The Walls

The walls we put up always end up crashing upon us.

I could sense her crawling on the walls, her long black nails shredding the oak that I had built with my own hands. I shuddered at the thought of her, knowing her body was emaciated and grey from rotting for years. As I tried to sleep and ignore her wails from inside the walls, I turned over on my pillow to see a body laying next to me; my own, freshly dead with a rancid stench of decay. I sprung up in confusion, for I knew that I was still alive. As I turned to run out of the room, hoping a bad dream had plagued me, I felt nails dig into my ankle, long and sharp. I yelped in pain as I fell down the stairs, thrashing my head against the walls and landing in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Each wall was made of wood, and outside of these walls I had made walls of stone and brick to keep those hunting me away. An impenetrable structure so I thought, but this one managed to slip through and latch on to me. As I kicked her body viciously, desperately trying to detach her body from mine, she looked up at me and smiled a rotted grin. I recognized her immediately; the girl I had run into years ago at the bar, who I drove home drunker than I’d ever been. According to my mom, I wrecked the car and not only paralyzed myself from the neck down, but brutally killed her in a crash on the highway. I can’t remember when I heard my mom telling me this, but I do know that I’ve been distant for a long time. I’ve put up walls, more walls than I’ve ever had, to cope with what I did to her. After I left the hospital and went home I could hear her every night, scratching the walls I built and groaning in pain. Maybe I deserve to live in this hell. Maybe I deserve to stay in this fantasy of mine where she can’t hurt me. I haven’t talked to my mother since the night of that crash. Why haven’t I talked to her since the night of that crash?
Why?
Why?
Why can’t I seem to remember what happened to me?
Just minutes ago I was asleep, you see
And I could hear her in the walls, her screams so dead
As I felt my body shake, abundant with dread
Her long black claws
Cut holes in my head
And I was paralyzed now
Can’t you see?
There’s no more walls
Left to protect me
And my mother she cries
Begging me to come back
But I’ve been dead for a long time
Comatose, yet intact
She holds onto hope
That I will return
But she has caught up to me
The one most taciturn
And her claws broke the walls
I put in place
And now my mother is left
With but a person of waste

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

And to think, before I read this one, I had every expectation of having a good night's sleep.