treatswords

I wasn’t sure how I got there.

The large house with endless floors, rooms filled with strangers.

There was a man we were all afraid of.

“Just remain quiet and he will leave you alone.”

I hadn’t seen him yet but tiptoeing to what appeared to be a living room covered in green carpet from my childhood, sagging old brown chair that smelled of black poodle fur, he was sitting there.

Something over his head, white cloth?

I watched the round shape shift, his head turning to look behind him, hearing my bare feet slipping on the carpet.

I quickly left the room, climbing rows of stairs to my bedroom.

I shared it with three other people.

A blonde woman named Amy, her hair in a tight curly blonde ponytail.

Kristin, the short brunette with large almond eyes. They seemed to listen deeply whenever anyone spoke.

“Tell me more,” she’d say, hand under her chin, leaning in closer.

And Albert, the singer. He’d stand in front of the mirror and sing, “Sweet Caroline, Baaabaaabaaa,” into the late afternoon. Then he’d disappear, seat still warm to meet with him..

The man who owned this large house with hidden closets, rooms with lights that hung on strings, whispers slipping beneath bottoms of doors when I walked by.

“Why don’t you leave?” I asked Kristin.

She was always crying at night about missing her sister. Pillowcase damp, hair in black knots form tossing and turning until the sky turned pink.

“We can leave anytime. That’s what I’ve heard.”

I told her when she looked at me with her large brown eyes.

“Then why haven’t you left?”

She said before digging herself beneath her blankets, a worm slipping into a blue hole.

She was right.

Why hadn’t I left?

I tried to recall why I’d agreed to come here in the first place.

“Everything is free, room and board, necessities.”

He supplied everything for us, down to our toothpaste.

Albert held the bottle to the light.

“There isn’t even fluoride in this, does he want us to all get cavities, so we have to rely on him for our dental work too!?”

We’d heard someone move behind the door, our eyes locking in on one-another’s.

After that we didn’t get toothpaste delivered to us for two months.

We used our toothbrushes and warm water, trying to peel away the fuzz from our teeth.

I would lie in my bed, scraping them with my nail, imagining sticky, yellow goo growing.

One day Albert was gone for two days.

When he came back, he was tired, hair unkempt. He collapsed on his bed. He smelled of hidden places, ones that collected dust.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Soon I will be a star. He finally heard me sing. He loved my voice. He knows people. Soon, I will be out of this place.”

Inching slowly to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I felt a pair of eyes on me. I slowed my pace down to a crawl, tee shirt hanging down to my knees.

Was he watching me?

Scouting to find what talents lie within me.

I didn’t want to disappoint.

Maybe he kept only the talented here.

I thought about writing him a note.

Explaining that I was a talented writer.

“I write mostly fiction.”

I scribbled.

I found Amy coming up the large green stairs one night.

“Where can I find him?” I asked, letter in hand.

She laughed, walking past me.

“Why would you call attention to yourself? You’re the only one he leaves alone.”

I watched her sneak out one night. Her red sneakers slipping from the windowsill.

I peered down at her; her small frame collected in the large bushes like a cobweb.

I waited to make sure she didn’t crush her skull. Soon, she pulled branches from her hair and walked down the long dirt road.

No one came to ask me where she went. Albert and Kristin never spoke of it.

Her bed remained tidily made, sheets tucked tightly, pillows fluffed.

A few weeks later, I caught a glimpse of her near the kitchen. My finger dipped in a jar of peanut butter, she walked by, someone behind her. She was soaked, hair a bright yellow mop, shoes squeaking, tiny puddles trailing behind her, mascara down her cheeks. She glanced over at me, her eyes frantic, pleading.

Someone shouted behind her, “Move.”

I crept by the broom closet, knelt behind the cracked door.

A tall man walked by briskly. A blue collared shirt, short blonde hair. It stood up like porcupine quills.

His eyes moved around the kitchen as they passed, his eyes filled with red strings, black pupils wide.

He locked eyes with me.

Pausing for a second, before continuing forward.

I didn’t leave my room for a few days after that. Afraid he’d seen me.

Amy didn’t come back.

A short man with a large beard came to collect her things. Gathering them into a garbage bag, stripping her bedding.

He took her smell with him.

A spring breeze, deep brown soil, the smell of life returning.

Kristin was in the room when he left.

We looked at one another, I felt the question form on my lips.

She put her finger to hers.

Shhhhh. Her eyes said.

He called her one day, a looming figure outside the door.

Brown leather shoes poking out from the ajar door frame.

Two loud knocks.

Knock.

Knock.

It startled me from my sleep.

Kristin rose, changing into a plum-colored dress in the dark. Combing her hair, spraying perfume on her collar bone.

Sandalwood and amber drifting away with her.

She did come back in the early morning.

I barely slept, my eyes never leaving her bedside.

Sunlight leaking in through the blinds, birds chirping loudly as she climbed back into bed.

She slept in the plum dress, a small raisin buried beneath blankets until evening.

One night when she was with him, I spotted a Polaroid on her nightstand.

It was a picture of her, in the bruised colored dress, sitting on a bed.

A floral yellow comforter beneath her, a fake smile pressed like an iron against her lips.

Her feet here bare, tucked beneath her thighs.

The room was dark.

I hadn’t seen it before.

The comforter reminded me of the one my grandma had folded in her attic, surrounded by porcelain dolls.

Her slinking off in the night to meet him became a weekly routine.

Slipping her dress on, her tiny feet paddling against the hard wood floor of our room.

He usually wouldn’t say a word, but one night when she cracked the door, large shadow towering over her, he asked, “You’re sure she’s asleep?”

She nodded.

The large figure took large steps towards me.

Daddy longlegs.

I pressed my eyes closed tighter, trying to relax my breathing.

Large hands scooped me up, swaddled baby.

I desperately wished I could capture him beneath my foot.

Leaving his brown spindly legs and green guts to dry on the floor by morning.