Complicated Greif

The breeze was light, but cooling, as the sun tried to peak through the overcast sky. She felt content, bordering on giddy, still basking in the relief she had felt for days. The happiness only left a trace of guilt in her chest. Her black button-up shifted as she walked, lightly coming into contact with her torso at odd places, too stiff to do anything as luxurious as flowing in the breeze. The shirt was slightly over sized, borrowed from her brother. It hung low over her black jeans, making her feel like a child playing dress-up; a pretend funeral in a tree house.

As she looked up at the looming structure in front of her, the seed of guilt expanded under her ribs, growing into something more pronounced; more familiar. A small Craftsman house glared back at her, symmetrically built but distorted by time, covered in faded, flaking yellow and white paint. There was a ghost of warmth; a left over impression of coziness from a past life. A once-soft blanket, falling apart at the seams. The porch appeared to sink into the ground on one side, pulling one window slightly lower than the other. The windows were dark, but there was a barely-there glow inside, peeking out under the closed blinds. The whole facade towered over her, bored and uncaring.

Her black sneakers continued crunching forward, taking her down the cracked and crumbling concrete walkway. The un-mowed grass was swaying, reaching over the sidewalk, grasping for her ankles. An unassuming dread settled in her stomach as she ascended the steps, flakes of white crumbling off the worn wood under her feet. Without thinking, she reached out and held the door knob. As she gripped it, she could taste metal. The flavor covered her, dripped down to her knees. Her toes tingled with it. It pounded through her blood.

She pushed forward and was carried inside.

The creak of the door was drawn out and climbed to a high-pitched screech at the end of its slow swing on rusty hinges. It seemed to echo around the cavernous room. It was a greeting; a question; familiarity and accusation filling the space. The skin of her arms prickled in response and her muscles twitched. As she crossed the threshold, swallowed by shadow, she was hit with a wave of musty, moist air, like a warm rattling breath. Her own breathing was the only sound she heard then. Vigilant stillness filled her, and she was paralyzed and attentive; taking in every detail.

The room was mostly void of anything of consequence, but there was junk everywhere; discarded mail in piles, most of it unopened; stacked Tupperware; empty salad dressing jars. Tiny plastic knick-knacks, scraps of paper and rags covered most of space between the large piles. Barely any of the hard wood floor was visible, which was unfortunate. The floors were beautiful, dark, sturdy wood with surprisingly few scratches, but no one would know.

Despite the decent size of the room, the garishly floral wallpaper overwhelmed her senses and, in combination with scattered bits on the ground, shrunk the room. It all pressed into her, preparing to grip her at any moment, but never striking. There was no longer a sofa; her mother had taken it when she left. The old recliner was positioned awkwardly in the middle of the room, its foot-rest extended, as if someone rushed to go to the bathroom and never returned. There was visible cracking along creases in the leather, like sun-damaged skin. She knew the feel of the surface; the sensation ghosted along her finger tips, though she stayed planted just inside the door, several feet away.

As a child, the brown leather always had more give than she expected. The memory bristled against her more recent recollection, in which the leather had begun to harden and split; the cracks would pinch at her skin. Little mouths, trying to punish her, in tiny ways, for being where she shouldn't be. The wallpaper pattern consisted of faded red and pink flowers, overrun by green vines and leaves. A barely visible once-white background, increasingly yellow over time, was jabbing out at occasional, and evenly spaced, intervals. Her eyes as a child had never been able to see anything but spikes – the kind running along the back of a dragon. It made it the overlapping, overwhelming pattern on the wall, that she always disliked, into something she could appreciate as part of a beast; maybe it’s camouflage, its mask, helping it survive. Now, with their color and even spacing, it resembled coffee-stained teeth.

She moved again, floating forward, taking in the small flatscreen sat on top of a waist-high, plain wooden cabinet against the wall. It jutted up from a pile, boxes and ripped up packing material in a chaotic jumble around it.

A lamp in the kitchen was the only source of light in the house, and it beckoned her. Promises of warm memories; light-pink watermelon stains on her shirt, her mother’s laugh; the scent of too much garlic. Instead, she was pulled- compelled - toward a dark open doorway on the other side of the room.

Her feet made low groans, commiserating their path, as they pressed into the floorboards. The sound seemed to fade into a deep-rumbling chuckle within her own head, echoing in her ears. Burning heat filled her chest as tears pricked her eyes. She touched them, surprised.

As she stepped through the door frame into the hallway, the ambient sound from outside the house, which had slowly come back, ceased again. It was gone with an alarming suddenness. Small eyes locked on her; twenty pairs, maybe more, looking out of frames on the wall. Scenes she could not place, and could barely see, without the light, which was eaten up by the dark wallpaper. There were smiles she could not be certain were real. In the dark, they loomed. The whites of the eyes; the teeth; floating faces, all other features clouded. They pressed in, pulling her, pushing her. Expanding and contracting. She felt it in her chest; tightness squeezing, her shallow breaths ragged.

Her hands ran along the walls of the hallway, a dry, infinitesimal woven pattern grating her fingers, as it pressed in. She wanted to pull her hands back, but the corridor was squeezing in. She froze. Her arms were pressed against her sides now, as the walls rippled, the chalk like roughness scraping at her skin, gripping; carrying her to the end. She let out a breath as she placed her palms and her forehead against the smooth plywood of the flimsy door, closing her eyes.

As she lifted her eye lids, she entered the room. It was untouched. The light from the moon shone through the window, revealing one side of the space. Her boom box, a relic even back when she used it, in the same place on her desk. CDs and tapes in several stacks nearby. She smiled at the shock of seeing something so welcoming, still feeling the heat on her forearms in angry red lines. Inhaling, there was the faintest scent of some kind of fruity body spray hiding among the dust. Soccer trophies and school ribbons were scattered on the shelves. A small puzzle game, a dog-eared book, a box of cheap jewelry and collectable key-chains. Signs of her life at seventeen were everywhere.

On the opposite wall where, the moonlight did not reach, the darkness was stark and made it difficult to see the chair she knew was there. It was a muddy brown and had old papers laying on the cushion, several shirts draped over the back. The surface of the seat cushion was visibly bumpy, used and ragged. She could remember the feel of it under her own skin. It was too faded. Too beat up. The color hid unknown stains and there was a rip in the side, cotton sheeting spilling out. She was staring at the fabric as a bubble burst out of it. The expanse of stitches and cloth seemed to shift from solid, into a thick molten liquid. Bubbles slowly expanding out of the surface, bursting at a slow splattering pace. Occasionally, smoothness would settle on the patch of cushion and, for a moment, it looked solid again. A moment later, its true nature, rippled out, creeping slowly. Her blood pounded through her veins. As her breath rushed in and out of her body, she could hear a deeper rush of air, expanding and contracting around her.

She moved closer, each step a chore. Her heavy legs felt dense and numb, supporting her, while weighing her down. If she wasn’t fighting to move forward, she felt certain she would fall through the floorboards. Her feet pushed through debris; a sea of items appearing to emanate from the chair. Her shoes rustled through dried leaves, faded bank notices, crunching water bottles, foil wrappers. The closer she got, the thicker the muck. It was up to her knees now, and it seemed to be pulling her on a wave toward the chair. She could only push through for one more step and she was falling towards the sear, ready for a splash; ready to sink to the bottom.

It was a jarring landing. There was more solidity than she expected. Relief flooded through her, tempered by panic. She felt the chair stretch and give under her body, sticking to her skin. It felt like melting fingers pressing into her arms. It dripped upward, slowly filling in the expanse of the denim on her legs, pulling the flotsam with it as it rose. She couldn't see her legs through discarded egg cartons and plastic packaging.

As her body was being taken, she stared at the ceiling fan, covered in dust, unmoving. Her breathing was shallow but she left it behind. She saw a single glow-in-the-dark star, stuck to the top of the wall. Her skin felt like it was dissolving, being digested.

The pattern of a face found her in the textured ceiling; barely-there bumps, shadowed in a fortunate direction to create facial features, arranged in a familiar shape. She tried to see something else, but she could not unsee it. As she looked away, it followed her, clinging to her gaze. It watched her. Pleaded with her. The features came into focus; intense eyes; round cheeks. The small scar just above the left eyebrow.

The pain came rushing back to her, as she screamed out, instinctively ripping her arm up. To her surprise, the chair released her. Her breathing became quick again, but she didn't stop. She yanked her other arm up, almost taken under again by the pain in her chest. She screamed, not out of fear, but effort.

She found herself on the floor. The room was shaking and shrinking in, trying to hold her there. She almost laid down, and let it. She felt a straw poke the back of her hand. She heard an empty glass bottle clunk against her shoe.

She found her feet and ran, shocked as she made it to the doorway. She drug herself out of the room and into the hallway, clawing at the contracting walls, the chalky wallpaper giving way to her fingernails, allowing her to pull herself forward. Another rage-filled scream broke through her teeth, directed at the faces in the pictures; the hungry eyes looked scared now, slinking further into their frames.

She burst out of the hallway and barely stayed on her feet as she reached for the doorknob and felt herself thrown from the house.

She woke with a start, feeling the pressure of a hand on her shoulder. Her head jerked from where it rested against the window. Slowly reaching her hand toward her hairline, she could feel a tingling. It was cool to the touch from the chill on the window, but it felt like heat from the inside. Her head turned towards the touch that woke her. The round face of her brother looked back, eyes intense, full of worry and unasked questions. Her heart slowed as she sent an almost imperceptible grin to him. She rubbed the cloth on her arm, soft fabric held her, warming a bone-deep chill that was abating as she shook the weight of sleep from her mind.

“Are you sure you want to go in? I bet the new owners would let us come by later.”

“No, its okay. Lets do it.” She was surprised to find that she meant it.

“Are you sure?” The confusion on his face sent a singular eyebrow high up on his forehead, a small scar riding along. The image carried her momentarily back to her fading dream. Was he there? It was too faint. She shook her head again as she brought a genuine grin, small but steady, onto her face.

“Yeah. I want my boombox.”

The eye roll he gave her was comforting and she swiftly exited the car, a blur of baggy black clothes. Her childhood home sat, unassuming. Just a house. She approached it for the last time.