Big Dreams

She walks around the new house in bare feet. She no longer has to dodge the tears in the carpet or the dirt rising up from the floor boards. She can’t quite believe that she is here. It feels strange not to ache and hurt from the cold. From the mould. It feels strange not to hear the neighbours laughing at her from next door. She has hung her clothes up in the wardrobe. She can choose what to wear now. She can be a different person every day. She can wear colour. She can let her skin breathe in the open air. In this bigger place there comes more space to move in her body.

She has to go back to the old place tomorrow. She feels scared. Before she got here she cried sitting with her back to the door. Let nobody in. Let nobody out. She felt she could never leave. She felt the emptiness there was gluing her together. The places she walked to, the words in the old brick porch were everything to her. Be calm be still. Her day dream. Her escape. The tears wouldn’t stop flowing from her eyes and they pulled and stung her fragile skin.

She never thought she could move. She never thought she could leave. Trapped in circles for all that time and with some strange force of momentum she got out. It was almost as if it was against everything she felt inside. That hand holding her under suddenly began pulling her out. So strange. She knows it will be hard. Some thing’s you cannot leave behind. But she has a lightness. She sits and looks out of the new windows. At the newly planted trees and the big black gate holding her in. Keeping her safe and she smiles. It wasn’t a big dream but it washed the darkness from her eyes.

When hell freezes over.

Her thin fingers darted in and out of the folds of the fabric. Tiny pleats that she made and then unmade in time with the beating rhythm of her heart. She sat in the old familiar black chair. Waiting for him. The numbers clicked around. Almost an irrelevance. She would wait here forever. She had nowhere better to go. This seat was all but hers. She liked it here. Tucked away in the corner. Not quite far enough from the prying eyes of the others. But still her spot. Her little anchor. The place where she imagined it could happen. She had put the bottles in her hand and walked there cradling them in her pocket. She stood rocking quietly to herself in the toilet counting. That is something he will never know. When she reaches him she has stopped the rocking and the counting. She has put the bottles in her bag. She takes them back home and watches them for another seven days. She consoles herself by ticking off the days on her calendar until the next time. Next time comes and she rocks and hides the bottles again. She smiles at the others. But she is not smiling at them. She is playing the other story in her head. The one where she doesn't even make it to the chair. Where she falls over on the concrete and he comes to her. Hell would freeze over before that ever happened. She knew. She knew he would never come. Nobody would ever come. They would turn up their collars and walk by as if you were nothing. Just like you were told. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. You little shit. And so she tested. For those brief minutes in the chair. If she tested she would discover what he was to her. She wondered what he would say today. If she would anger him and make him shout. She enjoyed that. It was what she understood. It was what she deserved. Sometimes when she saw him she only nodded. Not a word passed her lips. That infuriated him. She knew it did. But she knew it would make it last for longer. The time they had. How she would miss it. Him. When she was gone. But she knew that he was nothing to her and she was nothing to him. No falling. No drowning would make it real. In every place she found an old black chair. Another. In every place there was a darkened window where she could sit and slip away. Watching. Being watched. Being nothing. Not touching the place where she sleeps. It is only a passing phase. It is only as long as it takes for the fabric she folds to unfurl and turn flat. Back to how it was before she touched it. As if she had never been.

Ethical

She woke up at nine. Her body was sore. She looked in the mirror. Her right eye lid was huge. Like a watery envelope shutting in her eye. The quiet was strange. There had been so much noise last night. She opened the curtains and light crept in. It lit up the finger prints on the kettle as she went to make her cup of tea. The imprints were metallic brown. Crusty impressions of the half moon lines that belonged to that other person's fingers. It didn't shock her. It was familiar in its own chaotic way. The chaos itself could be a comfort at times. It had become her. Her life. She stretched out her arms. They ached a little. Like a fighter's arms. She had forgotten what she had been fighting a long time ago. But every movement seemed to be a battle against her body and that noise in her head. She reached for a teabag and dropped it in the chipped mug. Waited for the water to boil. She watched as the steam bubbled over the lip of the kettle and dissolved away the blood. She sipped at the tea. Carried it gingerly in her hands as she went to look at the other rooms. It was a trail. Searching around for clues. Proof of what happened. Following the red marks. The stains in the carpet. The dents in the furniture. She finished her tea standing in the middle of the room. Wondering what happened. How she got to this morning. She got a cloth from the sink. Let some water soak into it and began to wipe away the evidence. Of the night. Of that other person. She would leave the house and no one would suspect a thing. Nothing about this was ethical but it was the only thing left to do.

Message

The letter plopped through the flap. She heard it fall against the carpet and went down the stairs to pick it up. She was pleased that she could get to it first. Usually her grubby neighbours had sized her letters up in their fat hands before she got to open them. She could see their greasy finger prints on the corners of the envelopes. Just like the sticky trail of unwashed hands that led up the bannisters and deposited on the light switches after their many fried chicken take-aways. She hated this place. But some how she was rooted here. There were messages of her life spread out over the three rooms. The stain on the carpet in the lounge where she stopped breathing and they spilt a bag of fluids forcing life into her veins. The time it happened again and one of their boots scuffed the door as they carried her out. Then when they sent her home and she couldn't swallow and the morning tea flew out of her nose and splattered the walls of the bathroom. She hadn't tried very hard to wipe this history away. It was her. And despite what she had done she didn't want to lose it just yet. She left the letter on the table and did her usual circuit. Walk for an hour. Buy some milk. Some cereal. Maybe a bar of chocolate to cheer herself up. When she came home legs heavy and tired it was waiting for her. She put the kettle on and the radio to listen to the news. Except she never really knew what was going on. Her hand havered over the envelope. She went to throw it away but the water still hadn't boiled so she thought she might as well see what was inside whilst she waited. Dear Miss Harris. That's what it said. Except she wasn't Miss Harris. She read to the end. 'We are pleased to offer you a new property at the following address..' There was a number at the bottom of the page. For a minute she allowed herself to see that something could change and she picked up the phone and rang. The man said this new place, this new home was for her. She sat for a while. Thought about the message. She began to believe it and as she did she got up and started to scrub away the stains. At last she could leave this place behind.