The Secrets That Haunt Us

Chapter 1-2

Dangling off a precipice, held up only by an invisible string tied to the ether, that’s where I am. Unsure when that moment will come when the string won’t hold me anymore. Home, trying to be normal – clearing away the remnants of salt on the table where the vinegar-soaked chip paper let it linger and stick to the table; dust a bit; wash up; wash and wash and wash – and no one notices anything I’m doing because it’s ridiculous and I’m alone, and there’s no one to see as I chase shadows across the wall – something that was never meant to be there, should never be meant… But it was; meant with all my heart. And it – it’s lost.

I’m pleased with my finished story. No one knows I’m writing them again. The trapped bird. The one about me. Trapped, and walking around my cage, clipped feathers and numbness, without a soul. Because he took mine and implanted the image of his own there. He etched himself deep into me and filled me up.

Now foreign matter invades my belly.

A full soul, how lovely that would be! Tying me with bows and ribbons to him. A clean, tight bow; I tie it in a double knot so it won’t come undone, just as Dad said. But that invisible string, it’s too fragile, too weak to last and to hold me. Yet I still dangle over this precipice, washing and washing, waiting for this string to snap, to choose for me. To snap for me and let me fall into oblivion. Why can’t I untie the bow and slide the ribbon off my heart? And then I remember – the double knot. That tightness around my surrogate soul, so that it can never come loose. It tightens and tightens as I scrub it to keep it pure. It pulls tighter, tighter. I can’t breathe.

What’s that I feel suffocating me now? Something else wrapping, entrapping the remnants of what used to be me. My hips, squeezed, crushed; then down, down, probing, searching, over my sore skin. Unlocking my protective layer, seducing a way inside. A snake! Tricking. A trickster, sliding, sliming, coercing his own transgressions onto me. Trying to make me abandon my chance of falling. Too late, too late – this Eve has already fallen. Leave me alone! I’ll scream.