He poured another shot of whiskey.
I can’t wait to get out of here.
It was like mold, and if he’d known that when it began he would have burned down the house before it spread and poisoned the halls and doorways, the shadows in the backs of stairwells and basement corners where the spiders used to spin their webs.
But how could he have known? How could anyone?
People see things all the time, being emotional creatures, so the first few flutters and darting clouds he’d chalked up to instability. Time heals all wounds, or at least scabs over them, and with his being so fresh and still spitting blood from the cut he had ignored the sights and sounds and focused his all on his anger, dark and primal instinct with crosshairs on her form, her image constructed and projected in his mind, the last place she remained in his existence.
But weeks later, when it had been more than just a color of peripheral vision, it had been discernable, it had been supple, it had been a woman – his vitriol bubbled down and a creeping curiosity took hold. Who was she? Was there a history to this home of which he hadn’t been aware? He had decided, after a few quiet days, that it was merely the ghost of his relationship, manifested as a literal metaphor.
What a wild thing to see. Taking over my mind. Wild.
The first course of action had been to set up cameras of course, thermal scanners and motion detectors and tape recorders. None of which had recorded anything other than silence and stillness, though the motion detector had started one of the cameras once and delivered him a six minute recording of the living room. And nothing else. The couch, coffee table, and blank TV screen, but no shapes or sounds or movement of any kind. In fact, he’d rewound the tape and watched it through a second time, his eyes fixated on the television, sure something would skitter across the reflection or a pair of glowing eyes would flash by – but there was nothing.
After that he had loosened up, letting it go until he was getting the mail one day and happened to glance up at the attic window, yellowed with time and a bit foggy with memory, and peering through the glass at him was a man’s face. His eyebrows dipped and pointed with concern at the sight, though the man’s face stayed blank, inexpressive, and it was three seconds before he was inside the house, bounding up the stairwell(s) and into the attic, frantically wrestling the boxes and bags in search of the intruder, wading through the packaged time capsules corner to corner but finding only cobwebs throughout.
There was no one in the house.
But there had been.
Maybe there still was.
Maybe the woman had a man.
Or maybe the woman had become a man.
Either way, what a tiring taunt.
Funny little creep.
He poured another shot of whiskey.
Time lengthened, and his scab sank deep into the core of his hurt, and though the outside hardened over and the hole was plugged, his center was still a tumultuous place. He went about his days, cried less, but with more intensity. It mostly hit in the kitchen, making a simple sandwich and involuntarily firing up a memory of her dinners, each one special and full and rolling over with color and vivid sensations, pleasing the senses and twinkling under her smile because she loved cooking, it was love. She’d looked at him that way in the beginning. But as with his later wound, time took its toll. And so he continued to cry.
Two months after his first cry in the kitchen, he’d been at it again after a tuna salad sandwich had brought on remembrance of an amazing salmon meal, when a noise in the foyer caught his ears and attention.
Investigation was short lived and took to full on experience once he stepped into the hall and saw what he saw.
She wasn’t human, though she looked as such – it seemed almost like a reflection, the motionless form staring back at him with such full, overflowing eyes – but when a person loses their self amidst emotion and tides of change, they look more like a shell than anything else and their sorrow is palpable.
He stepped toward it and then it floated backward and into the door, and once it hit the oak it disintegrated into a mist that hugged the indentations of the wood and then gravitated to the ceiling, fanning out across the nubs and popcorn and then all at once it flew into the ceiling fan as if drawn by a vacuum, in and up and he could feel it move into the bedroom above.
He raced upstairs and found the room undisturbed, no presence or form out of place in the quiet afternoon still. Just the room as expected, and the note from when she left still sitting on the bed. His eyes then continued the previously paused catharsis.
She looked so sad.
After that night he took to the bottle, unsure of where to put his foot next and what was happening to his home and feeling only like blurring the lines of any and everything would bring welcome relief as soon as could be. And he felt it almost instantly, relaxed and numb so much so that when the figures walked by the doorway of the living room he laughed a little before he stood and followed.
The foyer was silent and sure, and noises then came from upstairs, so he staggered up to the first step to begin his ascent, slipping and falling face first into the stairwell as drunkards tend to do.
When the darkness subsided he awoke to find he was lying on the stairwell still, yet it wasn’t the same as before he fell. The steps had a translucency about them, shimmering blue and he could see right through them and waves and wisps of turquoise clouds stretched the infinity behind, then laughter up above drew his sights to set on the woman at the top of the stairs, her eyes still full but calling to him now. Behind her a spinning circular void, the same landscape as beyond the stairs, but open now. Her hand gestured into it, hovering, beckoning. Invitation.
He stood slowly, his footing on the stairwell functioning as it had before, and glancing down at the blue below he made his way up a few steps more, until a knock on the door startled his senses so much that he slipped once again and fell back to the bottom, returning to the interrupting darkness.
He awoke much later to his house as expected, the floor hard and cold underneath his sober skin.
Alcohol inspired, or caused?
Curious, he stared up the stairs until he remembered the knock that had ruined his moment, then he rolled his head up to look at the front door, and found an envelope had been pushed through the mail slot.
He picked it up and looked at the scrawled return address at the top, then he burned at his very center. It was from her.
His core seared, and in a chaotic stupor he felt direction once again. Even if it reactionary and nothing more, it was a direction. And he had no idea if it would even work. But he didn’t care.
So he dropped the letter on the floor and headed into the living room again. No reason to read it.
He knew what it said. He’d been down that road before.
Now he had some exploring to do.
He poured another shot of whiskey.