the house that dad built
or
i wish i'd known what i inherted
1.
it starts with a pinhole.
the walls have been silvery smooth since we moved in
and we'd never marked anything up
but there it was,
barely small enough for a thumbtack.
she stared at it,
studying the dark spot with the precision of a calligrapher noting a blot on parchment.
she reached her hand out,
as though to smear ink.
i asked her what was wrong
and she replied, "there's a bug on the wall."
before scuttling away.
2.
the next day
i found her poking her finger into the wall
the space large enough now
to fit double the radius of her pointer.
when i asked her what she was doing,
she turned suddenly, wide-eyed,
lip folded under her upper teeth,
then yanked her hand to her side
and stormed off.
3.
i awoke and found her sleeping soundly in her room.
i padded down the stairs
and found a large crooked crack
leading from the hole to the top of the doorway.
i paused for a moment,
mourning the loss of the glassy finish,
but thought nothing of it after i walked away.
4.
the following afternoon,
while frying onions
and pouring hollandaise over asparagras,
i heard a crash!
followed by a rattle...that may have been in my teeth.
i simply stopped,
and turned to see the door,
defeated, laying on the floor.
and she stood on the other side of the threshold,
hands clamped to her side,
lips squeezed together,
no doubt holding back something of a shout.
her gaze was fixed on the spectacle
as though just watching
would place the plank back on its hinges.
as her eyes slid over to me, she simply muttered,
"i--i--i d-d-didn't mean t'd-do i-it."
before she hugged herself and ran upstairs.
5.
we walked past the fallen door on our way to breakfast.
we weren't sure if we should try to put it back
or leave it,
like a trophy of confusing domestic horror
or the unwanted gift the cat brought home.
it isn't an elephant in the room
if we were able to interact with it,
right?
i noted, that evening,
how she was now tracing her hand
along the twisted spine of the old frame,
from the now quarter-sized gap in the wall
across the meandering rift that worked
down and across to the floor.
she seemed to coo, and breathe secrets into the house,
the kind of talk that a bladesmith saves only for his forge and steel.
6.
just this past monday
as i went up to bed,
i found a large plastic bag
huddled next to the front door.
as though anything this week could get any stranger,
it drew me in until i had no choice but to peek inside.
the contents might've been curiouser than my own desire to view them,
my vision was filled with the sight of a tawdry estate.
she'd managed to collect
a fraying toothbrush
three t-shirts
a small bag of grease paints
five cds without jewel cases
a small box filled with various cigarettes
a hair dryer
and one sad looking teddy-bear.
i blinked a few times
in the pathetic hope
that it might make something useful appear.
instead, i turned to face the wall,
the incision was still growing,
creeping up the doorway
and crawling along the ceiling
with the determination of a undiscovered cancer.
7.
when i awoke, i was already running.
this was the day.
it was more than a crash
a boom
or a silent itch
stretching slowly into a room.
i found her,
silently screaming in a corner,
knees to her chest,
hair in her eyes,
nails clawing at her own feet and arms.
i shook her,
shaking with the house,
shaking in my voice
and in my head,
she was already as trashed as the walls around us.
her words were farther away than needed.
she tried pawing at the floor,
picking at the paint chips falling past her shoulders,
asking me to tell people
that she would have done it differently,
that she wasn't always like this.
it wasn't her fault, she tried,
but she didn't mean to make it so bad.
when i told her we had to leave,
only otherworldly moans escaped her,
a harpy cry punctuated by
"i don't know what to do"
"why is this happening to me?"
and the worst:
"please don't make me go."
it was then that the kitchen unleashed a roar
