Under the Red Sky

It was nearly six when I shook off the stupid, heavy feeling of sleep and uncurled from my position on the couch. My eyes opened to find the sky a bleak and painfully ordinary gray, dimming with the coming of evening. I yawned loudly, my frightful nails reaching to scratch away the ceiling.

Rubbing the sandy grit from the corners of my eyes, I realized I was not alone.

The ghost of my nightmares crowded the remnants of my living room.

Mother was idling in the kitchen, her cigarette held lazily in her long pale fingers. She brought it to her smirking peach colored lips, held it there for a moment, and then exhaled, letting the smoke roll of her bottom lip in that sensual way.

This was the mother of my childhood. Wild hair, yellow. Fair skin. Freckles. And her crimson nails. Her familiar scent of tobacco and lavender hand cream teased my nose, and a dull ache struck up in my heart, like the phantom pain of a limb I had long since lost.

My dream had been a reoccurring one, throwing my unconscious mind into chaos from the ripe age of eight. And there it had stayed, a secret willingly kept from my mother and all others around me. Even Charlotte.

With time it had faded, as many things did, and for a while it let me be, relieved my psyche of the troublesome visions that plagued my nights with painful memories. After some years, the dream ceased completely.

I foolishly thought it was gone for good.

But it was just waiting for me to remember.

And I had.

In sleep, I had recalled that night when mother and I had returned to my childhood home after months of living on our own. We had left father long ago to drown in his liquor and his misery and his empty words. But that night, we had gone back.

Because mother had needed her necklace.

It had been a gift from father, bought with money he had swindled from his gambling friends. It had been the only thing of value my mother owned, and for that reason it stayed locked away in the safe in the parlor.

When we left, mother had sworn she wouldn’t go back. But we were been starving and mother had been desperate.

It had been unpleasantly quiet in the house on the night I crept back in. Alone. But my mission had been simple: break into the safe, steal the necklace, save the day, be mommy’s little hero.

Mother had given me a gun. “Just in case” she had said, that smirk on her lips. I hadn’t known what she meant. But I had taken it anyway.

Father had been asleep. Drunk, no doubt. But that wasn’t enough to save me. Or him.

I had just finished fishing the necklace from the big iron box when he had woken up, had stumbled through the darkness for me. My reaction had been one of shock and confusion.

I had never meant to shoot him.

Mother had not been alarmed. In fact, she had rewarded me with the necklace, her plans for pawning it forgotten.

I shook away the nostalgia, suddenly aware that my hands were at my neck, my fingers curled around the slender chain hanging loosely along the tattered collar of my blouse.

I pulled, slowly at first, and the metal cut into the back of my neck. I ignored the pain until I felt a pop and then the necklace was in my hands. I gazed down at it, devoid of emotion, my eyes two blank pools of blue. I got to my feet and ambled into the kitchen, my head swimming.

Mother was perched on the counter, watching me, puffing away on her cigarette, as I neared the sink. I glared at her wraithlike face, and how alike we were. The dark hair we shared, the freckles that dotted my arms. I knew I would never be able to look at myself without seeing her. And that killed me.

I reached over the rusty basin and flicked the small black switch on the wall. There was a roar as the garbage disposal came to life.

Mother’s smug grin faded, her lifeless eyes suddenly full of panic. No words fell from her lips, but the look she was giving me said enough.

“Don’t you dare.”

I shook my head, as my hand hovered over the sink, threateningly.

Her face seemed to soften and she looked at me with that sad look she wore so well. But I stayed strong. For once, I did not wane.

“I’m sorry.”

My lip curled in a sneer that would melt the paint on the walls.

“You should be.”
My fingers relaxed and the kitchen, the living room, every inch of flat nine was filled with the horrible sound of grating metal, the sound of blades tearing, ripping.

But it was music to my ears.

And I was alone again. No mother. No ghosts.

I threw my world back into bitter silence and left the past to lie at the bottom of a limestone pipe, as I moved from the kitchen into the living area and then into the hall. I ducked into the bathroom and was nearly knocked off my feet as I met my reflection.

It was certainly something that needed getting used to, and it scared me to say the least.

But I found that strange satisfaction in those white blue eyes, those odd clumps of tangled, ragged hair.

Smiling, I crouched low to the ground and rummaged through the mess on the floor. Bits and pieces of mirror, hair dryer, curlers, towels, towels, towels. And then finally my miniature box of nail polish. I traced my fingers along the carvings of the wooden roses on the lid, as I stepped back into the hall.

I stood there a moment, gazing up at the clean white wall, thinking.

I needed to confess. Come clean. For what I had done. The good and the bad. And for what I would do.

I plucked a polish from the little box, a nice red color. And began to work.

I wrote about mother, about father, about life in Braidal, and about Charlotte. About the city and about Shrek and Sylvia. About what they had coming. And about what I had heard and about what had happened to me.

I wrote until I ran out of polish, and then chose another bottle from the box. Reds and purples and greens and black and pinks. When I got sick of the sameness, I wrote in French. When I got sick of my words, I wrote someone else’s.

I wrote about the past and the present and the future and my nightmares. About the monster in the lake who I saw in the mirror, who smiled back at me.

I wrote about the man on the corner, who was there when I closed my eyes, behind my eyelids, waiting as always.

I wrote until my hand cramped up and my head ached from the fumes. Until I couldn’t take it anymore, until I had nothing else to write. Until my life was written on the wall.

I stumbled back against the opposite wall and slid down until my bottom hit the chilly hardwood floor. Goosebumps raked my bare arms and legs as I gazed up at my masterpiece, the golden hue of the last color I used, Champagne Bubbles, glowing in the pink neon light of the sign in my bedroom.

I smiled, drowsy at my cursive scrawl, at all the colors, and all the horrible things that had lingered for too long in this head of mine.

There was a tinkling of glass from the kitchen and the soft sound of rough skin padding across tile. Ms. Kitty appeared at the mouth of the hallway, drawn in by the harsh chemical smell. She seemed reluctant to enter the scene, but with her yellow eyes on me, she slunk into the dark foyer.

My hands stroked the length of her velvet body and she curled up, pawing and kneading my lap with her claws.
Her ears twitched, catching a far off noise. I did the same.

Somewhere, in the Lennon Complex maybe, there was music. Opera, to be precise.

I leaned my head back against the chipping plaster, appeased, and closed my eyes.

I had only been awake for a few hours, maybe even a few minutes. I couldn’t tell.

But maybe it was the fumes from the chemicals on the wall. Or the way the beautiful music smothered my conscious mind with melancholy warmth. Or that grand feeling of proud triumph.

Maybe that was what made me make the mistake of falling asleep.

~~~

I jolted awake upon hearing the quiet whine of a floorboard in the obscene silence of flat nine.

It must’ve have been some late hour of the night. Once more I found myself clueless without a watch or a clock or the sun in the sky.

The hallway was dark, save for the small amount of pink light burning in my bedroom. The paint on the walls had dried, but the noxious odor lingered in the air. It made my head heavy and my eyes sting.

Sleep threatened to swallow me up again, but just as my eyelids began to flutter, another groan of old wood rang through the hallway.

Suddenly, I was very much awake, panic pushing the blood through my veins and alarm quickening my heart rate. I was up on my feet in an instant, and I tried my best to ignore the dizzy, throbbing sensation in my head that came almost immediately. I should’ve known not to move so fast.

I stepped carefully over the many empty bottles of nail polish, my mind buzzing.

Could there be someone in my house? A burglar? A criminal?

Or was I simple imagining all this?

As paranoid as I sounded, something told me it wasn’t the latter.

I swallowed down the bile growing in my throat, just as I reached the mouth of the hallway. Looking out at the gloom of my living area, I found nothing out of the ordinary.

The only light in the room came from the lamppost outside on the corner, the moon high above oppressed by the clouds. The orange glow filled the room with shadows, the black monsters from my nightmares.

I moved farther into the room, picking through the mess I had made. I shivered as the breeze wafting in from the window in the kitchen licked at my bare arms and legs.

I stood at the window, peering through the frosted glass at the street below. Luna Street. Completely empty save for a few cars. Loose newspapers blew up and down the sidewalk. And my eyes found the corner, where the streetlamp stood like a lighthouse in a sea of stone.

I frowned. The lone, dark figure was no where to be seen.

Maybe I had been imagining things. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I yawned loudly, thoughts of sleep on my mind. I made to head back toward my bedroom, when another loud creak rang through the apartment.

I froze, eyes wide, searching the darkness. I listened hard, ignoring the blood thumping loudly in my head. But there was only…

Silence.

I sighed, slightly relieved. I chuckled at my foolish distress, stumbling away from the window, into the middle of the room. “Must’ve been the cat.”

“Unfortunately…that’s not the case.”

I gasped at the dark voice in my ear, the hot breath on my neck, as a gloved hand grasped firmly on the back of my neck. I felt fingers dig into my skin and I writhed in pain.

I jerked my head this way and that to get a glimpse of my captor. A caught sight of him for a mere second, his face hidden in the shadows. A red smile, a chalk white face. And the darkest eyes I had ever seen.

I tried my hardest to break free of his grip, but he held strong, whoever he was. I let out a yelp as I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head and suddenly, I found myself on the ground, staring up at his ominous figure.

The last thing I saw as the world spun in front of my eyes was his face, laughing. That high pitched, terrible, screeching. The most horrible sound to reach my ears. And I felt as if I had heard it before. I grimaced in my last few moments of consciousness, becoming nauseous and dizzy as I slowly went under. I begged for unending silence, for death even.

But the clamor grew and grew, shaking the walls around me, even as black enveloped me and crushed my bones into dust. It rang in my ears, filling my head with the sound of the horrible things to come.

Because this was night everything would change. For better. For worse.

I would be reborn. A monster. A freak. I would be given purporse.

Given life.