Estimated reading time — 27 minutes

The house we lived in was so big. Big enough for about six people, and we only had three. It was our dream home, the walls were made of happiness, and the roof was built from the love I felt for both of my girls. Two stories tall with a pointedly crooked roof like the tip of a witch’s hat.

Our baby would’ve loved it, does, love it. I think of her smile as she sits and watches the birds sit over her bedroom window.

My wife didn’t say a word when seeing it for the first time, only a tight hug in response. Her face dripped onto my shoulder as she teared up, I tried not to look but she could make crying the most beautiful thing in the world.

Being without them made the world so hard, meaningless. That was why I could stay home with them forever, in our home. To love the world meant I had to make them my world.

“Hey Billie, slow down in the house, will ya?” I could hear my wife call from the kitchen as footsteps rumbled throughout the upstairs. Coming up behind her, I hugged her around the waist, pulling her backside into me. She laughed, getting water down her leg.

From upstairs, the quick banging of running slowed and continued toward the stairs as our daughter came into view. She was wearing her school bag, ready for her day. I turned to look at her, a growing fire in my chest.

“Look at the little scholar, all ready for school?” Olivia said, a smile matching my own on her face.

I quickly ran over to her, picking her up as she giggled. “You gonna let me go with you?”

She shook her head.

“What? Why not? I’ll make you look so cool!” I began to pick my nose. “I can sit next to you and everything!”

“No!” She laughed.

I put her down as my wife told her to get ready for lunch. School would not start for some time, but she decided to get used to her backpack like it was a new bike. I was not ready to see her go away, alone for the first time. Even when she ran off into the connecting room the thought of putting her down wasn’t a good one.

Olivia had put her hand on my shoulder, filling me with the missing contents of my stomach. I turned around, planting a kiss on her lips as her glasses fogged, blocking her eyes. When I pulled away, they appeared, filling my vision with bright blue. “She’s such a sweetie, isn’t she?” she said.

I stared at her, the words reminding me of so much.

Beep

“Oh, it’s that damn noise again,” She said looking up at the ceiling, “Where’s it coming from?”

All I could do was shake my head.

“Hey, will you go make sure Billie is getting ready please?” She asked.

“Yeah, think I can convince her that her classmates’ll think my burps are cool?”

When I turned, I felt a slap on my butt as I left. Everything felt so perfect, the shadow looming over the house so deep within the clouds it was almost not there. This had been my place, our place. And I didn’t want it to end.

Billie’s room was so vibrant, filled with toys and her latest ninja turtle fixation surrounding my senses as I entered. You’d think she lived with her grandparents the way we spoiled her. Yet, if she didn’t get a new toy, she never threw a tantrum.

I was proud.

She was sitting in front of her coloring books, shading in Leonardo’s blue mask with a crayon. “Hey Billie, your mom’s gonna kill us if you don’t get ready soon.”

She didn’t look up, only continued coloring.

I called her name again, stretching it out long.

Billie finally turned to me, something catching my eye as I saw her face. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Her voice squeaked out as if nothing was wrong.

I bent down to her, my eyes never left that thing growing out of her forehead. The skin around it looked undisturbed but for the single white flower blooming from somewhere within. “Hey Billie?”

“Mhm?”

“You feel that?”

“Feel what daddy?”

I had already reached out to it, gently pulling the six leafed star from her head. It came off, brittle where it connected to her. I inspected it closely, a single lily between my fingers.

“Daddy?” came the little voice, “My head hurts.”

This sent my attention back to my little girl, her sweet face undisturbed but for the emotion stricken across it. She looked so tired.

I closed my eyes, my head filling with concentration. “Come on, please, a little longer.” I said to myself. “Give me a little longer damnit.”

Her small body went limp on the other side of my eyelids. Her cry split my head and woke me up with something I could not control.

The ceiling was not the same anymore. Dark, moldy in my eyes. The smell of the room I slept in was putrid compared to that of my wife’s cooking. I’m not sure how long I stared at nothing, the blurriness not going away in weeks. Or however long it had been.

I wiped my stinging eyes with a heavy hand before turning over, seeing the sorry state of my apartment. A smiling face had greeted me, the sunny park its backdrop. I reached forward and placed the picture frame flat, out of view.

I exhaled the stale air out of my lungs and rolled onto my back. The quiet room I slept in was louder than the words that could break it.

My hand hovered over my stomach before I held it close, pushing the ache inside from all the missing food.

My dreams, they’re getting stronger. Every touch, smell, the presence I could feel from being beside my family once again was overwhelming. It was just enough to not be enough when I was awake. And it made me crave more, to lose the person on this side of my life. To see my world again was just a short sleep away.

So, I closed my eyes once again. Repeating the words in my head as I drifted away. To create a world I never got a chance to have.

It was getting easier to fall asleep lately, easier to form my life in my dream. To bring them back made it harder to return to that place, that nightmare away from home. Before everything gets solid, I don’t remember much. Just the walls coming into view like I’m flying out of a thick cloud only to reveal my surroundings. And soon, I’m standing in our living room, Olivia’s back turned from mine as she places a grey pillow on the couch.

As I watch her lay her head on it, it strikes me how alive she feels. When I press my head against her breast, I can feel her heartbeat against my ear. When I talk to her, her responses drive my heart to do the same.

And when she sees Billie come into the room, her skin sprouting those white flowers across her skin… she screams just like she used to.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my head lately, desperately trying to remedy the sickness plaguing Billie. Forcing my dream to change to no avail, she sits there as I pluck the flowers from her never-ending skin. Underneath the sprouts, her skin seems softer, shinier than usual. She doesn’t seem to mind losing them, even when she sits there, watching her show on the television.

Olivia is by my side, taking the flowers as I remove them and placing them in a large glass jar. When I sit up, I realize the jar is full, Billie looking as if I hadn’t spent the last hour taking them off.

When I look at my wife, I see that concerned look on her face. I had seen it before, just not in this house.

“What’s happening to her Asher?” Olivia asked.

I raised a flower at this, spinning the lily between my fingers. When I looked down, Billie was looking at me. I squeezed the stem on reaction. She wasn’t making any kind of face, only looking at me, a blank expression etched behind the pettals covering her skin.

She simply turned and continued watching her show.

I looked over at my wife who shook the jar in front of her face. It seemed like Billie had more of those things on her, even after plucking those off. Nothing I did was making any difference, again.

My palm felt tight suddenly. I had crushed the lily in my hand, the crumpled and torn remains hiding in my hand. That day was coming back again, the anger, so much of it filling me up like the jar in my wife’s hands. It made my teeth sore from the force I bit upon them.

It suddenly fell away at a single touch on my shoulder. Olivia’s hand warming my whole body as I stared into her sapphire blue eyes. It always astounded me how much a look from this gorgeous woman could fix seemingly anything. No matter the circumstance, it would convey exactly what I needed to see.

I put my hand on her’s, she smiled at me, and I could not help but give one back.

Olivia had placed the jar of white lilies atop the fireplace as if to present them proudly. She told Billie that only angels sprouted such beautiful flowers and that seemed to bring her out of whatever darkness she fell into. And soon, Billie was back to her normal self. Free of those things across her body and eager to play multiple games at once again.

I’m not sure where the flowers went, as I did not see them fall off. They only ceased to be. Yet, every now and then, I catch her watching me. As she did before, no anger or distain in her cute face. As if she were looking into a wall.

When I dream, we never leave that house. The outside does not exist when you don’t need to go anywhere, when you’re happy where you are, you stay where you are.

In our house, when you look outside you don’t see much. Just trees, and vast open land until it stops over the hills in the distance. I’m sure I could envision something there, like a nice park, but I doubt I could focus that hard. If I were to do that, usually something inside the house might change or distort. I can’t have that.

None of that extra stuff mattered compared to my family’s sleeping faces, Billie held tight in my wife’s protective arms as we lied in our bed. Billie had not grown anymore flowers that day. And the night we found ourselves in, felt like it would follow the same pattern when listening to her deep breathing.

In my dreams, I never could fall asleep. Only stare up at the ceiling with my thoughts until the time would come when I got to wake the girls. The moon would pass in the sky until it hung just outside my window, igniting the room in a pale white glow. I’m sure most wouldn’t want to experience this part, opting for a better moment of waking laughter and experiences. But to me, this part mattered just as much. The moments in between.

Beep

My eyes did not move from the spot in the roof as I heard the noise. Ignore it and it’ll go away, just like always, I told myself.

Beep

I closed my eyes, focusing on the silence that followed. The abrupt stillness of the night air created by the absence of gentle breathing to my right.

Billie had been watching me, her little eyes open to the sight of her worried father. I smiled at her, her cute little face smiling back at me. Curing me from the pain knocking at my memory. The bad times had no place here.

The smile fell then. Replaced by her round eyes, open as far as they could. Her little mouth had fallen from its smile and landed in a neutral position. Her green eyes, now pale like the moon hanging outside. Or as white as the flowers that grew from them.

My muscles tensed up, my face frozen. Olivia, by my side, did not stir a bit as our daughter watched me through those things in her eyes.

I closed my own, shutting away the scene in front of me. All there was to do was to make it go away, just try and make it go away.

In the darkness of my closed eyes, I heard a squeak in the bed, a shift of weight in the mattress, then hot air on my face. As much as I concentrated, it would not go away, silent breath, needing at my pores.

I was quickly nothing but a bag of heaving air, my dream, a close memory. Frantically, I looked about the room, eager not to find the little girl’s distorted face in it. It had been empty, but for the flower on my nightstand.

2

I’d been staring at that flower on my nightstand for some time now. After every blink, a new worry that it would move was heavy in my tired eyes. But it did not, only its silent indication spoke to me.

My hand found my forehead as I rubbed at it, desperate to wipe away the stone under my skin. It soon moved to my stomach as it growled and pinched at me, telling me it needed food. Yet as I got up, I found myself seeing my two girls, the way they sounded the way they smelled. How happy they had been when all I did was walk through a door.

Hunger wasn’t the only pain in my belly. It wasn’t the pain I cared about.

I shut my eyes, spending the next hour for a return to that world I wanted so desperately to be real. A dream in a dream.

When I finally drifted off, it was different. There was no cloud to reveal it’s insides. Only a bleak house, with no one inside.

Still, I was fully aware I was in a dream. It was our home, but a side of it I had not seen until then. Where would usually be curtains full of sunlight drizzling into the kitchen I stood in, was now dark as the second before drifting off to sleep. “Olivia?” I called out to it, “Billie?”

Nothing came in reply, just the shadow creeping across my senses, laughing at me, taunting me where I stood. The ringing in my ears persisted in its attempt to fill the void until it was broken. Through the entryway in front of me, into the living room, something had moved. A slow, steady squeaking, following behind it as small sounding as a rat in a wall.

A single chair had moved across the floor, pulled by an invisible force somewhere in that room. It was being nudged slowly, inches at a time turning to feet until it reached the middle of the entryway.

As soon as I could realize the large wheel under the back rest, the lights flipped on. Something launching at my face where the chair once was. Something contorted, ugly, and small. I knew it had been Billy by the flowers covering her body. Patches had been scattered throughout, gone to the plague that had befallen her for a glimpse to the little girl beneath.

All my addled mind could do was force myself to the left, narrowly avoiding her attack. I landed on the floor, desperately trying to get back to my feet before the scuffle of little limbs could reach me again. When I did, I could see she had stopped, crouched on legs that seemed too many. The flowers on her body beginning to wilt and fall off one by one, then all at once.

A deep rumble sounded from where she loomed, radiating from somewhere in her chest. Her face now visible, I could see how much it had changed. Gone was a little girl I grew to love so fast. Now was a monster, its face drooping as if made of wet clay. As pale as what lay around her feet.

For a second, the idea of running to embrace her crossed my mind. The nightmare in front of me still the shape of Billie as she started towards me.

I ran in the opposite direction, unsure as to where I was going. The hurried, heavy foot falls coming behind me drove me up the stairs. All the while my head convincing its thoughts to change, morph this dream into what it once was, how it used to make me feel. Not this fear being strung along the many veins under my skin.

I cursed as I slammed the door to my bedroom, the bang that vibrated the entire wall making me realize how close she was.

As I stood, pressing myself against the entrance, a crack split from somewhere on the other side. It was a deep, sharp sound, like a homerun with a baseball bat made from a femur.

My breath had caught at this, making me recoil back the second time it happened. The third break drew me back a few feet away, as a sharp hiss that sounded like it came from multiple little spots from the thing behind the door. Motion brought my eyes down to the short crack below the door where hundreds, thousands of string like dark veins wiggled towards me.

The shock had tripped me, my back hitting the floor as those reaching things moved closer and closer. Before I knew it, they were at my legs, puncturing my skin, one by one like pins and needles hooked throughout my muscle. Any attempt to flee, to pull away was met with a tight drag closer to the door and a guttural scream from my throat.

I yelled, trying my best to wake myself from this rouge nightmare. It felt like my skin was being pulled off the bone as more of those thin veins punctured my leg.

Trying to reach forward and wrench them away only caused some of them to latch onto my hands, my fingers, my wrists. Drawing blood up my arms and across the hardwood floor.

My tear-stained eyes managed to look up, the door completely gone, the invading blood vessels no longer there.

“Asher?”

Olivia had been there, a terrible look on her face. She had been only in her nightgown, a light silhouetted between her legs from a lamp behind her.

“I miss you Asher, help me-“

She was cut off by the form jutting out from the right. My eye’s bulged at the sight of it, launching itself at her, disappearing somewhere on the other side.

The sounds of ripping, shredding so loud it drove me back further into the room. Olivia’s scream followed each sound of her flesh being torn apart. Stumbling, my legs hardly working as they unconsciously moved towards the single window in the room. Knocking over some piece of furniture with a loud crash that my frightened mind refused to acknowledge, I ripped the thin curtain to the floor.

Leaning my elbows on the windowsill, the only thing keeping me upright, I prepared to jump out. My body stopping as I really looked at what was before me. The trees were gone; there was nowhere to grow from. Only another room, unfathomably large, the kind of light that only the absence of a sun could bring.

Then, the only thing that could be more horrifying than ears filled with screams of agony, was silence. The muscle under my skin continued to shiver with an intensity I have never felt in my life. Before I could comprehend what my house had sat in, the silence drove my attention behind me.

A long, excruciating moment passed where nothing happened, broken by what hit the floor in front of me. My wife’s body had been covered in crimson; the places missing flesh had been gushing more into the quickly formed pool around her. Her eye open, staring right into my own.

Her head split open vertically with the same gut-wrenching crunch from before, the hollow insides now into view. More of those wiggling veins erupted from where her brain should be. They scattered from her, shooting hundreds of thin tethers at me as they latched into my skin.

The invasion of my body sent a terrible yell through the room; it mingled with the hissing of the things still spilling from her head. I spun onto my stomach, trying with everything not to be pulled in. Which happened to be nothing more than scratches into the floor with what remained of my fingernails. The more force in which I pulled, the more the muscles in my legs began to rip, separating one strand at a time until the hissing from the monster crescendoed its peak.

I was being consumed into the hole where my wife’s thoughts used to lay. God only knows what form I took in them. What would she think of me now, would she think the same as I think of myself?

Unable to fight anymore, I had been pulled in just above my waist, my legs now gone to the cavern below me, each inch I moved was accompanied by more of those veins. All the pain left me as Olivia’s head clamped down, snapping what was probably my spine.

The next thing I knew, I was gasping for air.

I was covered in sweat, laying in my bed. The visceral pain in my legs making me rip the blanket from them. What I thought would be a sea of blood turned out to be the land of pale, dry skin. Not a drop of crimson staining my sheets.

I’m not sure how long I had stared at them, the stinging sensation slowly wearing off until they inevitably did not feel real anymore.

My chest still heaving, I took one swipe with my arm. The resulting crash singing its broken song throughout the room. I cursed, a vicious string of anger leaving me as I looked at the broken picture frame on the floor.

I stared at the grinning, happy mouth as pieces of glass shrouded the top of her face, the rest of my body bubbling up the hopeless feelings I’ve harbored for so long. Few people know what it feels like to need something so dear to you, only to be blocked by a barrier indescribably impenetrable that no matter how you twisted the circumstances it would never fall. No compromises, nothing but the dust on the picture frames to lure you into a web that doesn’t fix the pain.

I just feel so lost, so angry.

And I can’t stand it.

I haven’t been sleeping very well since then. I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen the same numbers on the clock on my desk, but I get scared whenever they get close to midnight. I don’t eat much either, more than I did when I was living in my dreams, however. Food doesn’t really have any taste to it, like I’m eating wet lawn trimmings.

When I stepped outside, it hit me just how long it had been since I’ve stepped into the sun. The sky, endless with no horizon the higher you look seems almost scary in my bleary eyes.

Every time I go to the grocery store I pretend like I’m okay for the strangers I’ll probably never cross again. A woman with glasses and curly black hair almost bumped into me on my last visit. I apologized, walking away not knowing if she was real or all in my head. Now I can’t bring myself to go back to that store on the off chance I see another stranger to give me hope I know is not there.

Being awake, aware of the sights before me wasn’t what I had been really missing. It’s what was not there, the empty spaces. The empty everything.

I’m so tired. My baggy eyes feel heavy whenever I don’t blink and the dry air doesn’t have its chance to penetrate them.

And sometimes, I find myself sitting in my car, an empty plot of land as my scenery. Trees surround the spot where a house should be, where a turn of a page would’ve taken you through the eyes of a storybook fairytale.

The only thing alive was the rain sprinkling the earth around me as I opened the tiny wooden box in my hand. Inside was its metal contents, divots wrapping around the cylinder and the fingers reaching to touch them. I cranked the side just enough to play a few notes, then shut the box to read the inscription on the lid.

I closed my eyes, leaning my head on the seat behind me. Her smell had all but gone from the car now, nothing but a neutral, familiar scent I’ve remembered as my own. Some of her stuff was even still in there, collecting dust like everything else. I opened my eyes to see something floating through the rain, landing just on my windshield. It took a second for my eyes to focus on it.

It had been nothing but a single white feather.

My seat groaned as I moved closer to it, then up to the sky. Nothing but clouds covering the sun. I leaned back, cranking the engine to life and letting the a/c hit my face.

But just as I put it in drive, I looked up, my foot frozen on the break. No longer was the area empty and deserted, what now sat surrounded by trees with a house. Its roof curved like a witch’s hat; the roof of the house we never got a chance to build.

I left my car, my eyes never leaving the building in front of me until it was cut off at my car’s door. Even before my foot, now sticking out to the gravel outside had driven me out, I could see that the house was gone.

All I could do is rub my tired eyes, hoping beyond rationality that it would come back when I looked once more.

But there was nothing but a dream.

3

I am so sick of this feeling in my gut, constantly reminding me of why it feels that way. This weakness like I do not have all of my blood, like I teeter on needing to puke and not needing to puke. I can’t even watch my life go by in the television in front of me where concentration keep wavering.

I keep seeing things. Things I’m not sure if they’re really there or a trick of the sleep deprivation I have placed upon myself. As soon as I find that sweet spot in comfort where weakness temporarily leaves me, I notice something at the corner of my eye. A form of something I do not recognize.

It became clear that I was seeing my wife, as the warmth I felt in the smell in the air when something hugged me from behind.

When it happened, I was on the phone with my mother who had been trying to convince me to leave my house. It was her voice on the other end, asking me if I was still there that had brought me out of my stupor. The engulfing relaxation I felt as those invisible arms wrapped around me.

I don’t cry much, even when she passed, my way of dealing with it was to shut myself away.

But when I turned around and realized I could not kiss my wife. I hung up the phone and broke down in the middle of my kitchen.

And for the first time in a while, I fell asleep. Something I desperately needed, except for the dream that came with it.

Usually, when I lucid dream about the family I had lost. There was a little prep work that had to be done beforehand. But this time, as I opened my eyes in the hospital chair, I knew it was not real. I knew the familiar bed before me, the lump under the covers, was Olivia. Her beautiful face staring out the window as the falling sun brightened her face like the angel she was.

When I raised my head, her eyes full of love turned to me. Her weak smile as her greeting, like nothing had been wrong. Like her curly black hair had still been on her head, and we were in the park playing in the grass.

“You need to stop overexerting yourself Mrs Williams, what if you fell in the hall? No one would’ve seen you all night, and then what?” The doctor had been near the door, a stern look on his face while he lectured her.

“I AM in no condition to leave my bed you know,” she said back to him as if she was the doctor.

When the doctor had left a few minutes after this, Olivia had pulled something from her bedsheet and was showing it to me, “I watched it float down from the window, I thought she might like it if I couldn’t bring one in.”

“I’d hope you wouldn’t bring in a whole bird for her.” I laughed a little.

I took the white feather from her fingertips and held it in my own. Olivia was staring at me again, “Bring it to her, won’t you?”

I nodded, getting to my feet, “Her rooms gonna fill up completely at some point.”

Olivia smiled at this and continued watching life move out the window. The corridor I moved into had a sterile smell to it compared to her room. The frequent and random art hanging on the wall every few feet now just another part of the copy and pasted scenery. The door I stopped at had a small 28 in its middle, pictures of flowers and birds drawn in crayons taped around it.

Every time I entered Billie’s room my heart had sunk. The girl looking up at me from her bed brightened weakly as I entered. The older woman sitting in a corner of the room hung her head as she slept. Christy, Billie’s hospital sitter was quietly snoring to herself as I crept past her and knelt beside the bed. Billie looked about to squeal aloud in joy at my face until I put a finger to my lips.

Silently, I pulled the feather up and into her view. Billie, who had previously begun to visit my wife during the day, had told her how much she wanted to play with the birds outside her window. She gasped when she saw it, eager to hold it herself, I handed it to her.

Her small hands ran down its side with only a delicacy someone holding a fine treasure would use. She looked at me quickly as she plummeted her hand under her blanket and retrieved a single piece of paper.

When she handed it to me enthusiastically, I looked it over. It was drawn in various colors of crayon, its tip was a curly, dark purple witches hat roof, the walls at odd angles with triangle windows. Three stick figures stood beside it.

“Can you build this for me?” She said shyly.

I looked up at her, unsure what to say. Her eyes looked more tired each time we’d seen her, her visits less often from her volunteer growing ever more hesitant to let her move. “Of course,” I whispered, holding out my palm, “five bucks.”

Billie giggled and made the old volunteer snort a little. I quietly sucked air through my teeth at this, making Billie smile again. When I went to stand, I felt a tiny grip on my shirt. She was holding onto me, looking with those green eyes of hers. “When will Olivia come visit?”

My heart sank at this, her pleading eyes desperate to see her best friend. I knelt back down, placing my hand on her head, “Soon buddy, she hasn’t been feeling too good lately.”

“Is her head still hurting?”

My eyes fell for a moment, “Hey, you sure you want a purple roof here?”

When I came back to my wife’s room, she was smiling up at me again, “She’s such a sweetie isn’t she?” she said.

I nodded. My mind elsewhere.

When I moved closer to her, she lightly touched my hand, “Asher?” I looked at her, the thoughts emptying from my mind, “I was wondering, when we get out of here, I was thinking about letting her live with us.”

I smiled at her, warmth growing in my chest, “I think she’s got the same idea,” I said, handing her the drawing.

When I reached out to her, I noticed the bed was empty. The sheets pulled off to the side.

I stood up, looking around the now dark room. The only light inside was that from the moon watching me from the window. “Olivia?” My voice was hoarse, panic quick to my lips.

I flung the door open to the corridor on the other side. The few lights in the ceiling doing a poor job in making the place look less haunted. I called out loudly for help, uncaring which resident woke from my cry. No one was coming, no one was doing their jobs.

Again.

What the doctor had told him, the warning he had given him. I had to find her, to bring her back. I jogged down the hallway, watching the closed doors pass my eyes as the pang in my heart grew ever harder and the weakness throughout my body reached my head.

My shoes jolted still as something caught my eye, a thin light was stamped vertically on the wall near a turn in the hallway. I ran over to it, slowing as I took its turn. Sprawled in front of a door was a woman, still, unconscious.

I bent down, the inevitable that had been creeping in these past weeks finally gripping tightly, finally ripping at the skin.

I called out for someone that wasn’t there, for a force that kept us in that hospital. Her body drooped as I lifted her head, the only breaths coming from my own broken lungs. The hand that had fell was clenched in a loose fist. A perfect white flower in its middle, a lily. One of the same flowers outside Billie’s window. I looked up, room 28 had loomed over us.

Through the crack, I could see the little girl, sleeping soundly in her bed like the screams from where I knelt was only a whisper.

I only felt anger. I know I shouldn’t have.

“Help us Asher,” came a voice and even before looking down I knew who’s it had been. “It hurts.” those veins were splitting from the pores on her face.

I opened my eyes slowly, the feeling of dried tears sore on my cheeks. I never wanted to close my eyes to that day again, the worst of it. So painful was the memory I felt like death had come back for me as well.

A single picture flashed before my eyes as clear as anything else for months. A white piece of paper, scratches of crayon forming into a colorful house, three stick figures standing beside it.

Billy’s face looked so happy then, she expected so much from me, from her. She was waiting, I turned to the picture beside my bed, reached out.

Olivia’s smile that I alone got to see greeted me. Even then, I wished for that picture to move, to talk. Just so I could hear her voice one last time.

She’d tell me everything would be ok; she really loved me.

Again, I closed my eyes, taking control of the nightmare that awaited me.

It wasn’t long before I was standing in my bedroom, watching a bird dance across the trees. The room I was in was contorted into a box of rust and torn wallpaper that revealed the black wall behind it. At my feet was a thin carpet of feathers and flowers. If it wasn’t for the dirt caking over everything, I would’ve thought it was snow.

The same went for outside, as feathers floated gracefully in droves from the grey sky I could not see. Around the moldy room I had occupied only days ago now accompanied semi melted furniture. The ground crunched as I walked towards the door, the dry feathers and petals breaking from my weight.

When I got to the open door, what sat on the other side was not what I expected. The room before me was the same decrepit site as before, yet what should be my hallway was now a large room, nothing but darkness and dead air inside.

My resolve felt as if it could snap at any moment like the footsteps crinkling in my ears. Throughout the room were dark corridors, splitting off into different directions. None of them the same size or shape as the one next to them. All of them, as silent as the rest. The echo from each of my heavy breaths crawled back into my mouth where they belonged.

This place, it felt like the part of hell that the devil forgot, smelled like what only I could imagine burning flesh to be like. The emptiness in each corner wide enough to deceive its very statement and as I moved closer to any of them, the weight pressing over me grew until my legs could hardly carry me.

Yet, all I could do is press on into one of those entrances, into the maze. To be so lost for so long, finding my way felt so impossible. Until something had changed, something had moved.

As I stood in the middle of the room, trying to decide which hall to take, a beep scratched its way through the air. I turned towards it, the old beep of her hospital monitor methodically sounding inside one dark entrance, growing louder and louder. The beeping was quickly accompanied by steady crunches of footsteps as a single green glow hummed on and off with each beep. It soon ignited the figure’s silhouette, getting larger each time it flashed until the thing sprouted from the veil of shadow and into my room.

If its skin had been any tighter to the bone I would’ve thought it was a walking skeleton. The legs, red and beaten, limped towards me. Its pale flesh was so tight to its ribcage that each step looked as if they would each crack and cave into itself. White hands had been covering its face, covering the green light that lit through the bony fingertips. The face was long like the hands that hid it, the few strands of hair dangling by clotted blood from the top of its head.

The beeping grew sharper in my ears as I stood there, frozen to the rust on the ground. The way it didn’t scream, didn’t cry, didn’t breathe kept me there.

Beep

Beep

Beep

I closed my eyes, the sound pulling at my reluctant mind. She’s such a sweetie, isn’t she?

The crunching footsteps stopped, the image of curly hair, a reflection of the sun in Olivia’s glasses vivid behind my eyes. The fist clenching the air around my body eased.

Asher? Can you tell them to turn off that monitor? Its driving me crazy.

I opened my eyes to the monster’s bony spine limping away from me, slowly on its way to a single corridor. I watched it reach an entrance and stop there, the beeping the only thing that remained.

Hesitantly, I moved towards it, the weight from before pressing down on me the closer I got.

When I finally reached it, it continued forward, disappearing down the unknown of the entrance beyond. The large room was alone except for myself and the rust peeling off the walls. Continuously, the green light in its head slowly showed the faintest silhouette growing more indistinguishable by the second.

A moment passed before I finally drove myself after him, letting the darkness swallow me whole.

Beep

All I could see was the momentary flash of pale skin as we walked through the corridors of this maze. Turning so many lefts and rights, or so i thought, he would be in front of me one second, then off to the right the next. I had walked so long, I didn’t even notice how the thing began to struggle, the passing light blinking less often as we went.

Beep

Each step turned into a dragging, ripping sound. Whenever I saw him, it looked as if he wasn’t moving at all. And soon, the black hallway gradually let in some light from somewhere unseen.

The same rust and mold littered the floor and walls, the ceiling looking as if it could come crashing down on the two of us at any second. The first thing my eyes had caught was the way the thing I followed now moved. Its legs dragged across the floor, treating the carpeting of dirty flower petals and feathers as tracks of footsteps in the snow.

My eyebrows furrowed at the sight of its feet. The way they dragged was due to them being ripped from the ground. Each step pulling away hundreds of connected strands of those hairlike veins. They snapped with every tug, lying loosely on the ground as I cautiously stepped over them. Reary that they would come alive and squirm towards me.

Beep

Ahead of me, the thing had succumbed to its efforts and fallen to the ground. There was no instinct to help it up as it had immediately started crawling with the same strained force as when it walked. The veins that had apparently eaten away at its feet were now sticking and breaking at its hands, knees, stomach and soon, parts of its face. Whatever part of it that contacted the ground stuck like velcro.

As it pulled its way around one last corner, the air had changed. The rust on the walls peeling off and falling, the moldy feathers slowly rising, floating in the air like dust in a long-forgotten room.

I turned around, my heart choking in my throat. From behind me came the last huff of breath as it expelled down the hall. I stood there for some time, my mind wiped from any thought I had.

Then, what sounded like a bag of wet fungus being slammed violently on the floor came rushing through the corridor. My muscles tightened at the suddenness of it; I turned and ran around the corner to the leader of this maze as the thudding of whatever lurked behind me rose in volume.

When I went around the corner, my eyes widened. On the other side was a room larger than any other, a mountain of gesticulating veins that reached up towards the ceiling. The pale leader had crawled to the foot of it, reaching up its path as it was leached onto by the mountain.

Beep

Behind me came the hurried sound of incoming danger.

Up the mountain was a light, swirling like a vortex with something dark in its middle. I didn’t have to strain my eyes to know who it was, but it made her name whisper from my lips.

“Olivia.”

Down at my feet, the pale monster lied there, moving no more, beeping no more.

Thump

I slowly turned around, the sound no longer an echo.

All my eyes could do was widen in such a shock I have never known.

My panicked body drove me up the squirming mountain, towards the sleeping image of my wife. Away from that monster, its huge jaw slack across the floor it moved on.

I felt a weak tug at my ankle, stopping my ascension. The pale figure had reached out and grabbed me, its face halfway showing its long, noseless face, where its eyes should have been was a single deep, jagged slash that showed the meat beneath.

Beep

I stared at it, momentarily glowing green under the thin skin. From over its head the thing that followed me groaned and thudded in my direction.

I’m not sure why I did it, why the invading veins suddenly puncturing my skin down to the muscles didn’t bother me. I didn’t understand why I picked him up, tearing him from the mountain I began to climb.

Harder and harder was the journey. The skin from my shins ripping from my bones first, the feeling of minuscule hammers beating into my bone marrow only to rip away at what attacked me to be introduced to newer enemies. A numbing feeling quickly followed as I found myself wishing it were a positive sign. My stomach grew exponentially lighter as my front hit the invaders and tore me open.

Beep

I lifted the body in my hands above my still devouring body as I pushed myself to the top of the mountain. My wife only feet away from me now.

“Asher? Don’t leave me here Asher.” the wailing voice did not come down from Olivia, but up from the monstrous blob from below. I looked down at it, dead flowers sprouting from the broken and dragging mouth as it stood meters away from me.

Billie’s face flashed behind my eyes as I stared at it, wondering how her parents could abandon such a little angel.

“I won’t.”

I dove up to my wife, wrapping her in such a tight hug. Her limp frame hanging in my arms as the pain spilled from my soul. All the memories we shared, the love we made, the tears we shed were all ones I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. And if I could, I’d die a million times with you. It would only mean I got to spend that much time with you.

Olivia, I know I’ve been gone. Hiding behind a false world I knew could never be. You don’t need to suffer anymore. I’ll love you throughout all my lives until I finally reach wherever you are.

The pale figure lied beside me, veins wiggling up and through its body. Its skinny arm was reached out, clinging dead to a wire leading into the side of the living mountain.

I placed my hand over his, taking one last look at the monster below as it looked up at me, tears falling from its melted face.

I pulled on the wire.

This brings me to now, as I write this all out for whoever can take from my experience. To hopefully learn from the mistakes of a man god took half from. To not run but continue, fill the missing part of yourself. Don’t live for one person, live for as many as you can.

And before I finish the roof of our new home, the curvy point at the top being the most difficult part almost done, I need to find a good place with a lot of sun. I’m planting a lily garden, and I need the best view. Olivia’s picture would look nicest there, I think. She’ll be able to look down from wherever she was to watch the newest member of our family come home from her first day of school.

I hear little Billie calling for me now, I think you would’ve liked her new hair pin I made for her. A tiny little feather.

Your feather.

It’s funny, when I looked up just now Billie was already standing in the perfect spot. Sun shining down on her like you were placing a hand on her shoulder. She was cranking the little music box in her hands until the melody tinkled from it.

I wonder where she found that.

Credit: James Zeller