Lost in Midnights

A gaudy sneer contaminated his already callous face. His lips were peeling like paint, dried blood dotting the skin. His hands limp and numb; his legs rocking to the beat of the deafening grandfather clock that was nowhere to be seen. His breathing was shallow and laboured. The glare in his eyes blinked with possibility and life, despite his shattered appearance. Suddenly, his lunatic grin vanished, replaced with a fear-filled hanging jaw, brimmed with dread. Except for his eyes, all the colour in the old man faded, with the colour of the darkened room.

A split second’s warning. A crash of thunder. A marathon vanquished by the heart. The spontaneity of a nightmare that of a lion’s pounce. Fear flowing through her veins, Margo’s breathing accelerated. Her eyes darted across her eerily silent room, darkened with shadows. The curtains were swept open, windows thrown open. Wind whistled through them, starlight slithering in.  A low, unearthly moan swept along the frosty breeze. 

Margo pulled the covers taut around her, shivering as icy fingers crawled down her back. The shuddering thought of the man’s eyes bloomed in her mind like a fresh flower bud. Squeezing her eyes shut, she wished away the sickening thoughts. Unfortunately, no matter how much she yearned for a clear head, they were bright in her mind.

Clutching her head in one hand, Margo stumbled off the worn mattress and snatched up a lamp. As she limped down the tiled hallway, she rubbed what was left of sleep in her eyes and flopped onto the tattered remains of the sofa. Groaning, she massaged her temples. A high pitched scream pierced her brain, deafening her ears. Throughout the night it carried on, keeping Margo’s eyes wide open and her mouth as well.

The sunrise was ethereal, purples and magentas streaked across the sky like paint. Nonetheless, to Margo, it only annoyed her adjusting eyes and sleepy brain. She couldn’t have cared less, for she was much preoccupied with something much more attention-needing. Once she had slipped into proper apparel—and gulped down a few mouthfuls of oatmeal—Margo swiftly clomped down the staircase outside her apartment, the lift being ultimately creaky and slow; therefore useless.

She tapped her key card on the reader and slipped through the door before it closed on her. Pocketing her card, Margo trudged down the pavement and rounded the corner to ‘Mopsy Street’. Despite the inevitable tug of hesitation deep in the pit of her stomach, she knew there was only one person to trust. As she rang the bell to unit number A-7, Mopsy Street, she felt the migraine abate, however slightly. Through the intercom, a familiar, blurred voice crackled. A smile snapped across Margo’s face as her ears took in that blessed voice, and relief slapped a hand across her heart.

“Is it the milkman? You can leave it on the—” The front door was pulled open and a lopsided girl in a tangled mess of auburn hair and a woollen shirt, her jaws slack, appeared in front of Margo. The girl's chest tightened and her hands pulled up onto her hips. Her piercing blue eyes bore into Margo’s, bulging out of their sockets. “Margaret Brynn Rebecca! I haven’t seen you in a year!”

Margo, faintly disturbed at the use of her full name, spread her arms out—her way of begging for a hug. Her throat was too raw for her to speak—a year was a long time—but she managed a weak “Here I am,”. The grin on her face slipped a smidge, her eyes watering.

“But just because I haven’t seen you in a year doesn’t mean I don’t know you anymore! I’ll know that look anywhere,” Lyka wrapped her friend in a bear hug. “Let’s go inside.” Nodding and swiping at her eyes, Margo, secretly gleeful, entered the two-storey, cosy house.

 Lyka led her to the dinner table, which was just where it was 3 years ago. She blew away a clump of dust and dragged in a rickety wooden chair, which Margo sat down on. “Haven’t you had any company over?” She raised a brow, her mischievous smile returned.

“I doubt you’ve had any over on Zig-Zag Lane.” 

Margo grinned at her eccentric companion, though it soon vanished.

“What’s wrong, Margo? Spill it, please. Is it another one of your heada-”

Margo opened her mouth to agree but the sharp pain sliced through her head. She let out a cry of agony. A vision of the vaguely familiar old man from her nightmare danced in front of her eyes, dipping and spinning and pirouetting. Lyka and her surroundings clouded and became indistinct to her ears as well as eyes. She dropped to her knees, limp. A stutter escaped her lips. “Arghhh. No-o.” Suddenly, everything turned pitch black, the deafening, piercing noises silenced, and she fell unconscious.

“Margo, Mary. Open, it’s your favourite, bread and jam!”

6 year old Margo giggles. She opens her mouth to the scrumptious jam toast, tasting the rich sweetness of love and effort her mother inspired.

“Margo, Mary! Please, please please wake up!”

Margo’s eyes fluttered open. Her lips were parched and peeling. A whisper of thought from the memory lingered in her mind. A single teardrop betrayed her will and fell from her eye. Not mom, not mom. A single, repeating thought frequented through her conscience, like a choir in unison.

“Oh, Margo! You very nearly killed me with fear. You turned white, you were right motionless, you were! Rigid as the very chair you sat on.” Lyka’s face was awash with fright. But Margo could only feign a half-smile to comfort, partly real because she recalled Lyka’s accidental way with words. She noticed her friend fidgeting with a mismatched beaded necklace. Two of them, in fact. They were tied and knotted at so many places they were short enough to be bracelets

Margo’s hand went to her mouth, smothering the gasp that surely came. “Oh, Ly. You really kept them?”

“Yeah. They kept snapping and I mended them, but some vanished when they fell into this sea of predicament.” Lyka gestured a bony hand around the room, which Margo had forgotten all about.

Inquisitively, she looked around and registered her surroundings. “It’s just how I remember,” Margo whispered breathlessly. A queen-sized bed took up the lion’s share of the cluttered room. Next to it was a mattress, where Lyka probably slept. A wardrobe was tucked into the corner, built into the wall. The wallpaper was stained and ripping, the carpeted floor scattered with books and loose objects, but it felt like home. 

Memories of their inseparable friendship came rippling back to Margo and Lyka. From elementary school to 9th grade. The interval of time between the present and middle school vanished and they were back in the lively corridors of Westwood International School, pulling a prank on the school bully. 

Frivolous and giggling, the pair slipped a wet, smelly sock into Keziah Fernsby’s locker. 

Present Margo jerked her head to and fro, shaking herself out of the memory. Lyka rested a hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy. It hasn’t even been a minute since you fainted and we had to bring you up here.”

We? Margo’s brain was working like cogs in a clock. Of course Lyka Gordon couldn’t carry her up the creaky spiral stairs alone. “Wh-who else—“

“Oh, fiddlesticks! I forgot to re-introduce you!” With that said, a skinny boy—half Margo’s height—with a mess of blonde hair, dark at the roots, appeared before the staircase. He shyly raised a hand in acknowledgement, a little confused at first. Margo directed a recognised, suspicious and gleeful look towards Lyka. A small smile creeped along Lyka’s face and she nodded. 

Margo rushed to get up from the stool she was sitting on and leapt at Mateo like a lion. She wrapped her arms around him, and lifted him off the ground like she would never let him go. Oh Mateo, she thought bitterly, what joy!

“Mateo, when you disappeared at the fire I thought I’d never see my little brother again!” 

Matthew sobbed tears of sniffling happiness and relief and elation into his long lost sister’s shoulder, still as silent as ever yet brimming with questions. “Is Dad alright?” He asked between shaking sobs.

“Oh, Matt. The world lost a brilliant light a week ago.”

The pair cried their hearts out for their father. But that was the way of life; they could do nothing to bring him back, however painful it was. Once again, Margo’s mind flashed back to the face in her dreams. Just thinking about it gave an icy hand the opportunity to trace its long fingers down her spine. Supple skin, wandering eyes. She shook her head forcefully to wash away the memory. 

Then she heard a rumble, loud yet muffled. Margo knew that noise anywhere. She saved Matthew from the embarrassment of a ravenous stomach and started to pack for a 20-dollar dine-in at Taco Bell—his favourite. Even she grinned, thinking of a well-earned, actually filling meal.

“What’re you doing? Where’d you get the cash?” Margo’s brother furrowed his eyebrows. 

“I’ve been saving up,” She smiled slightly, and led them to the door.

Somehow, Lyka seemed to know what she was doing, as if they were telepathically connected. Margo delighted in that feeling, the feeling of a real friend. When she looked down at their intertwined fingers, she saw Lyka had at some point slipped her beaded friendship bracelet onto Margo’s wrist. Hand in hand, the unusual trio headed across the street to the dusty old corner of the city. A flickering, lit up, crooked signboard hung above the stained glass windows of the restaurant, emblazoned ‘TACO bELL’. No one really understood why the ‘b’ was lowercase, but they didn’t mind. So what if the construction worker guys didn’t have an uppercase ‘b’?

Mateo, who had now come to the stage where he realised where they were going, turned to the girls in excitement, mouth watering. “Really?!” When Lyka and Margo nodded, he froze in surprise, ecstasy and hunger. 

Then, his sister caught a glimpse of something weirdly familiar out of the corner of her eye—something she had not seen since a week ago. Her mouth went dry. “You guys go ahead and order, I’m just gonna go see something. Here’s the money.” As she croaked out the last sentence, she handed Lyka a wadded up 20 dollar note. To Margo’s utter relief, Lyka understood, and Matthew was far too hungry to be concerned.

Walking along the red road of brick, she scoured the streets for the round, fluffy pink teddy rabbit. She twiddled her bracelet under her thumb. Where is it, where is it… There it was. Lying on the grass, under the shade and far from harm’s way. Though it didn’t look far from harm’s way. Covered in mud; ripped at so many places and then sewn back again so many times that most of the cotton had fallen out. Margo smiled. The left ear was missing, so was the right eye. Just like before. Just like bef—no. The left ear wasn’t missing before. Strange.

Once again, she found herself amidst a storm of worry, hope and confusion, in a scavenger hunt for the teddy’s missing ear. And, eventually, she did find it. But with it, she found something else. Or rather, someone else.

Him. The man in her dreams, the man in her nightmares, in her headaches. He was the one. Peeling lips, callous face, rocking legs, plastic red chair, the eyes—it was the stuff of her very quixotic, caliginous nightmare. Cradled in his hands was the teddy rabbit’s ear. It was a blow to the face, like the whistling wind, the draped open curtains. Déjà vu crashed into her like icicles, too cold and frightening to be believable. “Who are you?” Margo was surprised at how steady her voice sounded in spite of the icy ribbon of pain lancing through her head. 

Then, it hit her, flagrant, just before he said it. Three words that changed her life forever. 

“I’m your father.”