- My World
I haven’t walked since I was seven.
Perhaps the least riveting part of this story however, is the crash that left me so. Regardless, it didn’t take long for my personality to morph into a unison with my sickness, hiding me behind its façade, turning me into someone no one bothered to ask about.
Well, even before that really, school was hard. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t speak much. Being quiet, unfortunately, doesn’t make you invisible — it makes you a target.
And so, the crash really was the final straw, I suppose. I was pulled out of school and left in the ‘care’ of my parents. Perhaps they thought that would help me, allow me to be the focus for once.
But isolation just got quieter. Lonelier.
2. The House
We moved into the cottage when I was one. It was this massive isolated fairytale home that at the time seemed like the perfect romanticism of ‘home’.
Back then, we were different- happier. We laughed. We talked; we played. As cheesy as it sounds, we really were there for each other, cared for each other.
Then, when I was nine, something changed.
Mom found out something awful about Dad. I remember that day, the glassy screaming iced with her tears. She screeched; her bellows drowned in silence of the night’s darkness which never seemed to turn to day again. What it was, I suppose now, I’ll never know. But she tried to pretend things were fine, sadly enough, the crash had spared my eyes, so I really wasn’t blind to our circumstances. It was clear, really —
She didn’t trust him anymore.
She didn’t love him, anymore.
Which leads us to five months ago when she gave up pretending.
The turn was sharp, abrupt and painfully inconveniencing. I thought perhaps she would take the traditional road – sacrificing her freedom for her child, living heroically but unfortunately in a suffocating marriage so that her child wouldn’t have to endure the burden of a broken family.
But the road less taken, I suppose, is where we are naturally inclined to lead.
And so, the divorce came like a righteous thunder.
3. The Divorce
I begged to go to the trial. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought I’d get a say which was comically far from the reality. Not only did I not get a say, not only was my parents’ divorce finalised but further worse, the judge was an unforgettable nightmare for me. He looked like he’d been cursed by a hairy werewolf halfway through transformation stage. And so when I didn’t have dreams of my broken home, trust me, I had nightmares of his hairy ears…
But ofourse humour in this story is tragically short-lived as I proceed now again to engulf myself in this shattered, nightmarish life I was living. As I write this story in my head, my memoir from me to you, I feel compelled to continue, to make you feel the pain I have felt. And so, I continue…
My world swayed like a ferociously mishandled rock thrown across a deep torrent-driven sea, sinking rapidly into the blue abyss.
My parents fought over everything — custody, money, bedroom furniture, you name it. I really thought the rock had hit its bottom. I would laugh now, if I could, wondering how naïve one would have had to be to think that.
4. Then Came The End
It was early when I woke up, staring out the window like always. Grey skies. Empty road. The wind moving nothing.
But that’s when it happened, or rather better, that’s when I saw it.
She was standing there. Back against the wall, knife clutched tight in her whitened fists.
Blood on her face. Eyes wide open. Still.
She looked mortified, mouth tilted open as though beginning to scream. But she didn’t. She stood, and soon she fell, with a lifeless, gentle thud.
I wanted to cry, but the tears didn’t roll down and instead of being drenched in a sad downpour, I was in a cold, lifeless drought of my own – unable to think or breathe. Witnessing as the house fell silent at last.
As my mother, fell silent at last.
A paradox really, a peaceful blasphemy. An unendurable, cruel, deafening silence. But a silence nonetheless.
And slowly, days passed.
Soon, so did I.
…
Years later, travellers wandered past our quiet cottage. Drawn by the twisted charm of old bricks and creaking wood, as if some picturesque fairytale awaited them, they stepped inside.
They marvelled at the walls, the rooms- the silence.
Until one of them found it.
Someone strange was sleeping on the floor. Except it wasn’t someone, it was some thing. A body so grossly decomposed, no face nor flesh could be seen under the ragged remains of clothes it was dressed in. So intrinsically fused in the moss-ridden panels of the floor that its fingertips had become lost somewhere in the woodwork.
And there, a little ahead stood a child’s wheelchair in the corner.
As they turned their silent gaze, they saw her too.
The girl.
Me.
Still sitting. Head tilted forward.
Still watching.
Still waiting.
A rotting pile of bone and skin.