Fear Itself

My father’s punishments would only continue after my sixteenth birthday. They never got better, but they never got any worse. It was just a lot of sitting alone with nothing to do for hours and hours, but that was okay because I found places to go in my head. I recalled places from my books and my stories that my father had confiscated. I thought about hunting down Kurtz in the Congo; I imagined myself investigating a murder in the deep, aristocratic south and entering the old, foul-smelling home of Emily Grierson. Some days, I envisioned that I was busy entangled in a forbidden romance while staying at the Yorkshire Manor on the moors. Getting grounded didn’t seem so bad after awhile; there were times I argued with my father on purpose just so that maybe he would take all my things.

Living in my head wasn’t so bad. I found, in fact, that living in my own thoughts was a way to experience the things I only used to imagine in daydreams. I’d lay in my bed and sleep on purpose; I’d keep my brain running, thinking, imagining all the way into sleep as pressure increased on my body, suffocating me, but in a good way. It would only last a few seconds before I slipped into a dream. Sometimes, it was a scene from a familiar book; sometimes, they were other things, magnificent things like flying or like running through an open field. Though everything felt real, the dreams weren’t very fulfilling. The breeze in my hair and the sun on my skin were just figments of my imagination. They ended just as soon as they began. The feelings weren’t real; they were just dreams. They were just things I imagined to escape my bedroom because anywhere was better than my bedroom.

When I wasn’t grounded, I continued hatchings plans for my escape, a real one, not just into a fantasy world. I perused the attic a lot, digging through the boxes until I came upon a box of old bed linens and dusty sheets. There were tons, and it came to me that I could probably link them together to create a rope depending on how old they were and how the fabric had held up over the years. I couldn’t take them all at once. I didn’t have the room or anywhere to hide them, so I decided to take them one at a time. I would take another sheet every day that my father went work, trying to find new places to store them: under the bed, on the high shelf in the closet, at the bottom of my underwear drawer. There were folded sheets everywhere you could possibly imagine. I was just waiting for the right time. I was waiting for the night I was feeling brazen enough to finally tie them into a rope and climb out that window.

It was a cold night in December when I finally tore the sheets out of their hiding places around midnight. I don’t know how my sheets I had, but I tied them all together, knotting each after about a foot. They seemed tight and sturdy, and I gave each segment a good tug to make sure the knots weren’t budging. I couldn’t risk getting halfway out the window only to have my rope give out on me and send me falling two stories into the garden, where I’d probably hurt myself and have to deal with more of my father’s punishments later.

I tied the end of my sheet rope tight to leg of my bed closest to my window, and I tossed the sheet rope into the open air, allowing it to unfurl and drape against the side of my home. I didn’t bother packing a bag this time. All I wanted was to go outside for a few minutes and feel the grass under my feet. I wanted to experience fresh air around me. I didn’t have to stay out there. I imagined that I would just shimmy down the rope, hang outside for a little bit, and then I climb my way back up. It seemed simple enough.

Then again, I hadn’t counted on the fact that I’d be attempting to climb backwards out of my window, and there was something absolutely horrifying about that. I never liked going backwards; I couldn’t see my direction, so I started to move backward through my open window with extreme caution, clinging to my rope the whole way. I moved steadily, slowly, cautiously. My palms were sweating, and I was suddenly thankful that my rope was made of fine, cotton sheets. I went a few feet down with my feet pressed to the side of my home, trying to balance my weight, but just one shift to the right sent my bed squeaking about a foot toward the window. I felt the rope begin to drop, and in a panic I scrambled back up, my hands clutching the window pane.

With a thrust, I tumbled my way back inside my room, chest heaving, brow sweating, and hands trembling. I untied the rope the bed and quickly roped the line of sheets back inside of my room and immediately tossed the jumbled mess under my bed. I’d return them to the attic tomorrow. For now, I decided to climb back into bed and try to forget. I lulled myself into sleep, feeling a familiar pressure on top of me as my body drifted to sleep, and my mind drifted off into wonderland, but my fear consumed me that night.

The world I entered in my dream was not beautiful, and it was not free. All I saw around me was fire. Everything was aflame. Embers surrounded, glowing. There was no sky, no background, just darkness. The heat felt so close to me as though if I budged from my cozy spot in the center of this mess, I’d catch fire and burn to death. There was no sound but the whistling of wind and the crackling of the flames. A path appeared before me, a straight path due north, lined only by a wall of wire about ten feet tall, and when trees began to crash and fall around me, I saw no other choice but to run forward.

I ran for what felt like miles. I was dripping sweat and panting. Everything was hot; everything was on fire. I saw the world falling to pieces, crumbling under the flames and crashing to the ground. Tears stung my eyes as the path stopped, and from a wall of flames emerged my father, dressed in a three-piece suit, staring at me with cold, blue eyes.

“Daddy,” I said, laughing with slight relief. “What’s happening? Why won’t you make the fire stop? Please make it stop.”

My father sighed and averted his gaze, tugging on the sleeves of his suit jacket to pull the ends over his wrists. “You should have stayed inside, Thalia,” he commented.

“But Dad—“ I interjected, my voice cracking in utter fear as the flames grew around us. “Dad, you’re… you’re supposed to help them, these are your people—“

“Thalia,” he sighed. “Why couldn’t you just listen? Why couldn’t you just behave? Everything would have been fine if you just behaved.”

My lips parted in shock, and I stammered a bit, not sure of what to do or what to say. Everything was collapsing around us. The homes, the buildings, and the trees were all disintegrating. The sounds of screams echoed from all around, and I covered my ears in terror. My eyes stung with tears, and a soft sob escaped my throat.

“It’s all your fault, Thalia,” my father added pointedly, finally lifted his gaze to look at me. I returned the stare, eyes fixed wide as my hands slowly fell back to my sides. “None of this would have happened if you just stayed.”

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. This couldn’t be my fault. I never wanted anyone to die. I never wanted any of this.

“No?” my father repeated, mocking me with a laugh. “Tali, you were supposed be inside, and now you’ve hurt them.” He laughed again. “You’ve killed them all, Tali. Listen to them. Can you hear them scream, Tali? Can’t you hear them?” My father’s laugh echoed through the empty space around us, above the roaring flames, mixing in with the screams that seemed to fly out of nowhere. I covered my ears again, sobbing.

“No!” I cried. “It’s not true! It can’t—“ Another flash of flame burst around my father’s figure, engulfing him as he laughed. Even as he burned, his grin glowed, heckling me. I screamed as he crumbled into ash, and I pivoted, beginning to run in the other direction, but something grabbed my ankle. I tripped, falling onto the path as the flames swarmed me. I screamed.

I shot up in my bed, sweating and gasping for air. Pinching my skin, I found relief knowing that I was awake, and nothing was on fire. Once the shock subsided, I flopped back into the mattress on my side, curling up in a ball and sobbing into my pillow. It all felt so real. My better judgment tried to remind me that it was all just a dream, but I could feel the flames, hear the screaming, and see my father laughing right in my face, telling me that this was all my fault.

London was burning, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.