Chapter Two

Chapter two of Mirrors

                        

                                                 --Chapter 2--

         Once, when I was three I stumbled across a stray dog in the quaint woods behind our secluded home. I liked to think that I didn’t know any better when I approached it; with its still tail and bared teeth, even the low growl that nearly made me wet my pants. I can’t really remember how much it hurt when its teeth tore into my arm, but I remember the blood unfortunately. Crimson stained the fallen leafs and blades of grass everywhere.

I suppose that is malicious growling and barking was enough to draw my parent out of the late nineteenth century Victorian in time. I still have the hideous scares on my shoulder and upper arm that I attempt to hide beneath the safety of long sleeves and sweaters. But the terrible sorrow that dulled the bright green of moms eyes when I sat in the hospital being poked and prodded, wrapped and stitched up, killed me because I could do nothing about it. Dad had been the only one stopping her from ripping the damn dog apart as she called it.  Though if I remember correctly he’d found it and shot it before the police got a chance to. But even the wee bit of light seized to shine anymore.

It had been a week almost since she broke down. The ride home had consisted of silence and then silent tears running down her cheeks. Dinner with Uncle George might have been awkward, since mom burrowed up in her room with a bottle of wine and The Note Book. But George and I seemed to have both been lost in our own worlds as we munched on pizza roles. He deiced to stay in town for a while, to keep an eye on the both of us.

I disturbed him; it was visible in his eyes. My mother indeed had her own ways of grieving, wine and sappy romance movies. I however made the choice to hold it in for her. I had to be the strong one, because dad appeared to always be the mortar to her bridge of sanity. I knew that if I resigned myself to the very welcoming sheets of my bed and tissue boxes that oddly seemed to fill the trash cans, it would only make it worse.

The sky was at most devoid of all color, save for the faint orange and lavender hue that still remained. I used to feel comfort when I sat alone in my attic room, gazing out into the sky through the floor to ceiling windows. But that seemed like forever ago, and comfort seemed over rated. My mom had taken the decorating into her own hands when we first moved in. I had been just two at the time. Oddly enough, mom always despised baby themes with a passion, even though I was indeed a baby.

 One wall shown with a pale orange, with the fairest trace of the glitter that I had once managed to douse it in when mom wasn’t looking. Posters of all sorts of things from, old reproduction Broadway flyers to the famous rockers all decades really, clung to it by the force of scotch tape. The three other walls were suffocated entirely in the strangest abstract, black and white circles that if one happened to stare at long enough would receive a head ache from hell.  The only thing that had really changed over the years was the addition of the diagrams of the planets from the 5^th grade science fair and the evolution of my bed.

But everything has to end sometime, and the comfort and security that it once held blew out the windows with the breeze. Because every where I looked, there was some eerie reminder of my father, the stars, the deck where most summer evenings were spent, the kitchen where he often sent mom away and took over the cooking, and even my own bedroom where he often told me stories until I faded away as a child. 

I close my eyes for a fraction of a second, the silence makes it difficult to block out the silence that bleeds through the cracks in the door that leads to the corridors. Because that silence means that mom has finally passed out from crying or just staring at the ceiling again, her face blank as paper. It feels like insects roaming over my skin and sweeping them away is inevitable. It’s a constant ringing, and suddenly I can see why so many once normal people go insane. I wasn’t sure if it was the simple fact that I could no longer hear any laughter, or hadn’t laughed myself in what felt like a century.

It was very, very unnerving to know that the house wasn’t empty yet besides the distant sound of my breathing and Lane, my companion otherwise known as a deep blue Parakeet, banging his beak against the medal wire cage bars, were the only signs of life.

 “When you were born, your dad brought a bowkay of wild daisies he picked from the hospital landscape for you and your mom. That was the fateful day we discovered you had a predicament with bees.” Luke’s deep voice caries through the door that hung ajar. Feelings of I wasn’t positive of, relief, sorrow, and joy? Over came me. “Do you remember the nurse’s face, my god? Figured she might round house kick good ole dad in the a*s she was so mad.” A barley there smile played on the corner of my lips for a second. The last time I’d received the pleasure of being humiliated in front of any watching bystander or at the very least prank by Luke had been somewhat of a year ago.

My cousins red head finally pokes through the door and his bright blue eyes survey the room for whatever reason before he ghosted in, perching on the edge of my bed. He wore his usual get up of a dark blue blazer over some graphic tee and jeans topped with orange skater shoes. “Margret, how’s she been handing all of this?” He asked all of the sudden the playful glow leaving his eyes and suddenly going from 19 to 49. The usual aura of depression that hung over house like the dark grey clouds that promised rain with a little something extra reminding me of its presence. “Well, she hasn’t landed herself in a clinic yet. And the wine seems to help.” I retorted sourly, half in attempt to lighten the mood and the other half simply out of the wish to share by less than nice mood.

“Vin,” Luke sighed and patted my head rougher that I only assumed he intended. “I’m really sorry I missed the funeral. There just so . . . depressing you know?” I narrowed my eyes at him, and just stared. Depressing? I resisted the urge to snort. He came all this way to merely related with me on how depressing my father’s funeral seemed to have been foreseen by him?

“But that’s not why I’m here. Vin, I came to warn you, though I don’t know what help it’ll be to you.” He stroked his jaw. “I was walking home on night from the convenient store; I was fresh out of smokes you see. Then I saw this old looking bag lady on the curve. Turns out she wasn’t old at all. Young actually, 17, 18 our age, red hair, real pale but the strange thing was, she was dressed like a Muslim.” I chose to ignore the icy feeling that had taken up residence in my stomach. “Did it ever acure to you that perhaps she was Muslim?”Luke shook his head slowly, and averted his eyes to the ceiling, then pressed a first to his mouth briefly.

“Have you ever heard of, um banshees?” He wrinkled his nose in saying. I clamped down firmly on the inside of my cheeks. I shook my head despite myself. “They’re rumored to be some part of Irish folklore. It’s said that they usually show up around the time someone dies. They . . . tend to scream a lot, like a siren.”

               “And . . .?” I snapped.

               “I think I saw one.”

Author's Note

Chapter two, and my apology's if a certain folklore character disturbs any of you.