Not Real. Not Imaginary.

PART THREE: NINA. [Trauma Theatre]

The lid, very lightly, sprung upwards, as if the contents were ready to spill, and I could only hope that there wouldn’t be anything viscous or gross inside.

Once the chest was open, both lights went out, and the key dematerialized from existence…thankfully not the same way it materialized. I touched my chest again. There was a slight pain lingering, just the kind of pain that would remain when you get burned.

“I really hope that doesn’t leave a mark. Cause that will be though to explain to Terry…” I said to myself, out loud, as I looked at the wooden chest, mesmerized. I was really curious about the contents, but at the same time, I didn’t want to look inside.

I definitely had to take a look inside though; I was there for that. I told Greer I would do it, and I owed it to him, to me, and to Terry.

If I was still going to be her friend and if I was considering living with her, then I had to be able to be the real me with her. I had to be true to myself to be able to exist around anyone else. It was just about time time I started to be true to myself, right?

I don’t know how much time I just looked at it while I tried to make up my mind....

I took another deep breath and shook my hand as if to get rid of all the nervousness and anxiety while I exhaled.

My fingertips placed on the top of the lid, lightly sliding all over the edge; then, I got a grip on it. I could feel my hand trembling a little bit. My whole body was trembling a little, I wasn’t sure if it was fear or excitement. Most likely, both.

I gently pulled it upwards, and opened the chest, very slowly. A voice in my head was telling me to hurry; if I was going to open it anyways, doing it so slowly was dumb. So, I hurried and hastily shoved the lid away. I gasped as I took a look at the contents.

Another key…

“Are you kidding me?!” I clicked my tongue annoyed at myself.

I had to go through quite a bit already, and I had to endure the burning pain of the materialization of a key, just to get another key, an ancient looking one, which i didn't even knew where it went to.

It couldn’t be all that the chest had in! It was very heavy when I first picked it up, and all that smoke and fog and ominous little girls and.… It just didn’t make any sense.

“I’m such a pain in my own ass…” I told myself as I reached inside to get the key. As I grabbed the iron key suddenly, the wooden chest was gone. “What the…?! well okay me!”

I was really pissed at myself right then.... The worst part of it all was, that there was nothing around. Nothing at all, the key was useless cause there was nowhere to put it in…unless….

“Not again!” I touched my chest, just on the place the other key had burned me. I looked down at it, and I could notice the ‘scar’ had the shape of a key hole. “Great…couldn’t you just be a little more forward about it and skip all the nonsense, me?!”

I reluctantly brought the key to my chest, took yet another deep breath, and sighed deeply before placing the key in, just the way I would against a lock. Surprisingly, I couldn’t feel a thing. I thought the key would find some resistance, but it went in pretty smoothly, as if there was a legitimate hole there.

As I felt the cold metal of the bottom of the key against my skin, I turned it, just as if I was opening a door, and gasped in surprised as I heard a ‘click’. Next thing, there was a ray of light before me, getting bigger, as if a door was opening.

Yet another door, another mystery….

“I didn’t even realize I was this deeply traumatized…”

I took a step in, decided to put an end to this madness. I was really angry. I couldn’t believe I would play me this way. Me! It was all my doing, this whole puzzle, or…whatever it was, I had created it…for myself.

“UGH!” There was more darkness at the other side, so I groaned loudly.

Just as I groaned, a large screen lit up before me. It was like a movie theatre, only very unsettling, since I knew I really wasn’t in one...and the room was completely empty.

It was huge, I couldn’t believe how big both, the screen and the room were. There was really no need for such dimensions, since I was the one it was for and the only one who'd be watching it. Being in such a huge place only made me feel kind of…lonely.

I took a seat at the back, right in the middle. It was the seat I would’ve picked in a regular movie theatre. So at least, I could pretend I was in a real place and maybe, ignore the unsettling loneliness creeping on me.

The countdown started, and I felt as if the dead silence that filled the room had made sure my ears were blocked so I couldn’t hear, because the sound that came next, was completely muffled to me.

The little girl from before appeared on the screen. She was crouching, crying, saying something that I could barely made out as: ‘the monster is in my room again’. And then, long, adult legs stopped next to the girl, and a hand reached down towards her. I heard a voice trying to reassure her, telling her that monsters weren’t real, and that they would go and show her that the room was empty.

The little girl took the adult’s hand, and they both walked into a door. The room was well lit, there was a small bed with white covers: it looked like a princess’ bed, elegant and…childish, full of toys. There were more toys on the ground, and there was a large window, that left all the sun light in, and the room, looked like the one a princess would have in any fantasy tale.

The adult said: ‘See? There is no monster’, and as the little girl looked around, her tiny lips were about to curl into a smile, and her sobbing almost stopped...her eyes fell on a shapeless shadow near her closet, in the only place where the sun didn’t shine so bright.

The figure reflected the terrified expression of the girl, by hundreds. As if it was formed by tiny shards of mirrors, of very dark, muddy mirrors.

“The shards…”

Greer had talked to me about them before. Now I knew what they were. Now, I could see what he was talking about. This was definitely a nightmarish creature. It didn’t really have a shape, It was just like a shadow disguised with mirrors, maybe, to reflect the outside world and be able to hide in plain sight.

But it was clear the little girl could see it. She pointed towards it crying and telling the adult that the monster was there. The adult however, started to get impatient and its tone changed; the adult started to yell at the little girl and impatiently tell her that it was her imagination, and that monsters and ghost didn’t exist. That she was a big girl, and had to act like one and be brave, leave all the child things behind.

And then the girl slowly got taller, and her hair grew, and she left the adults hand go as a second, a third, a fifth…a tenth! Shard appeared. As she kept growing, the room filled up with shards, and the adults where nowhere to be seen.

The cheerful and luminous room from before, now looked like a dungeon. Gray shades filled it as the place got packed with shards, and the girl seemed sad, she seemed scared, but not precisely from the shards.

In the background, a laughter track slowly got louder. She hugged herself, looking down, her hair fell on her face, covering it. Then, a choir of voices started to rise. ‘Here she comes again with her stupid stories, when is she going to accept that it is just pathetic how she wants attention so badly that she makes up all this stories about the ghosts in her room’, ‘Get lost weirdo, go talk with your imaginary friends’, ‘Grow up already, stop those nonsense and maybe you’ll get some friends and won’t be in here so much. To see you here all the time really gets our mood down, you look so pathetic and alone.’, ‘Stop that already and get help from a professional, normal people doesn’t hear voices and see things like that, only crazy people do’, ‘you’re crazy, get away from me!’, ‘Everybody run! Crazy Nina decided to come out to the playground today! Run before she sees you or her ‘ghosts’ will hunt you forever!’.

She covered her ears as she crouched down over her stomach and a despair scream pierced the room.

I don’t know when the tears appeared, but my cheeks were drenched, and the tears just kept rolling down. I wasn’t even making a sound. I felt extremely calm, but the tears didn’t stop.

The next image was the girl alone, in the playground, swinging sadly while there was no one around her. Behind her, a white luminous figure was barely visible, then, it moved besides her. It stayed by her side all the time, throughout every scene, as the girl grew older.

The laughter and comments slowly started to fade, as did the shards in her room, however, her room kept looking gray. In fact, now every place she visited looked gray. The only good part was the fact that the laughs and comments were now muffled, and you couldn’t understand anything, and the girl, that was now a teen, could at least…keep going, even if she had to drag herself forward.

The screen suddenly came to a blank and the lights turned on. The screen had disappeared and suddenly, I wasn’t in that movie theatre anymore. Instead, I was in a big open luminous space, and in front of me, a little girl was crying because the monsters locked her away.