I Bleed Dust

Wheels roll and furniture scrapes across my surface. The stomps of steel toed boots vibrate through each and every floorboard of mine. The shouts and laughter of removal men and the blaring of hard rock music reverberate on my walls for hours. They are always so violent. Once they are gone, three little pairs of shoes, one pair of brogues, and one pair of heels enter my home.

A new family has moved in. It fills me with the promise of humans eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, making memories, watching television, reading books, and adding new parts to my body. I cannot remember the last time I felt whole.

The boiler hisses and the oven purrs. Metal forks squeak against ceramic plates. The sound of teeth tearing into crunchy, processed pizza brings me back to a different time when the woodstove still lived here. I prefer the crackle of burnt logs to the whirring of fans.

There is chatter. The words sound friendly but there is a sharpness behind their tone. Then a shout. Then silence. Crockery and cutlery alike clatter in the sink. The brogues and heels stomp back to their rooms.

Three pairs of bare feet slap my surfaces as they wander my halls. They exchange insults, but there is a softness to their barbs even as they use language as a weapon. They prod and pry at every cranny and crevice, looking for faults, playing part time inspectors.

I am proud of how I have maintained myself over the years but age has weathered my innards. In every loose floorboard, missing shingle, and peeled piece of wallpaper, there is a story. Previous owners have stashed bags beneath the floor, pulling the rusted nails loose. Birds have crashed against my roof, breaking the slates. Well-intentioned decorators have tried to replace my skin, only to lose faith in their project and abandon it.

The children pry one floorboard loose. All they see are my pipes. They forget to repair their damage and wander somewhere else. Someone could break their leg tripping beneath me. While they are not looking, I pull the board back into place.

While I have owners, it is my job to keep them. I cannot be seen. I cannot be heard. I cannot repair what is already damaged, but I can replace what is already there. I would sooner die than allow any tenant to come to harm.

Days pass. I pay attention to what is said and what is unsaid. I listen to the echoes in the hallways, the whispers behind closed doors, the creaking of my wooden bones, the screeching of excitable children, the silence that their slumber brings, the deliberate silence that stonewalls lovers, the shuffling of a book, the tap-tap of a thumb on a phone screen, then the sound of lips smacking together like a plunger pulled from a bathroom tile.

The headboard thumps against my wall. There are still marks there from hundreds of years ago. I do not linger on the scene, focusing instead on the owls roosting on the rafters of my attic. I shall give my owners the privacy they need, for I am glad that they are not shouting at one another.

Each day, alarms chime and shoes rush down my stairs. I open my door just before they push my handle, just so they exert less force trying to get to work or school on time.

Weeks pass. Children laugh. Children cry. The adults laugh. The adults shout. Slide whistles, whip cracks and gunshots ring through the television. Tiny thumbs press buttons on game controllers, clickity-clack, clickity-clack. Large fingers type on laptop keys, clackity-click, clackity-click. Soda pop fizzes in a glass, glug glug. Wine sloshes against glasses, glug glug.

One day, more shoes enter: heels, high heels, dress shoes, sneakers, sandals, flip flops, and hiking boots. They are temporary guests but guests all the same. Pop music plays through tinny speakers. Chairs squeak. Hands clap. There is the usual trading of passive-aggressive comments and unspoken statements, but it is drowned out by the much friendlier chatter of the guests.

I remember the last family party, thirteen years ago. It was a wake. I much prefer this kind of party.

One of the guests recites a limerick to the children about a man from Nantucket – despite the tut tuts of their parents, they laugh. And I laugh too. My floorboards vibrate beneath their feet. I hope they don’t notice, but the father stares down for a little too long.

Months pass and the cheer from the party dissipates. Each laugh grows quieter. Each shout and silence afterwards grows louder. Mugs shatter against kitchen corners. Arms sweep ornaments and books off of shelves which bounce off my floor. Pillows muffle sobs. Metal music blasts through headphones for long after the sobbing stops.

I have seen it happen before. Countless times. Am I not maintaining my foundations well enough? Am I not making enough effort to provide the family with shelter? I inspect the interiors for any blemishes. I screw the loose nails of my floorboards shut. I slot the remaining shingles back into place, all one thousand seven hundred and thirteen of them. While everyone is asleep, I brush the dust off the floor, the walls, the shelves, the windowsills, the cracks, the spaces, and out of the air.

The family used to clean me every week. That has stopped for quite some time.

Despite my deep clean, the shouts and silences continue; they become deafening. Footsteps slow to a crawl whenever they walk in. I do not hear the leather of those brogues or heels slapping against my floors as often any more. Even the once-affectionate insults shared between the children take on a different meaning once shouted.

Each night, I clean. This is all I can do to keep them here. Yet I am not seen or heard. My efforts go ignored. Yet still, I clean, and clean, a little louder and less graceful as each night passes. Sometimes, those leather brogues pace back and forth across my halls, as if searching for something that is not there. Each night I clean, the pacing quickens. They have begun talking. More shouts follow. Perhaps they feel my presence.

One day, socked feet shuffle down the stairs as I sweep the halls, my floorboards oscillating before their eyes.

Their backside crashes against one of my steps. They scream and rush back upstairs. I stop. I have been caught.

A part of me wanted this to happen. I cannot count how many years I have spent fixed to the same place. When was I built? I cannot remember. But all this time, I have been hiding. Loving my tenants unconditionally. Yet they leave. All of them do. I will continue to love them until I am razed to the ground, but I cannot hide any more.

The cries carry to the room where the parents sleep. They wake up. They shout. After much arguing, their feet leave the room and head down my steps. Hands rapidly tap at the boards. I tap back.

Silence. I have their full attention. I rip the boards from the floor, which form an outline of a person. I wave at them. At last, I am finally seen.

The father shouts bloody murder. The mother and youngest son watch from the staircase, unmoving and unspeaking. The father’s slippers pound against me, rushing towards the kitchen. My outline reaches towards the two sitting on the steps. I want them to shake my hand. The son stares and reaches out too.

The father swings an axe, slicing me in half. The son screams. The father screeches like a wild boar and chops down, down, down, breaking pieces of me into splinters. It hurts, but I endure it, as I have endured for time immemorial.

The son sobs. He begs his father to stop. The father stops, only to grab his son’s arm, dragging him by his knees to the hole in my floor. The father yells and curses. The mother bashes her tiny fists against his muscles. He ignores her and pulls his son’s hair, dragging his head further down the gap.

I see the son’s face twisted and dripping tears and snot.

The mother launches herself against the father, pushing him and the boy away. The axe clatters across the floor.

The father pounces on the axe. He raises it towards the mother on the floor. She shields her face as he swings down. No, he can’t!

My scaffolding shifts. I focus my entire strength covering the perimeter of my house into the ceiling over his head. The ceiling ripples.

A wooden beam falls.

There is a hollow thunk, then a slam of wood against wood that blasts and bounces across my walls. Blood seeps through my cracks and drips to the ground below.

Time hastens. Many cries, sobs, and sirens follow. More booted feet enter my home. They tilt the beam off the father's corpse then carry him in a body bag, the final zip sealing him off. The rest escort the family away from me. The only sounds I hear now are the wind and the owls hooting in the attic.

Days pass. The steel toed boots return. Pest control enters and the hoots cease. Once they are done, workmen remove my windows and drive long nails through me, sticking wooden boards over my openings. They say I have been condemned. Deemed inhospitable. In days, the engines of trucks and heavy machinery roar outside. Vehicles beep as they reverse. A megaphone blares commands.

I am about to be demolished. I do not move my interiors. I have taken a life. I have failed. I have already accepted my fate.

The wrecking ball swings into my side. I bleed dust and microfibres. The shingles fall, clack and shatter into me. I endure and endure and endure, but it hurts. It hurts so much.

They reduce me to a mountain of rubble, slate, plasterboard, timber and styrofoam. Yet still, I live. They collect each piece of me. They count each piece of me. They transport each piece of me. They take each piece of me to the facility.

I am pulped, crushed, and mixed into many other plasterboards. I am shipped across the world, in the homes of others with more families, some better than my previous owners, some worse, and I also reside in new train stations and town halls and park gazebos.

Once, I was trapped. Once, I was alone. But now I am everywhere, I am never alone.