, and it requires the efforts of but one to send even the mightiest of walnut trees crashing to the soil.

“You want to see your father happy, don’t you? This would make him so unhappy with you. He might not ever bring you out here to see him again. What would he think of you? Besides, he’s such a good friend to me. And no one would believe you…”

He wasn’t forgiving. With each harsh touch, every shattering blow, through every sharp slash of dulling pain, I, that strong, towering walnut tree of my youth, cracked. The pulsing, steady rhythm of my hoof beats wavered, dimmed to the point of bare audibility beneath the drowning roar of his angry whispers, leaving behind the broken, glittering shards of that elusive invincibility, dulled within the shadows of my withered shell, and left dusted with naught but the memory of a time violently cast into the past.

He was afraid. Afraid of getting caught, afraid of being punished, afraid of his own taboo feelings being exposed to the world that had come to so highly respect him. A teacher, a friend, and a father, he was expected to uphold high standards, be a model for the generation to come. He knew the standards, felt the pressure of them, a vise clamping harshly with every violation of a childhood torn asunder. He convinced, goaded, placed the seed of guilt securely within the whispered threats, numbing pain, guilt-lent harsh punishments, childish accusations, and, finally, empty apologies begetting a hasty retreat back into his safe world. He bought the desired silence, sounding loudly over protestations, his violation a blind attempt to excuse himself from the iron grip of all those expectations, if only for the space of those minutes in time.

I dream often, waking in a cold sweat from nightmares of his creation, and wonder if, somewhere across the expanse of earth, he is not waking from nightmares of his own. It would be so gratifying, somehow a revenge of my own, to know that his sleep is as unsatisfying as my own, that, like myself, the rest he craves is left hanging as little more than a teasing thread before his groping hands, his waking hours a hazy fog of incredibility. But I’ve come to know better than to believe in a fairytale creation of my own wont, accepting the likelihood of his indifference with a resignation borne of so many years of silence.

Yet it is only within those nightmares, an acceptance of a haunting past, that I will find the life that was tossed so aside so carelessly. As gratifying as the intrinsic pleasure proffered by a rapid revenge would be, it is a useless pleasure, at best. It is the forgiveness within the violation that promises a permanent solace, and will offer a respite from the debilitating whispers of the past, from the dark dreams of the present.

I will get lost in dreams of unbreakable blue skies again.

Daddy’s little girl

“Hey there, cutie! How’re you?”

The small blond head bobs out of sight, well-covered by the ample height of a blue-jeaned pant leg. Her blue eyes go wide, and she grabs the rough material desperately within her chubby-fingered grip, biting her lip in consternation as the eager face of the cashier presses down on her.

“Hiding? That’s adorable. I was shy too when I was your age.”

The widened eyes clearly show disbelief, and the grip doesn’t slacken as her father finishes the purchase, smiling down at her gold-crowed pigtails as he gathers the bags.

“C’mon, girl, let’s get going,” he says softly, and grins as a smile breaks out on her face, showing two identical dimples offsetting a white smile. She grabs for his hand, tripping ungainly over his feet with the first few steps, face turned up in adoration and absolute trust as together they saunter through the door into the outside world.

I can vaguely feel the corners of my mouth turn up as their retreating backs grow faint in the distance of the store. I can remember that face, though not with my own eyes. It was a face identical to my own as a child, on the rare holiday or summertime visits with my father, when I’d have a week, maybe two, to enjoy his unadulterated company and off-beat humors. The same dimples, faded with time now, yet then so quick to appear with a joke, or a Dr. Seuss song improvised on piano with non-sensical lyrics. Even the ungainly walk, tripping in an attempt to take strides well beyond the capability of shorter legs…

“How are you today?”

The brash, chipper chirp of the cashier blares through my softer thoughts, and I smile automatically, returning the greeting as she finishes ringing up the purchase, each beep a bright, blaring stab on the back of my eyelids before I grab the bags and leave for my car.

I see the small blond head, safely strapped into a Chevy truck, as I find my way to my car and they their way from the parking lot. Sliding in, I turn the key, feeling the solid weight of the engine turning over, the quiet purring as it idles in the spring sunshine; the engine in a car that I purchased just recently, my proudest financial achievement to date, a milestone in my life’s highway. And an event during which I couldn’t help but miss my own father more acutely than ever.

Time heals all wounds, fades memories, dulls emotions, I’ve heard tell. Yet it seems with each passing year, each new growth and achievement, his memory keens through my senses more resolute than before, the absence painful and ever-present with each attempt to strive away from his sunset, and into the sunrise of my own story.

The past is veiled dimly with his tint. I gazed forlornly at stands full of other peoples’ families during my black belt test, searching desperately for the shadow people promised was keeping an eye out for my performance. I vainly waited to hear the praise after each orchestra concert, wanting more than anything for a congratulatory hug and kiss from the specter haunting the back row. I graduated high school, clasping my diploma and squinting through the glaring lights as I walked from the stage, waiting for flowers and a graduation gift from a ghost long since past.

I see his face in the faces of strangers, hear his laugh in the laughter of friends, and smell his cologne while drifting through airports. I search for our relationship within the bonds of my own, disappointment following every failed attempt, dissatisfaction simmering constantly below the surfaces. He remains a ghost, a shadow on the faces of any and all I choose to love.

I will marry some day, and he will not see me down the aisle, nor berate my husband for a lack of appreciation of my innate talents. I will have children some day, and he won’t make them laugh with silly renditions of pop songs on the accordion. I will realize his dreams, my dreams, some day, and he won’t be there to accept my thanks, my love. His memory is all that will carry into those days, intangible and sharp as a summer lightning storm, soft and welcoming as a spring morning.

Yet, still, I long for that specter…

A car honks behind me, eager for the spot I’ve yet to abandon. With a sigh, I put the car in reverse, and begin the drive home.

The party is over

There was a veneer lent to our existence. Life inside the house did not reflect into the life outside. More accurately, our life outside deflected our existence within, lightening and distracting from any darker aspects of our daily living. With straight A’s in honors classes, sports and academic teams gallant efforts, and through band rehearsals, after-school study groups and an amazing assortment of extra-curricular entanglements, the waxed coat of gleaming perfection supplied a perfect guise for the glaring shards of ruin entrenched below.

The general motto of the family began with some great-grandmother, far too many moons ago, uttering the seemingly disarming phrase “When company comes to call, there shall not be a hair off the natural order of things”. No matter the state in which you would normally live out your happy days of existence, when the outside world became involved, there was not an inch of room for appearing anything less than the standard set by the neighbors. If all the adjoining neighbors decided to dye their lawns purple and set out a gaggle of small gnomes and various woodland creatures in mock cast of the glorified birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, then by the great glory of God, we’d plant our own puce-shaded sacred Covent beneath the pine trees out front, sit the dog happily grinning nearest the swaddled chipmunk, and ne’er bother looking back.

The biggest event in the act of blending, the grandest act of contrition to set the neighborhood example, yet without a doubt the largest desiccating threat to our private existence, was the event of an impending party, birthday or holiday, held at the house, with a countless amount of invited, yet singularly invading, bodies sitting in menace outside our front door. I can recall literal days spent cleaning up the house, frantically mopping, dusting, bleaching, and attacking any and all exposed surfaces in a defiant attempt to strike out all evidence of a less than desirable lifestyle. When guests came to call, the carpet was clean, vacuumed, and smelled fresher than our laundry out of the dryer. The corners were properly scrubbed and mopped, showing no sign of the smattering of cat shit that had lain there mere hours prior. The dishes were extracted violently from their home in murky pools of water clotting in the sink, and were cleaned, dried, and stacked neatly behind the creaking cabinet door, which was then stuck shut with duct tape to deter any idle hands from discovering the audacious tendency it harbored to dislodge without prior notice onto the heads of innocent passerby. The bathroom was sprayed with enough bleach to asphyxiate an elephant herd, and tough villages of rainbowed molds were blasted helplessly and left desolate in mere hours. The beds, which had never been made previous from their moment of purchase, were stripped of their stained, heady coverings, sprayed with ample amounts of designer botanical sprays, and left standing with sheet corners tucked to surgical perfection, coversheets drawn across the frame tighter than a whore’s bra. Last on the lengthy agenda, various items would then ceremoniously be hidden, the prime being the vodka and orange juice with which my mother nursed herself to sleep nightly, the nesting place evolving continuously, always new and completely unknown to her until the event had come to a satisfactory conclusion.

And the party would, inevitably, come to a satisfactory conclusion, satisfactory generally hinging upon Mom’s ability to discover the hidden stash before the last guest had chosen to depart. On the few occasions that she did find the bottle before the neighborhood friends had been covertly guided to the door, there was little else to do but smile placidly and proffer the tested excuses: She’d worked a double shift, was exhausted, had been on her feet for far too many hours, and would feel much better tomorrow, surely, with just a bit of sleep. Reputation would then, for the most part, remain intact, though far more often out of pity than true naiveté. Mom would then slur a largely unintelligible fragment of what we assumed to be a sentence, and stumble ingloriously off to bed, bumping off and apologizing to the walls along the journey to her oblivion. For the rest of the night into the smallest, darkest hours of the morning, the hours of my greatest promise, I would listen continuously for her loud snoring while finishing schoolwork, my breath catching painfully in my throat if there was a slight pause, or silence to be had for even a few moments. But I could sigh with ease when the sun rose the next morning, for the party was over, and still, most importantly, no one knew.

4 a.m.

Sweat, despite the bitter chill–

   Clammy hands

        throbbing,

   shooting through,

Pierce the head,

      the knee,

  Pushing past senseless.

 
Half-awakened,

    always aware,

        pained.

Always frigid,

     hands of ice,

         eyes of stone.

Alert,

       sharpened vision,

   Light filters within,

          illuminating,

               piercing the grey.

Yet…

The terror lingers still—

    Physical shakes,

        mental squirms.

They will wait–

      watch, prey.

Eyes wide,

       nightmares traverse reality.

    Closed, they reveal

            chasms of the soul.

Reassurance of peace—

       Warmth?

    A shield?

Borrowed strength.

Nightmares are braved,

     survival maintained,

        For one more,

    another sunrise…

Tide Pools

She was tired.  Had been, in fact, for some time.  It seemed, in fact, with the rare pause in the frenzy of hours she proudly labeled her day, that there was really no memory of actual rest, or lack of exhaustion, even on days of relative calm.  Even on those days when her body was allowed a break, her mind never ceased its endless rounds of depravation, draining her even more than her physical lifestyle ever could.

For this evening, as had occasion on many another, it was he that she allowed recourse throughout the cracks of her mind.  She didn’t really ever cease her stream of thought in his direction, actually, just let the tide of that stream ebb and flow subconsciously, allowing herself during lighter moments to wallow more deeply within his sacred space. Tonight, she let loose, felt herself fall gently, heavily, drowning surely within the pooled space of him.

She loved him, of this much she was assuredly guilty, and decidedly sure.  This, however, was nothing new, relatively.  She loved a great many of her friends; all, case in point, of her closest friends could lay claim to a great portion of her love. She took from each relationship individually the fulfillment and caring that she desired, delving within each persona deep beyond any given expectation, allowing each in turn carnal knowledge of her own worth, carefully laying all her trust within the guarded sphere to which the perimeter of friendship was inextricably bound.  She did love him, had always loved him, unforgivingly, within that safe perimeter, stemming the flowing tide of him with the guards allowed thereof.

Perchance, however, as tonight, that tide had unerringly crept surreptitiously through the barriers, weakening reserves, lapping at the shores of her mind, invading into the many unknown, and wholly undefined, recesses of her mind.  She found herself pondering such an invasion, so very much it nearly came to the point of excess.  There was neither place nor precedent for this development, and she found herself fascinated, obsessed, incredibly uncomfortable, somewhat frightened, and entirely unsure as to how to proceed without stumbling blindly into something from which she might find no return.

But for all her fascination, and obsession, ultimately she couldn’t handle a change within that safe perimeter.  By set definition, such a change would lead to sex, inevitably, and, invariably, a retraction of trust would be a necessary follow.  The two ideas were distinctly separated, divided and interminably distinct, and never would, nor could, as far as she was concerned, mesh harmoniously.  There was simply no definition, and therefore placement, for his invasion, and in her confusion he was becoming far to powerful, and she was becoming inextricably entwined within him, losing all sense of direction and self with each passing hour of placid obsession.

She could fight him, she knew, hurt him, once again, and badly, just as he was unknowingly hurting her.  She could strike him from existence within his space, permanently erase his every influence, and irrepressibly send the tides out for one last undertow in current.  Such things could always be remedied.  She had succeeded previously in such an arduous task, after all, and could easily triumph once again, without fail.  She was strong enough; the drive was there.  It merely became a question of action.

Yet, as she allowed the ebbing tides of him to carry her inward, the question spiraled away, silkily slipping past her fingers, twisting gently from the need for action, into one of intent.

She could fight, yes, but perhaps, just perhaps, she didn’t want those caressing tides to ebb out permanently after all.

Night Falls

She could never fall to sleep without a night light.  She wanted, needed, the illumination for the darkest hour of the night, when she would awake for those precious seconds, eyes snapping open to catch reassurance of the solidity of her room, the furniture, closed closet door, that validation of safety, before drifting back into slumber.

Every evening, after the routine tuck-in, and the comforting reading of “The Land of Nod” for the uncounted time, the kiss on the forehead, the usual pleading for “Just five more minutes?!”, the overhead light would inevitably be flicked off, and the lamp’s comforting green glow would paint the darkened room in soft shadows, muting the porous silence into a soothing hum, a lullaby into the world of darkened sleep.

One night, the light went out.

They changed the bulb, checked the wiring, moved the lamp to a new outlet… Nothing.  The light had simply vanished, never to return to paint her darkness, and with it’s glow, her peace of the glowing evening.

Awakening in the depth of the night, her eyes would snap open, searching, trying to catch a glimpse of the familiarity of the edges, the creasing of the corners within her narrow room.  Instead, the darkness swam before her vision, blurring and muting the solid confines.  The ceiling was reduced to rippling waves, the walls shifting ominously beneath.  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the door open, a maw of darkness widening, the waiting shadows in the hall advancing, filling her vision with a red haze of terror.

Every muscle tightened, tensed upon the blade of a knife.  Vaguely, she registered her breathing, rasping loudly, echoing off the sharp edges of the room’s silence.  Panicked at the grating sound within the solid press of air, she drew breath in sharply, holding, counting slowly, quietly within her mind, to twenty, to the point where her chest muscles ached with the effort, pushing her to allow the release.  Slowly, ever so slowly, along the silenced count of twenty, she let the breath loose, feeling the air tingle upon her skin, the rising goose-flesh upon her arms, her skin harkening to the sounds her ears could never pick out.

The blurring of the edges continued, muting and softening her vision, so that soon she was sure that she could see him, just beyond the door, waiting patiently for her to move even one muscle, blink just one time, breathe too loudly.  His tall silhouette swam through the shadow of the hallway, words traversing the thick air, hissing like snakes into her ears; goading, threatening, angry.  She trembled unwillingly, her body recalling the physical terrors set with the words; terrors her heart couldn’t seem to let loose.

Within her mind, she pleaded, begged, willed him to disappear in the darkness, before her mother or sister woke up, stumbling in the darkness; before he could hurt them, too.  Before the dark promises, the threats, could ever take permanent shape in her life.

Muscles aching, chest shaking, she closed her eyes, closed her ears, closed her mind, escaping into the dark oblivion of denial.  He couldn’t, wouldn’t, ever touch her there.