Torn Fragility

"Hannah?" I called leaving the kitchen and beginning my way upstairs. "Smith?"

I stopped when I reached my room. The door had been ripped off the hinges and lay blocking the hallway. Inside my room there were torn pieces of paper scattered about and when I bent to pick up one it was part of the face I had drawn that warm sunny afternoon out on the porch. It seemed so long ago but it must've probably only been yesterday.

The wooden frame of my window was twisted open as if to make way for something very very big. I shivered, recalling the monster that I had just managed to glimpse before my fall. My leg and back pained just thinking about it.

Of their own volition my hands swept my pencils and colours into the small backpack I scrabbled out of my suitcase. I pushed an A4 wad of thick sketching paper in as well along with a clean change of clothes. My cell phone I left, crushed into miniscule bits as I had found it on the floor. I then changed out of my dirty clothes with grass stains and climbed into cut off jeans and a black shirt with a star on the front. I don't know why I chose it but the star seemed significant somehow.

Slinging my arms through the straps of my backpack I turned my back on the wreckage and stepped over the fallen door before making my way towards Smith's room. I had to make sure of something before I left this haunted lonely house with all its dark secrets. Maybe then I could get rid of the nightmares and be released from the spell I was clearly under.

I was just a small budding rose, hiding beneath the thin skein of green petals, not yet ready to face the enormity of the world and all its horrors. But now was my time to do so. Face what I inevitably would. I couldn't run, not with roots this deep in the turmoil of secrets.

The room was empty, as I had expected it to be. The bed sheets were in disarray attesting to a fitful night’s sleep and everything else seemed to be in its usual messy state. But now I could explore freely and find out what I can.

I swept the curtains wide open allowing golden sunlight to filter into the murky dungeon. When I turned around again my heart fell and my confusion rose. The piano was gone. The bare space of floor seemed empty and lonely when I passed it and walked to the dresser, the available flat surface of which was overtaken by tissues, music sheets, and two framed photographs.

I leant in closer trying to ignore my slightly sunburnt appearance in the reflection of the glass. The one photo was of a small boy on a young woman’s lap. A woman who looked uncomfortably like me. The boy was obviously Smith, but without the characteristic sullenness. The woman, on the other hand, looked nothing like him but she clutched the squirming boy tightly to her and was trying to keep from laughing.

The other photo was of a pretty meadow, with strange flowers...My hand swooped to pick it up and I held it so close to my face that my breath steamed the surface of the glass over.

It was definitely the meadow I had been imprisoned in. What was a picture of it doing here, in Smith’s room of all places? I was having a heavy bout of déjà vu and left the room as quickly as I could without running.

Downstairs my fingers trembled slightly as I picked up the mouth piece of the telephone and dialled a number.

“Rose!”

The blood in my veins chilled.

“So glad you could make it! I hope the meadow wasn’t unpleasant?”

I couldn’t speak; my voice had crawled down my throat to hide.

“Are you upset? Upset dear Hannah didn’t pick up? Upset I did?” The owner of the voice chuckled.

My hand started to loosen its grip on the receiver. Millimetre by millimetre, so that she wouldn’t guess before it was too late.

“I wouldn’t do that, little Rose. If you leave this room, never mind this house, unless I want you to, you’re in for a big big surprise.

“What...do you want?” I managed to say resisting the urge to drop everything and run.

The voice on the other end sighed. “Dear Rose...I only want what’s best for you of course. And right now that is for you to go home to the safety of your parents’. But you’ve ruined some of my plans, set them back a few years and that in turn is a few years off of my life trying to fix them...”

“You’re not human,” I said without thinking and my eyes grew wide. Whatever brought that on?

That voice changed; it adopted a hint of biting sarcasm and the honeyed words were stripped of their sweetness leaving only the scathing nature of the voice behind, “Congratulations! That took you longer than I had thought it would. Now, due to your interference in...”

My anger suddenly boiled over without warning. My calm facade had finally been dropped no matter how hard I had clung onto it. “In what?! In Smith? I have no idea why I’ve been put through all of this! Everything in this place is messed up, broken and I just wanted to...”

“Precisely. You interfered. You tried to fix, you tried to heal and you did more harm than good. You want to escape right? And I want revenge. So, let’s play a little game and the winner will get what she wants plus a little bonus.”

“A bonus?”

“Max of course.”

I was starting to feel dizzy and gripped the edge of the table next to me for balance. “Why...Why would I want him? And what does he have to do with it?” my words came out a bit slurred and I couldn’t understand why.

The voice sounded genuinely puzzled. “Hannah didn’t tell you what this is all about?” The woman on the other end laughed. “Darling! Max did the same thing you did! He interfered and I made a deal with him. He wouldn’t keep his side of the bargain and I...spirited him off.”

My head was pounding. Nothing made sense. “Who are you?”

When she answered I didn’t hear the words issue from the receiver but felt them brush my nape, like a cold breeze. “I,” she whispered into my hair “am what nightmares are made of.”

The phone slipped from my grasp as I spun around to face this new demon. But of course no one was there, and the pounding in my head became stronger drowning out nearly all thought and sound.

“There are no rules in this game...only penalties. The longer you take the closer I’ll come to taking what I want which I can assure you isn’t something you want.”

I fought the crawling threads of oblivion but they finally managed to catch me in their snare.

“Max is waiting Rose...Time’s already running out...”