Labyrinth of My Own Making

A stop light blinks red, but Susan didn’t stop. No one else was on this street, she hadn't seen anyone all day in fact. She rowed passed the half collapsed traffic light pole as the red light continued to flicker unnoticed. Susan didn’t remember exactly where her destination lay, but she knew she would recognize it when she saw it. Her boat scraped against the asphalt of the submerged road. Susan splashed into the shallow water and dragged the small boat to a light pole covered in creeping green fungus. She would have to walk the rest of the way. 

Looking up from securing the boat, Susan was greeted with the dark, empty window of what once must have been a very cute cafe. The checkered floor and bold, playful writing on the window were both cracked and dull. The whole cafe revealed the wear of neglect and water damage. If she went inside she guessed the whole place would smell like mildew. 

Susan looked away and quickly made her way down the street. She tucked her shaking hands under her arms as she scanned the buildings lining the waterlogged street. 

“You have to go get it,” Anna had told her yesterday, “those dreams aren’t going to go away if you just keep ignoring them.”

Everynight for the past month Susan saw that same place in her dreams, the same building she barely remembered from her childhood. She dreamed of it before too, for years even, and the longer she ignored them the more the dream returned. 

The streets of this quiet town seemed to never end, the clouded sky casting a gray shadow over everything. Nothing like the place she and her sister lived now, high up in the mountains and trees, everything overgrown and green and bathed in golden sunlight. Up there the two of them were up and away from everything.

She wandered for at least an hour, until she finally stopped in front of what was once a lovely, family owned restaurant. However, it had suffered much the same fate as the cafe and was now filled with mold and cracked walls. In her dreams this place was still the same as she remembered it, bright and lively and full of familiar faces. At least at first, as the dream continued the warmth would fade into a cold, empty shell. It would also seem larger with more doors lining the front. If she tried to enter the building in those dreams it would take her several tries until she found the right one.  This time there were only two, one that led into the restaurant and one that led upstairs. Despite how simple it seemed to just open the one door and walk upstairs, Susan found herself staring at the knob unwilling to turn it. 

“Those dreams aren’t going to go away if you just keep ignoring them,” her sister’s voice echoed in her head.

Stealing herself with a deep breath, Susan pushed open the door. The stench of mildew wafted out. One narrow set of stairs led into the upper rooms. The steps creaked under her feet, but held as she climbed to the second floor. It all seemed so straight forward in the waking world, rather than the web of staircases she would climb and descend endlessly in her dreams, never really reaching her destination. But there was none of that now that she was actually there.

She switched on her flashlight at the top of the stairs and shone it around the room. The stairs opened up into the dinning room. One small table and five chairs, two for her parents, one for her sister, one for her little brother, and one for her. Just one table instead of a hundred standing in her way, just one more door to pass through, not a thousand, and just one more flight to climb, not a million. There was no web of endless corridors blocking her way like they did at night when this place only existed in her mind. Yet it seemed even more impossible like this.

Dampness soaked through her shirt as she fell against the wall behind her. She released a shuddering breath as she stared at the door ahead. Her flashlight, hanging limply at her side, caught the glint of a red glass bottle on the floor. She should bring that home, Anna liked to collect things like that. Anna often ventured down from the mountain to collect little trinkets or anything bright and colorful that reminded her of the way things used to be. She would arrange them constantly, changing them into beautiful pieces of art. Susan would always tell Anna they were lovely, because they were, but she never told her sister that they made her sick to look at. Anna loved them because they were pieces of the old world and Susan knew that she hated them for the same reason. 

“You have to go get it, those dreams aren’t going to go away if you just keep ignoring them.”

Listen to your sister for once, Susan reprimanded herself, she’s much smarter than you when it comes to these things and you know it.

Gripping her flashlight tight, Susan strode across the creaking floor and pushed open that last door. Before she could change her mind, Susan pulled the string hanging from the ceiling. A ladder unfolded in front of her, leading to the attic. The steps were cold and splintered and the joints squeaked every time it moved. Susan was half afraid the ladder would buckle under her weight, but it held, leaving her with no more excuses.

Her family never kept much in the attic, but one specific box sat at the very top of the ladder. It was a box her mother kept, it used to be under her parents’ bed, but Anna wouldn’t stop going through it so their mother had to move it to the attic. 

“You can have it when your older,” their mother said as she placed it safety out of Anna’s reach, “I want these memories to be safe and sound for when you three are all grown up so you never forget what it's like to be a child when you’re all boring adults like me.”

Susan pulled open the cardboard flaps with shaking hands as she sat on the icy attic floor. Thick, faded albums filled the box. Each page had been filled with memories of her and her siblings as babies to toddlers to kids. In one her dad held a five year old her in his lap as he grinned and gave thumbs up at the camera while she stared at their new dog in utter bewilderment. In another, her little brother, ten years old, shamelessly smiled at the camera while surrounded by restaurant napkins he had crumbled up so he could pretend it was snowing. In nearly every picture she could find of Anna, her sister wore a bright smile as she finger painted or played with their dog in the mud. Anna still smiled, despite everything, but it often never reached her eyes. Maybe that’s why she never came to get this box herself. She was afraid to see what they had lost too.

A tear splashed onto the plastic sleeves protecting the pictures. Susan wiped at her eyes vigorously, but they wouldn’t stop. A sob escaped her and she curled around the faded blue album in her arms, holding her mother’s collection close to her chest. She would bring these back to Anna, they would keep them in a safe place in their little shelter up in the mountains. They would keep them close by so they would never forget what it was like to be children now that they were both boring adults with too much to bear on their shoulders.