#I’d expect nylon rationing to come into play)

[doolallymagpie]

hold on, let me check something

yep, still bothered by the lack of pencil skirts in fallout

*banging pots and pans outside Todd’s office* HEY MAN I JUST WANNA TALK ABOUT YOUR ALT-HISTORICAL FASHIONS

[halloweenvalentine1997]

it's early November. city's dead. I haven't slept in a couple of weeks. the sky sheds its clouds, rainwater sluices down my face. it falls in subtle droplets, into my eyes, hollow sockets in my upturned face. my mouth craves hydration, it's dry. ghosts of unrequited love cry on the street corners, skin cut from paper flowers, petals sharp as lust. I am a haunt in a haunted city. the concrete serves as an ashtray, a wastebasket. I bite my lips. my high-heeled boots sound like explosives as I traipse the sidewalks, finding messages in the signs, finding a silhouette of a girl screaming in a reflective window. I am her shadow, aimless and clawing at a cage. leaves crunch beneath my boots. I pass the hamburger joint on Third avenue. a homeless woman with grey hair and stoned eyes glimpses at my boots, fails at a disapproving scowl. around here, wearing high heels with nylons means you're a tramp, even if your slut-shamer doesn't know your name. I cross the highway overpass. cars dash west and east on the edges of my blurred vision. something's off. everything is deserted and misanthropes are fighting yet another futile war. some dare to call themselves nihilists, the belief that life is pointless. I see a point in existing as time ensues. there's more to life than ashes and purgatories. I will live and strive for goals, even if the clocks shatter and the church bells clang loud and clear to a faint and distant tinkle to a hushed silence. the altar will bleed. cities will perish. my name is Vivica Salem. I am eighteen. I am gasping for air up the stairs to room 213, a dreadfully drab room in a subsidized housing complex. once inside, I choke on the stale smoke, swimming, floating in a suffocating sea of potential cancer and voices I can't understand. I am drowning, head held and forced to inhale carbon monoxide. skulls are whispering, they're attached to skeletons with some skin still left, covertly plotting my journey across the border. I slide the window open. poison drifts out and fades in the dim moon. I try to see something pretty, like a rainbow or a sunset, behind my closed eyelids. the dark behind my eyelids. a quilt gently covering me, excluding the following: sadism. malice. hate. I have no energy for it. just want to collapse in the remains of bluebells scattered along the horizons of hillsides. a moor aglitter with snowflakes as shimmery as diamonds, crystallized frost. the panic attack starts in the pit of my stomach, a tide of discomfort approaching my brain. volts of sickness, of sleep-deprived psychosis, wash over me to bleach out the endorphines. bangs ricochet off the corners of the ceiling. sonatas blend with choruses from an angry female vocalist. songs fill my head. the dark omits the light. I am just a shadow of someone deceased. diseased. my parents want nothing to do with me, but they're the only people I can turn to when the witching hour occurs at night. I can't spend another minute in this room, choking, smoking, being alone. I shove a pile of books as well as a composition journal into a messenger bag, the one I lugged around in 9th grade. my shoulder pained from the weight of textbooks. history drags me down. I slide the key ring onto my wrist, step into the hall, practically slamming the door behind me. the stairs lead down to the first floor. a TV blares from a wall in the sitting room. a group of men stare at bad media. some stare into space, too numb to change their lives. the phone rests on a side table next to the couch attached to a cord. it slides out of my trembling hand and clatters to the floor. but it doesn't break. the dial tone hums monotonously. I punch in the number to the house I failed to grow up in. it doesn't ring, just cuts to a recording telling me I am calling long-distance and that charges apply. It must be a total bullshit hallucination, but it's been doing that for awhile. perhaps it's a sign that they want to completely disown me. so I wouldn't be known as their daughter. I am, in their eyes, an unstable mess, the nightmare they conceived. mom told me she wished I'd never been born. I am ten minutes away from them via car. the security guard who sits by the door reading crime novels all day allows me to use her cell phone to reach my mom. mom agrees to pick me up. I go outside to wait. I sit on the bench overlooking the parking lot, the cheap cars, the destitute night. I expel smoke through my nostrils. my fingers turn yellow. grit gathers under my nails. mom arrives. I can't articulate my feelings to her; she doesn't accept my answers, or lack thereof. the car ambles up the hill, turns the corner on 25th and Post and down another busy main street before it slides to an abrupt stop in the driveway. there is a stark and hushed eerieness to the neighborhood. it reminds me of the silence, the grief flowing from the eyes of mourners during a funeral service. black veils fluttering in the wind, birds twittering in the trees. we ascend the steps to the front door of the house. I enter the living room. during my excruciating, vague existence in this house, it had much more of a life, an implication that it is inhabited by people who care. now, I sense a callous cold just by observing the interior. there is no carpet. hardwood creaks under my feet. just like it always did when I paced the rooms in the dark, an insomniac, tongue doused in caffeinated coffee. the dining room feels empty. the wooden chest that contained antique dishes and a portrait of a stern great-grandmother as a young girl, is against another wall. I peer through the glass and into the contemptuous, dour, truly Victorian gaze of Grandma Mildred. she looks to be about nine years old in the portrait. she bears a slight resemblance to my younger sister, Christine. Christine is sixteen and a spoiled, self-indulgent nightmare. luckily, she is hiding with the Twitt family, possibly watching the ABC Family network on their fancy TV. and she's possibly enjoying the luxury of having friends. the Twitts have three daughters. friends. truthfully, I never craved such a presence. people lie through their teeth. lips part to spew filth and sabotage me in a disagreement. I used to cry about it but now I don't care. before my thoughts can run riot and make me lose myself any further, mom calls me into the kitchen. I need to eat. I'm too thin and my bones feel brittle. I put a mac and cheese dinner in the microwave. I am starving unintentionally. I just can't feel hunger right now... and then I take in the sight of mom. she looks tired and thin herself, but far from sickly. her eyes are suddenly vivid and blue, but vacancy prevails. her hair, a dark red, is styled in a trim similar to mine. my hair is mistaken for "ginger" by colorblind acquaintances and by colorblind strangers. it is a strawberry blonde, and it's hanging in my eyes. I cannot stop screaming at mom who is pathetic and playing the victim. just like I was and used to do. my voice raises, I'm incoherent and can't tell her that I don't want to be alone in that morbid $250 room with dreams littering the dirty carpet. I am stalked by men, leered at, and I have scared off potential sex offenders. but something could go wrong. my heart could always stop and I can't see her grieving for me. not that I expect her to... my eyes widen when I notice all pictures of me are missing. my infancy, my school pictures, my forced smiles for one of my dad's cameras. they have stored them somewhere, left them to collect lint, dust and decay. the professionally photographed portrait of my sister with her ballet class is displayed on the CD shelf, next to the TV that's always on. I turn it off, mumbling "shut up" at the dumb show on the screen as my thumb presses the POWER button. another picture of Christine is on a side table by the window. she's laying on her stomach in the grass, wearing her drill team outfit , and smiling innocently, but only I see beyond that. even while frozen in a frame, she seems to be mocking me from inside it. my dad always wanted to shelter her and shut me out in the mist. sometimes, he would even lock me out of the house, regardless of the weather. when dad emerges from the computer room, he says he has called the mental health professionals. they are coming to the house to send me away, to call me "gravely disabled&" and incompetent. I lose all rationality. my composure crumbles, resilient stone reduced to useless dust. next thing I know, we're all in the living room. I am posturing at my father. I push him, not wanting to inflict any true damage, really. he doesn't fall. he has no right to call the system on me! I'M AN ADULT! but maybe I do need a place to go to regain my well-being. the mental health professionals enter the house to tell me I'm to get in the ambulance parked across the street. I punch the screen door on my way out, shout a string of obscenities, and allow them to strap me down on the wheeled bed in the rear of the ambulance. I bellow horrible things, unheard. this behavior isn't rational. I'm imagining a lot of things. this isn't right but I haven't slept for nearly three weeks. I am whisked away to the hospital where I was born, only to be detained in the emergency room. I am lying on my back, a padded mattress beneath me. they cover me with warm blankets. my right wrist is bound in a restraint I can't undo. several hospital staff come and go, asking me questions I can't answer to their satisfaction; all I want to do is sleep and not think or say another word. I've been asked all these questions so many times that I'm too exhausted to keep my eyes open. a tall, awkward man with black hair, who looks to be in his late thirties, probably an on-call nurse, with black-framed coke-bottle glasses enters the room, draws my blood and demands a urine sample. my wrist is still bound in the stupid restraint, and I haven't even resisted any of the staff. I'm too tired to raise my head, but I know I have to now. the creep's fingers brush against my toes briefly, and it looks purposeful. I snap at him not to touch my feet. "If you are uncooperative and won't give us a urine sample, we'll have to use the catheter on you." he seems a little too delighted at the idea. it shows in his creepy syrupy voice. idiot. "I can't give you a urine sample if you don't loosen the restraint on my wrist," I respond coldly. he does. I go to the bathroom to piss in a cup, knowing they'll detect marijuana. I've smoked it almost ceaselessly throughout the month. after I'm done in the bathroom, they bind my wrist yet again. I think I hear the ER staff discussing my case and giggling. but I am also sleep-deprived and a lot of things that seem real aren't happening. the atmosphere of the hospital is different than I remember it to be, and I can't really explain why. the same fluorescence streams from the ceiling, waterfalls of stinging, penetrating illumination. I stare at the patterns of the light until it no longer hurts. objects tilt and distort before my dried, dulled eyes that have not had the pleasure of a good night's sleep in so long, so long... a heart monitor beeps, lines go up and down, never straight. unless I stop breathing, but I know I'm far from death. My whole world feels like a desensitizing purgatory. I see this all as a punishment for wrong-doing, but maybe I'm the only one punishing me. the activity and machines and voices are no longer heard as I surrender to a dark thicket of heavy sleep. nothing can alter me any longer. I've secured my fortress. no one but I is in possession of the key. * I awaken to find  myself being transferred by another ambulance to The Institution a third time in one year. it's a mass structure of bricks and chain link towering over a murky lake. I know the wards all too well and distaste fills me. I am too exhausted to object to the court's decision. maybe I can learn instead of running, the tail of a kite evading the grasp of a hand. I would rather be the kite. I would rather be a balloon instead of the string that prevents it from rising when it's wound around someone's fingers. I want to cure myself, but with guidance to find out why I'm such a seething, wrathful girl. why I'm lovesick when I shouldn't be. doors open. elevator swallows me and the EMTs, ascends and spits us out onto ward 1 North 1. the EMTs wheel me through a door. my eyelids fall from the exaggerated brightness. I cannot speak, but I know that things need to be done differently. my goal is not for people to understand what I went through. my goal is to express myself however I please, freely, without guilt and without fear. everyone has to the right to put down whatever they please on paper. risk censorship, for fuck's sake! like permanent ink on a wall or under a bridge, my awakening from a lifeless nothing to a wide-eyed, perceptive person will not collapse and crumble under the strain of adversity. I will feel pain, but not only pain. I've seen enough to know that surrendering to pain is not worth it.

Vivica Salem

[witandwicca]

The Untold Witch by Keith Waldrop, part 2

Part 2: She Dreams, She Dreams, She Dreams

Bradley Home; Ellis, Iowa

The sun beats down on the backs of our necks as I watch my Dad toil away at yet another day trying to build my swingset. A song with a heavy drumbeat plays on the radio and though I’m not really listening, lost in the pages of yet another fantasy novel, I kick my heels into the ground to the beat.

Dad’s not a handyman. Not with wood, not with any sort of instructions or the insistent guidance of the woodworking man from Home Depot. Give him a broken car engine and he’ll have it fixed in a heartbeat but he’s been complaining about splinters for the last few days. But the sheer fact that he wanted to do this for me means the world to me--struggles and all, so here I sit in my neon-coated plastic hell while he suffers--anything to spend time with him.

The dog days of summer.

“Gwennie! C’mere!” Dad calls out to me. I look up to watch the sweat pour down his face. He looks like a bucket’s been dumped on him, but I doubt he smells anything less than like a salty sewer.

I hop up from my bright pink nylon chair, book abandoned on the overgrown grass, and run towards him. “Coming!”

“Where’re your shoes?” he asks, a slight frown on his face. “I don’t want you stepping on a nail.”

“I don’t like them. I wanna feel the grass.”

He pushes up his glasses for the umpteenth time but the sweat just makes them slide back down to the edge of his nose. From the bottom of his ladder, I stand on my tiptoes and push them back up.

“I need you to hold these nails while I hammer them in.”

He doesn’t need me to hold them. Not really. He wants me to because he wants me to be a part of the process--the experience. It’s sweet of him, so I nod and cup my sweaty hands as he drops a heap of nails into my palms. They’re rusted, bent and broken in some places. I give them a wary look. But he’s my Dad, and he’s never wrong about anything.

So I simply hold them and look up to the boiling sun, watching the shadow of my Dad as he leans over the frame of the swingset. He’s building it for me. I don’t want to seem ungrateful.

“Nail, Gwennie?”

I pluck the one that looks the least bent, even though the flat head is broken and I can’t really tell which side is supposed to go into the wood. Hesitantly I offer it to him with a smile.

“Maybe we should go back to the store and get better ones…”

Dad shakes his head and laughs. Over back by my chair, the same song continues to play on repeat.

“These are just fine.” His voice, calm and reassuring, doesn’t calm or reassure me. But he takes the nail from me and, with a single swing of intent, hammers the nail into the wood.

“AGH!”

I collapse as a sudden pain blooms across my wrist, staining my vision with a light brighter than the sun overhead.

“Careful now, Gwen. I don’t want you to lose the nails in the grass with your bare feet.”

But it’s too late. I’ve already dropped the nails, forgotten in the long, uncut summer grass as I clutch my aching hand with a child’s might of painful desperation. Red wells up over my small fingertips, pushing and pulsing forward until it crests and begins to run down my forearm in thick rivulets.

The foreign smell of copious blood fills my nostrils and I try not to gag. Coupled with the rusted iron of the nails, it makes me want to throw up my lunch of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs cut up inside of it.

I hold up my wounded hand, salted tears making it hard for me to open my eyes.

“Dad! Look!” I cry out, waiting for him to rush down from the ladder to help me.

That’s the thing about my Dad. He’s always been reliable in times of crisis. From small knee-scrapes to the Broken Leg of 2009, he’s never failed to be there.

He’s never failed to be there when I need him most--except for now.

But as I look up at him, the sun glaring in my eyes and obscuring his face from me--turning him into some strange, dark creature whose face I can’t see but with humanoid proportions at the very least?--he’s still hammering away at the swingset.

“Dad, I’m bleeding!” I shout with insistence, little teeth gritting in my little skull, and thrust up my hand further to insist he notice my injury.

“We’ve just got a few more nails, Gwen. Just a few more.”

I shake my head in disbelief. He’s like a man possessed. I’ve never wanted a swingset this badly. Not badly enough to ignore me in pain. Badly enough that he won’t come down from the ladder and hug me and kiss it better and bring me inside so we can put some of that stupid burning neosporin on it and wrap it up in seven bandaids because as much as he gets hurt on the job, every silly piece of medican kit in the house has always been for me.

I don’t know what caused his wound. It felt like when he hammered into the wood he was hammering into me. Like it was my wrist he grasped with all of his might and struck the nail into. Just the fist blow--none after--but the pain was more than any child should ever have to bear. And being ignored after? Too much--too much--too much.

“Dad…”

The tears fall hot down my cheeks and I take a step back.

Pain shoots through my foot, a signal that winds its way from my heel all the way up through my leg and somewhere around my heart. I cry out and look down to see all of the stupid, crooked, rusted nails sticking straight up in the grass, just waiting for me to fall onto them.

“Sonuvabitch!” I curse, and hop on one leg as my bloody hand grasps for my bloody foot.

Something’s wrong.

My dad won’t stop hammering away. The sun won’t stop beating down. My skin won’t stop bleeding. And no one’s yelling at me for cussing.

The nails in the grass look up at me like wicked little snakes with rusted little fangs. Come step on us, they say, come give us a taste. I can’t tell if their voice is in my pained imagination or if they’re really whispering to me, but if feels so real that I suddenly want to hurl up my lunch and collapse to the ground. But I know that if I do, no matter where I fall the nails will be waiting to taste and lick up more of my blood and poke more holes in me.

“I don’t want to give you anything! Leave me alone! Leave me ALONE!” I scream, and, Dad and the stupid swingset forgotten, I bolt on my pained limbs towards the house. I’ll be safe in there.

I’ll be safe in the house.

I pass the radio, playing the same drumming song--now with lyrics.

“Give us the blood we are owed. Your blood is ours. You can’t hold what we own. You are our property.”

“That doesn’t even rhyme!” I scream at the radio, and push it into the grass as I yank open the screen door and slam the glass shut behind me.

The house, despite having what should be open windows filled with the midday Iowan sun, with blasting air conditioning and the smell of that stupid air freshener Dad thought would make the place smell less like gasoline from working in the garage if we ever had the guests we never did, ISN’T.

It’s hot, muggy, and pitch black. A strange smell, like something burning, fills my nose, and immediately I’m filled with such a carnal, visceral fear that I’d rather be punctured by a thousand rusty nails outside in the tall green grass.

But when I turn to open the glass door, it doesn’t exist.

Nothing exists, nothing but the blackness.

Even when I close my eyes and mutter under my breath, “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” and tap grass-stained, bloody heels together, the unnamed colors behind my eyelids aren’t as dark as the black before me. Not that I expected the damned Wizard of Oz to do anything. Oz is made of a dream, and this place is the stuff of nightmares.

Eventually my eyes acclimate to the darkness and I see a slight shadow before me--something long and rectangular moving downwards.

Stairs.

“I’ve seen every horror movie!” I shout out to the black, and my voice seems to go on forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever… and ever……. and ever…..

“I’m not going down those stairs!”

So in my fully rational, albeit childish, defiance, I sit on the dark ground in the darkness.

It feels like concrete, but concrete isn’t supposed to be warm. A defining feature of concrete is that it is always cold, and no matter how many layers of socks you wear, or how many blankets you have wrapped up on you, you’re never cold in a room with a concrete floor. I would know--Susan Joybee has a basement with a concrete floor.

But this concrete feels warm. Like someone put a dozen space heaters on it and let them sit for hours and hours. It’s the temperature of my skin--and makes me feel like the floor isn’t even there. But I sit, and hold my still-bleeding wrist and my still-bleeding foot, and wait.

Because by the laws of horror-movies and Goosebumps, there is no way I’m going down those stairs. Not ever, not ever, not ever.

Until not ever becomes passing time that, to my child-self, feels like hours. Maybe days. Sometimes I look behind me just hoping for the glass door to my backyard to come back, but it never does. Eventually I stop looking because the false hope it somehow worse than the little bit of light that hope might give me. I don’t know how long I sit in the darkness, the concrete pulsating its warmth onto me as if to remind me that I’m somehow not alone.

And all the while I know that there’s that staircase leading down into the depths of wherever I am. And the more time that passes, the more interesting it looks. The more I feel that itch in my chest that wants to go explore--the same itch that’s no doubt led to the exploration of things like the New World, or the attempted discovery of the Fountain of Youth. I feel my legs shift like I’m going to stand up... And then I remember Goosebumps, and I sit my little ass back down.

Until the urge to move again comes over me.

Each time I shift a little more, move my legs a little more, inch a little bit closer to that staircase. But I know that’s what it wants and that bugs me more than anything else. Even in this deafening silence and this deafening darkness, which is starting to get… deafeningly comfortable… I don’t feel safe, not one bit.

“I know you want me to go down those stairs,” I speak out loud, the first sound in ages, and my voice croaks when I speak. It feels like I haven’t had water in days, but my wrist and my foot are still bleeding so it can’t have been that long. I wipe a tear from my cheek and feel blood smear across it. I try not to think about it. “But there’s gonna be an axe murderer down there, or something, so I’m not going. I’ve seen ‘Scream,’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ yeah, even the shitty sequels. And I know what happens when the little girl does down the creepy stairs!”

My protests echo, but are met with silence. For some reason that irritates me more than if I were to get a response from the air around me, or the rock below me, or even the steps themselves. It’s just me, so I’m going to talk my own ear off.

“Okay, fine!” I cross my arms petulantly over my chest and try not to hiss at the sting of my wound on my shirt. “What if I do go down there, huh? Are you gonna show me my worst fear? Because I got over the monster under my bed last year. And I ain’t afraid of bugs, or Keith Blair who tried to push me into the swingset pole. So there’s not much down there you can scare me with.”

I raise my eyebrows as I look around, but as I suspected the darkness has nothing to say.

“So the worst thing you can do is try to kill me. But I’m a scrapper, everyone on the playground says so. I’ll put up a fight don’t you dare think I won’t. Lil bitch…”

I mutter that last part under my breath. Maybe it’s because I’ve been sitting here on my own for who knows how long, but irritation is starting to creep in. I want to wrap up my injuries. I want to get something to drink. But most of all I want to get back to my Dad and figure out what’s the matter with him because whatever is going on… none of this is normal.

He’s not here for me, and he promised to always be here for me.

“Maybe I’ll go down there just to show you who you’re messing with! Because you pissed off the wrong girl, buddy!”

And, I think without saying it aloud, all stories must progress at some point. No one in Goosebumps simply ended the book by sitting still on the couch or ignoring the sounds coming from the basement. It’s the stupid move, but someone has to do it.

With a deep inhale I finally stand, feeling the pinpricks of sleepy-limbs travel all down my legs, and slick blood try to slip me underneath my injured heel. But I steel myself, biting my lower lip, and clutch my little fists at my side.

“You want a fight? Fine! I’ll give you a fight. I’ll go down there and claw out your eyeballs and feed them to my neighbors dogs! And when I’m done, ohhhh you’re one sorry sonuvabitch, I’ve been reading murder mysteries all my life you dumb fuck. If you don’t think I know how to hide a body and that my Dad won’t help me, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Finally, finally, I take a step forward, and the first step of the stairs creaks.

The wood is old, old like the smell of mothballs is just a part of it. And with every step I take downward my blood becomes a part of that smell. As dust kicks up it tickles my nose, but I keep in the need to sneeze like my life depends on it.

Maybe it does.

I feel a hand take hold of mine. A familiar hand, a hand that should’ve been there this whole time and since it hasn’t I’m actually kind of mad at it. I had to learn to do this all on my own and now it decides to be here? No, no he can go away.

“Go away, Dad.” I say aloud, but the hand doesn’t let go.

“Her pulse is responding to your touch, Mister Bradley. She knows you’re here.”

“Oh thank God. Gwen? Gwennie? Can you hear me? It’s Dad. I’m here, kiddo.”

My brow ticks in agitation and I try to pull my hand away, but he holds on tighter even as I continue to descend the stairs.

“I said go away! I can handle this on my own!” I turn to where he should be, but there’s only the stair rail and more darkness. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. “You weren’t here so I learned to do it on my own now go away!”

“We haven’t seen this much reactivity in months. This is promising.”

“R-Really?”

“No! STOP!”

On instinct I take off down the stairs. My heel screeches in pain--or maybe that’s me I can’t even tell anymore--but I try to run, run, run as fast as I can. But Dad’s hand feels tighter than before. Stronger. Solid.

“I want to fight whatever’s down there!”

“Doctor Lee! Someone get Doctor Lee--She’s waking up! Sir--Mister Bradley, we need you to leave the room, please, now.”

I feel Dad’s hand release from mine and begin to run faster, feeling free from his restriction, free to pursue my enemy.

“What, wait, no! No I’m not gonna leave her!”

“Mister Bradley, I promise you can see her later--DOCTOR LEE!”

“Finefine--who are you? So I can find you?!”

I keep running, ignoring the voices in my head, ignoring how the darkness looks less dark than it did before. How the rickety wooden stairs seem less rickety. I’m going to face whatever sick axe murderer put me in that darkness and I’m going to face him now because no one is going to stop me!

“Come out of hiding so I can kill you!” Screaming until my throat is hoarse, until my lips are chapped, tripping over every other unrefined wooden step as fast as my little legs will carry me, despite all of the cold hands I suddenly feel grasping onto me, trying to pull me out of the darkness.

“NO, LEAVE ME ALONE!”

“She’s waking up! Gwen, can you hear me Gwen?”

“Mister Bradley you need to leave--”

“Who are you so I can find you?!”

“My name is Nurse Lamotte, now please leave.”

“Gwen, can you hear me? My name is Doctor Lee--”

It’s with unceremonial grace that I trip and fall the final dozen steps at the base of the stairs. The concrete is just as hot as it was at the top, but here the darkness is somehow lighter--or I can somehow see better. My palms and knees sting with the collision of my fall but I scramble up against the pain, wiping dripping blood on my clothes as I look around me, fists ready, teeth gnashed and bared.

“Come on!” Comes my voice, an unwavering child’s cry as I whip my head this way and that, seeking my captor and foe. This is My Hour, My Moment. I struggle against the invisible hands that try to yank me back towards the top of the steps. “Come at me! Fight me already!”

But nothing comes to fight.

Instead, all of the voices in my head stop in one blissful moment of silence. No voices, no hands, no urgency. There’s no burning on my palms and knees, no blood on my heel and wrist. No pounding headache that I hadn’t even noticed was there.

Instead of a young child--unafraid, I stand there as a grown woman, shaking in my very bones.

Fear is something I have lived with for the last year. I’ve been afraid of the woman who knew my past, my present, and my future just with a touch. I’ve been afraid of the tumor growing in my head and what it would eventually take from me and the people I loved. And I’ve been afraid of myself--what I’ve been doing to myself as a result of… everything.

I let out a shaky exhale, looking down to see trembling fingertips outlined in the darkness. Before I can do anything, a pair of hands, soft and kind, reaches out to take my hands in their own. The warmth and gentleness of them breaks every bone in my body. I’ve never seen or touched these hands in person, yet somehow I know whose they are without being able to see the face that they belong to, obscured by the shadow that taunted me up above.

My voice comes out of a grown woman’s lips still so child-like and afraid.

“Mom?”

My eyes open to a flashlight shining in my pupils, and the smiling face of a man I don’t know.

“She’s with us, she’s with us…” He repeats, and all around me men and women move, adjusting hospital bags and computer monitors that beep with my vitals.

“Do you know who you are?” the man asks, and I nod.

“Gwen… Gwen--dolyn Rowe.”

The man I presume is the doctor nods firmly, and beside him a portly woman takes down notes on a clipboard.

“What’s the last thing you remember, Miss Rowe?” the doctor asks again, and I sigh, closing my eyes.

I felt my mom, I want to say, but I don’t.

“I was in a bar. I got… into a fight. He pushed me. I hit my… my head…?”

“That’s right. You’re lucky, Miss Rowe. Very lucky.”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

The nurse beside him clears her throat, looking at me with strange eyes as she speaks.

“Why don’t we let Miss Rowe get some rest, Doctor Lee,” she says lowly, “let her recuperate before her Father comes in.”

I try to sit up, but someone to my left I can’t see pushes me back down. “My Dad’s here?”

The nurse smiles and nods.

“Yes, flew in today. He’s grabbing a coffee now, we’ll let him know when you can have visitors.”

For a moment, the room is silent as the nurse and I look one another in the eye. Finally I give her a curt nod.

“Thanks, Nurse Lamotte.” I mumble.

Lamotte raises one perfectly-drawn brow, and a smirk curls on her lips.

“No trouble, Gwen, no trouble at all.”