Believe it or not, sometimes I write things that are unrelated to Nadiel. Call it a compulsion. Anyway, here: have a sketch. I reckon we’ll call this one
Anima.
She’ll hope it’s a dream later on. She’ll try to rationalize it, forming it into a wobbly excuse for the terror that rips through her on a daily, even hourly, basis. The truth is something’s not right within her mind, within her. There’s an illness that’s always been there, and although everyone has seen its branches extending from the roots of her, few know about the color of the bark, the texture of the leaves and the odor of those dark purple blooms on that sick tree.
She’s faceless and nameless, even to herself. There isn’t any occasion in which she isn’t startled by her appearance when she stops by a mirror. Everything’s all wrong—the hair is too light, the eyes are too dark, her limbs are never that long or thin—and even her own name has an improbable combination of consonants and vowels so as to spill clumsily out of her mouth every time she utters her name. Identity in itself is a trick question to her.
She’ll ponder her ability to value that which is beautiful at some point in the future, for in this moment, she’s looking after her niece—we’ll call her Olivia—and her nephew—he’ll be Sean—in her brother’s home. Her brother—Davy to family and close friends—is away, and Sean and Olivia have requested a bedtime story. She’s happy to oblige, and the three of them curl up on Olivia’s bed, a child on each side. The story is gentle and sweet, and it winds through all the obstacles with clean precision.
But something shifts in the room, and she realizes that it’s the subtlety of its temperature. She pulls in the children closer, and there’s the distinct feeling of something horribly wrong within the atmosphere. Despair and a murderous anger seep into her, and its character feels as if it is part of her now.
The children are gone. Davy is still gone, too, and she’s alone in his kitchen. The house is empty, and all its walls feel like they have never known any warmth at all. The tile in the kitchen beneath her feet is accompanied by the intuition that these stones were once used for some grim purpose in the past. This house, Davy’s house, is absent of the love with which it was once so full. And it’s his fault.
He. It isn’t Davy. It isn’t Sean. No, nothing this ruined or perverse could belong to a child. It belongs to something older. She doesn’t care to consider his origins. She senses that it comes from that same awful place that nurtured that awful seed that grew into that awful tree within her.
He’s taken a familiar—in more than one sense of the word—shape. It’s her brother—the younger, his name is Robert, but the name suits him as uselessly as her own name—but it’s not him. The eyes look like Robert’s, but Robert, although distant, considers his own anger too precious to share with the world in the way that he does. The smile is definitely not Robert’s. Robert doesn’t smile often, but when he does, he means it, and it’s brilliant. His smile has been carved by the sharp tool of menace.
A single response crystallizes: get out of the house. He lets her, for this is just the first stage of torment.
Olivia and Sean are waiting outside. They’re happy to see her, as if they hadn’t seen her in a long time. She puts them in the car, straps them into their seats and sets out to take them to their grandparents’ house, where she hopes they’ll be safe.
But the house isn’t where it should be. No one lives there anymore. In fact, there’s nowhere else to go. She doesn’t know where her own home is. All the roads to the place she calls home are covered with sand from every last castle she built on with a plastic pail and shovel on the shores of her memory.
Sean and Olivia are happy children. They don’t understand what’s going on. They’ve been playing in the backseat, and she’s grateful that they’re too concerned with their game to pay any attention to their driver’s panic.
The only place to go is back to Davy’s house. She knows it’s too much to hope for that he won’t be there. She’d rather face him, truthfully, if only to get it over with.
Davy’s home, and his wife—Rose, of course—is there, too. Rose is welcoming, as always, and the house feels divided on the inside, for there are two competing currents involved in a calculated exchange of energy within. Sean and Olivia are happy to see their parents, and they shuffle off to bed at their mother’s request.
Rose senses that he is nearby, and she wants him out. She and Rose trade a silent agreement to do what is necessary to get him out, but he’s too quick for that. He knows that his ruse of wearing a Robert-suit doesn’t work, and so he decides that frightening the children is the next step. He wakes them, and when they are all assembled in the kitchen, he finds the largest, sharpest knife in the kitchen and cuts into his own neck with it.
The children are crying. Davy and Rose shield them, but there’s not much they can do. He’s got all of them held in the kitchen, threatening all of them with violence and pain and torture, while the blood forms a discreet, consistent trail from the wound in his neck all the way down his front and his arms. He’s bleeding too much, and as far as she’s concerned, it’s obvious that he’s not Robert.
She knows it’s a gamble to escape and call for help, but it’s the only thing plan she can muster. While he’s occupied with Davy, she makes a run for it, bursting through the front door, into the night, down the street and over a neighbor’s wall. She huddles behind it, out of breath, and calls the police.
She hears the sirens. She crouches behind the wall, observing from a distance as the cops set up a strategic assault to destroy the very bad man who has taken hostages within a private home, a home that, with such beautiful children as occupants, ought to be so full of love.
She’s paralyzed for a moment, for it occurs to her that he might not be he after all. He might actually be Robert, and as she hears the shouts and the gunfire from inside the house, she wonders if the declarations that the cops make to stand down are indicative of his or his passing.
She rushes into the house, where there are alternating smells of smoke and blood. They make to attempt to restrain her. It’s Robert, and not he. The questions of culpability drip down the walls to mingle with the blood spatter, and they alter the gravity of the room and pull her to her knees.
She feels a scream well up from somewhere deep within her. All of her bones have been crushed up, and their shards are released, tearing into her throat, as the scream escapes in a primal howl she never knew she was capable of producing. This is what she’s always feared: the sound of grief. She’s a crumpled mess on the kitchen floor, choking on the loss and puking up all the useless, best intentions she had of ever knowing her brother again.
The smells temper: either she’s gotten used to the smell of death, or the air is clearing. She can’t decide which. She stands to leave and make a decision about the air by going outside. She glances at her reflection in the mirror in the foyer, and there’s a glimmer of something awful sitting in the chair. It’s he, and she wonders if she’ll ever be rid of him.
♥
