House

The facade presented itself plainly and elegantly before me, though the structure, in truth, seemed to face the ocean on the other side. There was a clean and yet still appropriately aged look to it, evident in the slight peeling of the white paint and the way the porch may have creaked a little when I made my way cautiously to the door. From the path, I hadn’t noticed its color as much, but here it stood before me, the gate’s face, a bright and challenging sort of red. It was an annoyingly simple design for a front door, but only so in that it still held its own presumptuous self up in a surprising display of boasting.

My eyes traced the shifting wood down to a lustrous and intricate gold-colored brass orb, peeling as well, fading out in the most lovely way. I reached out and the knob began to turn, somehow warm to the touch as if, perhaps, it hadn’t been so long since my last visit. I don’t remember closing it behind me, the door I mean, but I suppose it must have been closed at some point, securely, though there were no locks.

I felt safe there. And in this new hallway that wrapped itself warmly around me, I felt so welcome. I was home, sort of.

There was a large map that followed me as I walked toward the next room. It was not a map of any place in particular, but it was old and filled with all the places I had ever been or wished I had been. On second thought, I don’t think the map was of any real place at all.

As I walked into the living room, I noticed some photos on the wall. They were old pictures of smiling people without faces.

There was a wide window there that let in the warm sun and let it dance on the carpet where I sat, barefoot, humming a tuneless melody to myself for a while.

There was an emptiness to the bedroom as well as the fridge in the unused kitchen, but when I made it to the last room, she sat with the strangest look on her pretty face and astoundingly good posture. She was looking out the back window at the sea. There was a longing in her eyes and a nervousness to the way she clutched the arms of the unmoving rocking chair. She looked elegant, stoic, and picturesque, as if she belonged in this house more than I did. She probably does, I thought.

Then she looked up and saw me looking at her from the doorway. There was a moment of perfect shattering silence. For the first time I noticed that there was no longer any sunlight, that the light in the room had only been the moon reflecting from the window off of her pale face. A cloud passed across the moon in that forever moment when her eyes met mine and all went dark. I couldn’t see a thing, yet, as always, she saw right through me, and I could feel it like a cold breeze on a summer’s day, chilling even sun-warmed skin.

In the darkness, I took a breath and lightning flashed. In that half-second, she was standing right in front of me, looking up hauntingly, longingly. Then, with the crack of thunder and the returning darkness, she was gone. I walked over to the window, taking note of the sea’s waves rising above the cliff in their tempestuous clashing. I shut the window, but I did not stop the moving of the rocking chair. Evidence, I thought.

Everything in that house was old then. Everything was cold and fading. In the shifting light my hands before me were ghostly and translucent. I too, was fading.

I heard voices coming from the kitchen and left the room with a permanence to my steps. The ceiling light was on, and there was a crowd of people standing below in the passageway blocking my path and my sight. Their voices blurred into hushed conversation and whispers with words loud enough to hear yet too secretive and implicating to understand.

Every eye glanced and glared as I traced a shaky path toward the group. They cleared away, avoiding even the slightest touch as I walked through into the kitchen, which now seemed much smaller than before.

By the counter she stood, head down, sea-salt storm air gliding through the curtains behind her and dancing with her hair as it fell across her face. The boisterous whispering behind me hushed itself. She looked up just a little.

My breath caught. How I hadn’t noticed it before, I did not know. She was, somehow similar in appearance to almost every attractive girl I had ever met, yet so much more so and completely, completely different. Utterly unlike any other girl I had ever known, she was more real than anything in the house, than the house, than anything. My heart was tied inexplicably to hers, and there came over its beating the strangest and wildest enchantment. She was the most astonishingly beautiful girl I had ever seen, and she was crying her eyes out. In between choking gasps, her soft voice ripped holes through my heart.

“How could you?” she pleaded with a voice like crimson glass, “Why did you let me believe that you loved me?”

I didn’t know what to say or what was happening, but she continued.

“You led me on and then just let me down. In big and small ways you’ve broken my heart over and over a thousand times, taking it from me when it wasn’t yours to have, stealing the innocence of my heart and soul with your jokes and games and teasing and compliments and...and promises. You’ve shattered me, made me an object to use or a prize to win. Then, then you get bored with me when something better or prettier comes along, and since you never had any plans of committing to a person’s trust, you run after the new prize. ‘Cause you can’t trust at all, can you? You were too scared.” She gasped, “We were both scared, okay? But this...why...just why?”

I had no idea what to say. I wanted to say something, to do something, to apologize, to hold her and wipe away her tears, to do...something, anything. I didn’t. I couldn’t. No, I wouldn’t. I was stuck in place, immobile in my thoughts. I heard the group behind me renew their whispering, hateful gossip burning up the back of my neck. I remember I had recognized them from the pictures in the living room, old friends, their faces now filled in, though no longer smiling.

She wiped her eyes and took a sip of water from a glass on the counter. When she removed her lips from the glass, there was blood on the rim. I took a step toward her, but a hand grabbed my shoulder and stopped me. She walked out the back door, quiet as a phantom. Agony met me as my jailers held me back. I watched her, pixelated through the screen door. She walked like a shadow, tangled up in the curtains of rain. Far off and yet only a few footsteps away she was, and ever retreating.

I could see the waves crashing across the cliff-face, the breakers rising higher than her head as she approached the edge. I shoved off the hand on my shoulder and ran to the door, flinging it open and rushing after her, my hand outstretched in desperation. My foot slipped in the mud, and I crashed landed at full speed, head on into the ground. Quickly, I pushed myself up, ran my arm across my mud-covered face and cried out to her. “HEY!” My voice was weak, broken, and alien.

She didn’t even turn around. She just kept walking, and then suddenly dropped right off the edge of the cliff. Behind me I could almost feel the flames as, even in the pouring rain, that bloody house of my burned swiftly to the ground, leaving me to choke on mud and ashes.