Soul Searcher
It began on a cool September night, around 1:30 in the morning when I was awoken with a startle from a rather odd dream my mind was concocting. I was back at my childhood residence, a home where my heart certainly still was, and I was horrified that the once cozy quarters had taken on the look of a fun house. The foyer’s warm brown sugar carpeting was stripped away, replaced by a cold black and white diamond patterned marble floor. The walls were papered with a stark white that took on a nearly blue hue and was designed with methodically placed black Rorschachesque blemishes. A crystal chandelier hung from the upstairs hall ceiling on a long clear chain and hovered only six, maybe seven, feet above the marble floor. The original front door that once offered a welcoming character to the home’s façade was replaced by a thick black door with three slim, rectangular windows running down the center. All decor on the first floor of the home was black, white, or transparent.
I stood on the stairs infuriated by the unwelcome makeover to my childhood home, and started to scream a blood curdling wail that caused my body to bend and contort, my fists to clench and my eyes to shut tight, but not a sound echoed from my lungs. A young blonde girl with her hair in a prim ponytail and her not much older, much blonder brother with coarsely chopped mane appeared from the breakfast room, and were shortly joined by their agitated mother who couldn’t hide the uninvited fear that had settled so unevenly on her face, in that delicate space between flesh and bone. She pulled her children to her body in a protective embrace; her left hand clasping her daughter’s left shoulder, her right hand digging in the same manner into her son’s right arm. Summoning anger to project through her insecurity, she yelled, “You don’t live here anymore! This is our house! You must leave now!”
I looked towards the two substantial windows that lined the upstairs landing and there were no panes within them, just empty space that from my angle looked out on the tall trees that towered over two blocks of homes. A soothing warm, spring-like breeze swirled around me, luring me up the stairs to the windowless wall. I could still hear the mother demanding my departure, but her voice grew distant as everything outside the window began to drain of color and lose defining lines. The entire world had gone white, blinding white, like sunlight that kept intensifying until it radiated through my flesh, making my eyes squint and then forcing them shut, but even under the safe cover of my eyelids the light still penetrated my eyes. I heard the drone of white noise and just as I felt I might succumb to the hypnotic hum, I felt the floor beneath my feet disintegrate, and I dropped, falling at such an alarming rate it no longer felt like I was plummeting, I felt static. And as I began to feel the rush of familiar songs, voices, scents, and touches coming over me, and I, just a hairsbreadth from placing my finger on the familiar, awoke with the whip of my neck, now facing the terrace off my bedroom, eyes locked on the tall, dense shadow, darkening the balcony.
I felt no alarm bells going off in my woman’s intuition, no fear. I just kept my eyes on the shadow, trying to let them adjust and focus in the harsh shades of night that seemed too bright compared to the womb-like protection and shade my eyelids provided mere seconds ago. I finally broke my gaze and rolled my eyes to the ceiling. I snuck a quick peek and still the shadow was there, angled into the concrete railing and the column that bore a gaping mouthed gargoyle, who’s accusatory eyes questioned every person, dog, and specter that passed below my twenty-three story penthouse. Eyes to the ceiling, I exhaled a soothing breath and felt goose bumps alight over my flesh as the cool evening breeze blew into my bedroom from the open French doors, billowing the gauzy curtains that framed the threshold. I pulled my downy, white comforter over my shoulder as I rolled in the opposite direction, away from the senseless distraction that kept me from sleep. In my head was a running one person conversation about the ludicrous thought that it could be anything more than a play of the moonlight and the dark corners, embellished columns, and ornamental potted plants that adorned my balcony. Nobody, nothing, could gain access to my apartment without authorization from more than one source. Without sneaking another peek, I fell into a welcome sleep.
I could feel myself boiling with rage, trying to express myself through a rabid snarl, that it was mine, it was my home. I was clinging to the ebony railing, my fingernails embedding into the wood, through layers of stain and varnish. Her words rushed me with a smug certainty that she could banish my fury. “You don’t live here anymore! This is our house! You must leave now!” I released the banister and as I turned to curse her, I felt a pull that reached into my body and grasped my lungs, dragging me towards the Rorschach blotch that had deceptively looked harmless, but was morphing in a flipbook fashion; bat, butterfly, pelvis, shark jaws, face mask, skull. The vacant white sockets took on a sinister, angular shape, staring at me as it bowed forward, its mouth gaping wider, wider, wider, until it was inhaling me with a ferocity that sucked me in with the power of a natural disaster, and as I felt myself being decimated into tiny particles, I could here her repeatedly banishing me from her home.
With a dramatic gasp of breath, I sat up and threw the covers off my body, stepping onto the cold bamboo floor. I walked into my dark bathroom; filling the glass I kept by the sink with water and swishing it around in my mouth, spitting it down the drain. I took a sip and felt it bring back to life my arid throat. Taking another sip, I emptied the remaining water into the sink, placed the glass on the blush marble counter with an echoing clink, and walked towards the French doors that encompassed a majority of the far wall in my bathroom. I looked up at the night sky, catching sight of Orion’s belt, and as my eyes set out on a quest to map other constellations, I saw the dark mass in the same spot it was however long ago. I tried to determine if there was anything more to the mass than shadow, but I couldn’t really make out any defining lines or sinews that would betray a well designed veil of deceit. I shook my head at how ridiculous an idea it would be for a person, a man, to make his way onto my terrace undetected and at such a height.
I returned to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, taking note that the shadow was still there. As I climbed into bed I glanced at the lilac Moonbeam clock on my bedside table, the long and short arms marking the time as 2:59am. I lay back on my pillows and turned one last time to glimpse the shadow before surrendering to a vulnerable suspension of consciousness, when I noticed the shadow had taken leave of my balcony. I looked to the clock and saw that it was 3:00am. Only a minute, perhaps even less, had passed since I verified its presence, but by some strange circumstance with either city lighting at this height or lunar glow at that angle, it had vanished. I went right to the doors, stepping out on the terrace, but there wasn’t a shadow, corner, column, or potted plant that compared to or could mimic the mass that stood here no more than two minutes ago. I scanned both wings of the terrace before returning to my bed, succumbing to a sleep that came too easily after such an unforeseen manifestation and even more abrupt departure.
E.A. O'Connell
No comments:
Post a Comment