The Deep

Her great grandmother's house was falling apart, sure. Unraveling, even; the outside looked as if it had been abandoned for years. Still, she climbed the rotten steps of worn wood on what seemed like the dreariest sunny afternoon there has ever been.

Dust clung to the window panes on the door. She wiped away the first layer, taking no notice of the sickly gray particles that her fingertips collected. Dust still clouded the inside, so nothing was visible.

She came because she closed herself completely off from everyone when she encountered a stressful situation. She came because she could no longer hold their pitiful glances or tolerate their seemingly pointed whispers. She hated everything about funerals. The living always made her angry, and the dead always rendered her emotionally helpless. She ran; that was all she could do, all she ever did. To immerse herself in the people she'd lost and to reconnect with her family, she'd come here... But now she found herself on the aluminum threshold (after a bit of lock-jiggling), and staring into a pit.

Confusion was her first feeling. Utter bewilderment wracked her small frame as her eyes scoured the bare house, then the chasm, then she repeated the process again, paralyzed, until her subconscious suspicions became her overt rage.

In a passionate outburst that she scarcely remembered later, she yanked at any objects that found her hands first, whether they be blunt objects or odd edges, and threw them, furiously, behind her in one smooth motion. She grabbed and ripped until she nearly fell into the crater herself. When the potent animosity had run its course, she regained logic and function sitting on the edge of the abyss with bloody hands, pricked fingers, splinters poking into her at odd angles, and legs dangling precariously. Yet the newfound relief all at once was welcomed by her desolate, ragged spirit. A tantrum always seemed typically to be her quick fix and the gateway to fleeting resolution.