Of Bounded Days

Content Warning (CW): Physical violence, gore, abuse, mental health

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Of Bounded Days

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'Oh, God, it's so quiet here!' I thought to myself, sitting on a victorian balloon chair made with a solid mahogany frame. Sitting with my knee over the other, I caressed the arms of burgundy velvet that was there. Then, I called out into the empty, listening to the echo repeated back to me like a bored little girl. The silence was slipping into my head despite subtly hearing the laced underlay of my floral-embroidered cardigan sliding across the upholstery from standing up.

I had lost track of my blue villa's many passing days of isolation. Although, the shadowy silhouettes of the objects in the foyer were more attention-catching than what lay beyond the six pairs of red curtains in the room. The things I would see in the dark but weren't there gave me something to do and games to play. So I imagined the creaking floors and skittering behind the walls as the monsters that pretended to be the clothes in my open closet.

"Oh, how delightful," I spoke to the black feline, who had rubbed herself against the hand-carved cabriolet legs of the sumptuously padded chair I had just sat on. "Watch out for those you took tongues from." And I reminisced about the days I danced with my so-called friends when we rebelled against the worldwide shutdown of public gatherings as I walked along the halls where their footsteps used to be. I knew that's how it was, but now only their bones are here to play.

"Wee!" I twirled and tapped. Decorated along the halls were glass terrariums of preserved skulls and moss. It felt as though the envious skeletons had recollected themselves and followed. So I played along and pretended we each dressed to the teeth to dance again. The past of our meetings resurfaced; lustful eyes, wicked smiles, greedily eating my heart out on a spit as we cooked live centipedes in borosilicate wine glasses of hot cooking oil and drank 'ji nei jin tea' in Erlenmeyer flasks. They would kiss the back and lose themselves in the happy hours of cocktails toasted to the toads that grew shrooms in the corner of their depression and would thirst for more punishment games, then skip to use the john, and we would laugh at each other's expense until we got sick of the improvising.

"Good night," I bowed to the medieval knight's empty metal armor, rusting by the corridors of my medium-sized chamber, with a crooked grin. Then, down memory lane, everyone disappeared into the night as I tossed and turned in the button-tufted, orange comforter of my matrimonial mattress. My thoughts transitioned to dreams, and the guests that partied from dusk to dawn snuck around the villa to the window pane of my room, watching me dozing. They waited while my eyes stayed glued to the whining chandelier that seemed still yet moved by the vibrations of the house from the harsh winds and banging tree branches. Multiple times, I stopped myself from yawning, thinking that the creatures who awaited my slumber would hear me if I did. Then, I jumped out of bed, tricked by the confusion of the chandelier's fall, breaking the canopy with nothing happening.

"Nuh-uh!" I swayed my index finger back and forth toward the ceiling. Then, walking to the door, I looked behind me, undecided about what to do. 'What's that?' I felt paranoid. My eyes wandered back to a felted cat plush on my shelf, then to the flickering light of the burning wick atop the yellow melting wax on my floor candelabra. I felt my face getting heavy, yet my mind became restless despite knowing none of this was real. Instead, what felt like forty winks of lucid dreaming had been 30 seconds of sleep. Then, upon opening my eyes again, I threw my sheets aside and saw leeches all over my body.

"I didn't ask for this," words struggled from my lips. And this time, I genuinely woke up. "Ugh!" I expressed, annoyed by my exhaustion and difficulty with sleep. I returned to the hall with glass containers of preserved rib cages, wood, and decaying plants. Three-quarters into it, my body reflexively turned to its side after hearing fluttering behind me, staring at the darkness, then to the left where the decorated miniature gardens were, and then the right to the folds of the soutache braided drapes. Excitement was all around me, and I nervously smiled.

"Oh, those little rascals," I ridiculed in the delusion of the narcissistic creatures haunting me that wanted to play again. I remembered the unsatisfied look the guests wore from ear to ear as they threw tantrums like spoiled rotten children, the men who chased and the women who yelled, and the maggots I had let into my brain, eating away from the inside out. I tried to ignore the invisible worms crawling underneath my skin as if to hold myself together. Yet, somehow, I knew the shame wouldn't have been so terrible if it didn't feed off the moths in my gut and if I knew the consequence of loneliness from when the only friends I knew had fallen ill from God knows what.

In minutes, my scratching leads to bleeding, as if I were trying to dig myself away from the world that is out to get me. Then, I squeeze my arms, changing my mind so as not to bleed, or the raging spirits would possess me through easier access to my purple veins and perhaps more increased bleeding. But, instead, as I was breathing hard, madness seeped into my bloodstream, and I feared worse pain was becoming of me. Now, pulling my hair, I could have sworn that the slugs from before were getting on my nerves. And I wanted nothing to do with being a host for the pretentious parasites that praised my inherited status like a child-molesting bishop.

Suddenly, a flash followed by a loud crack above resounded over the building, and alleluia lifted the tension in my small, still despairing shoulders. I sat there, wavering in my grief for when innocent people were free, not locked in their homes from the world we used to know. My hands shook, unable to stop. Then, after a long moment, the scattering rain halted, and I firmly swallowed the guilt in my throat as anger replaced my sadness, then hungered for more. Finally, I rejoined my demons, laughing again, only at their disgust. Reunited to my center, I held the reigns of my insanity like a ringmaster, lighting the candles in preparation to reopen my villa for rent again.