Once upon a crime.
Treasure in the grime
The four and a half lays soundless. Darkness swathes in each corner of the rosary beads of rooms. You are walking on the hallway for a quasi eternity. Every pace you do is adding nothing to your progression.
“It never gets to end!” you hear yourself nag.
From Haley’s room, not so far, the echoes of a child singing a nursery rhyme capture your attention.
You listen carefully, despite the fact that it seems not to be your daughter.
“Fwerhuh Jackhuh, Fwerhuh Jackhuh, … Doormay voo! Doormay voo!” it makes before turning into droplets of giggles. You smiles, but your heart race inside its ribs cage. You are freed, suddenly and you press on toward the source of the song hastily.
You rush to open the door, expecting the familiar furniture’s and layout. Rather, you found inside a black hole swallowing all that is around, growing considerably fast. Things, no matter the size and the weight are set in the air, attracted toward it. Even yourself. You have to hold on the door knob in order to not go that way. In the main time, the door you just opened makes that the rest of the household is flying toward this gasping toothless mouth. The song is still heard as well as the giggles.
“That is impossible, Illogical. I am dreaming. I will wake up.” You repeat, closing your eyes when you realized your moist palms have now had released the knob.
You fly through the room, shouting out your lungs to aware Caith, sleeping aside. You hear a tremor. The building itself is being eaten. Papers, coffee filters and diverse things dashes pass you. You feel them flaying your skin when they do. This force, what ever what it is, exerts a pull on them, with no exception, from the biggest to the smallest. Even the eyes shut; you can see that light in your surrounding is dimming rapidly. You concede victory to that mute and powerful adversary.
After a long moment, you think that it has last enough, you lift up one lid. You gaze a moment before opening the other. Your pupils broaden: you are back to where you started from, back in the hallway again! Only, there is no more kid singing.
You hear a hearth beating slowly, not yours. Yours is at an all different rhythm.
You approach Haley’s room again. You can’t shake away the envy to peek in it again. You do it, carefully peeping in. Yes, you could have bet, there is something else: a huge tunnel of some sort with a railing like for a train. No more pinks walls or white bed. A constant hum only perturb by water drops falling somewhere. For each, a brief sizzling noise is emitted when it gains the ground. There is a short reverberation, the particular one you have in a mine tunnel. The odor is there too, with the kind of haze hovering. You sneeze. Coal mine, like where your own dad was working. But when you decide to step inside, the black ground is nothing but a void. You got no time to grab anything.
Falling! Falling endlessly toward one unknown destination, but falling down. Falling and never touching the ground. Shouting till you wake up, all in sweat. More tired than the eve, tired like if the fall was true. So much that the destination, once you woke up, seemed to be falling into your own bed from high, very high even above the ceiling.
It takes a moment before you recognize where you are. One more before you remember what happen the eve before. You get up in a hurry, stumbling into the book you were reading to not fall asleep. One foot slide on the wrong direction, but that slight unbalance only propels you faster into your daughter's room door.
Your weight in it suffice to swing it open and you hang from the knob still when it slams into the wall behind. You kneel, panting. Nothing.
The bed is still undone like it was. You memorize all the posters position and like a maniac, you look at each of them, in case there is a sign, something telling you Haley's back. To no avail.
Under the reflection of the full moon, by the window, you see something shimmering. You stand up and once your foot leaves the thick carpet, the floor is traitorously cold under it. Someone must have left the window unclosed. By little quick pace, you come closer to the opening. Your mind is all set for the action of closing it back, so you grasp too late that your feet steps into a little puddle of water. You curse. It has rain. You cried a lot, as Caith, but this is too large to be the result of your tears. You hear something as you extend the arm, ignoring a moment the wet floor, to shut the window. You lean over to look on the side yard. You clearly perceive a sound, like a child whispering.
Suddenly, you feel some warmth spreading in your body. Something else glimmer down there, in the bushes.
Resolute to verify, although the probability of it being your daughter is firstly frightening and secondly more than unbelievable, you hurry back in the hall. You open the wardrobe there and, without taking time to dress more, you get your winter boots on and take the coat of your husband, the first falling under your hand. You are already getting down the stairs when you pull the gear on you.
In no time, you are under your child bedroom window, searching through the bushes.
A voice come from above, half-whispering. "What Are you doing down there?"
It is Caith.
You raise your head, a finger over your lips and you hush. You listen and it sound a bit like a tape recorder playing back, or an old vinyl. It light nothing into your head a moment till you understand some words out of it…
"…Si je suis meurt avant l'éveil
Prie que le Seigneur mon âme accueille.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I die before I wake,
Pray to Lord my soul to take.
Agora vou dormir,
rezo ao Senhor que guarde minha aaalll…"
As the word slow gradually, to be brought to an alt, your hand finally grabs something. Pulling out, you look astonished: It is Haley Praying doll. You look up, Caith is no more at the window. You turn back on yourself, examining thoughtfully to the treasure you found before a shadow stands in your path. You sigh, then start to cry. You know who it is. You lay in his solid arms and he hold you, crying with you. The doll is the only thing separating your breast from his chest. It is moist.
"Lets get upstairs. I forgot to dress. It is a bit cold." Your husband say, covering his naked part all he can with his hands. "I don't want to give a show to the whole neighborhood."
You open the coat you borrow, removing one sleeve so he can be covered. You and him in it. "Have you still hope?" you ask. "I do, but it is tough." He answers, rubbing your forearm like to warm you up.
You both climb the stair and the apartment interior is more than welcome when you finally steps in.
"I can't smell an other cup of coffee. I am sick of it." You declare.
Caith nods.
"We will get tea, then?"
"Please. Green tea or a Mint." You request, going back directly to bed, the half -worn coat still covering you. Your nose rest near the collar of it, extracting the odor. You brush your cheek on it and your eyes get all dreamy.
You slip into the bed still wearing it.
Your head touch the pillow and you lay there, the doll hanging from your hand toward the floor. You are not sleeping. You can't sleep. You are just in a sort of trance. You feel more than you see your man coming in at his turn. The bed moves as he perhaps seat or lay aside.
"Do you want your tea here?" He asks.
"Please…" you makes again. The doll drops on the ground and you flip on your side, getting up on one elbow. Your head is so heavy. But you can't sleep.
When you look where Caith is supposed to be, he is not there .
You stays still, wondering.
He reappears behind, in the entrance, with a tray and two smoking cups.
"Here it is. Why are you looking at me like that?" He immediately react.
"I lost bit of reality, I thought I just felt you sitting there and … I never closed my eyes. So I don't understand how come you are standing there." You answer, all mixed up.
Your husband smile. "I think we do need to sleep. We'll hear her if she knock. No need to get us sick. Who knows. She might come back in a minute, strolling down your friend duty car or she…" He stops, the tray leans sideways and he has just the time to react to prevent the cup falling off.
"You don't have to say it. It will hurt us too much. She'll come back. There is no other consequence, nothing possible beyond that. She'll come back. She has no choice, Halloween is coming up and she want to try on her costume. She wants to show it up to everyone." You claim with a lot of enthusiasm despite that feeling of emptiness dampening your life.
You beckon your spouse to draw near the bed.
"Sit and sip. We'll sleep after."
He obeys and the tray is put in between you and him. You take each a cup, drinking slowly.
The liquid effect soothe the skin by under where a moment before it was exposed to the cold night. You lay your gaze on your husband. On his neck, the vein is beating regularly. He gets only that vein so near the skin when he is stressed.
You extend your hand to stroll your fingers into his hair, one strand at the time.
He too has his eyes reddish. The lips' corners are heavily put downward. You explore him like you do of your own visage each morning since so long. That is the only thing that remind you of your age: Looking in the mirror. In the heath of the day action, if it was not for that ritual, you would had not noticed it a bit.
You conclude that, by the way he is under your careful inspection, you must also look like a wreck. Some old boat adrift without wind in the sail. You are just floating in the silence, one aside the other, drinking your tea.
Caith can't hold it, he pushes on the "sleep" button of the radio.
That piano introduction, it remind you something. You fix the radio, turning in ice. As is your husband. He hit repetitively all the buttons he can, trying to shut up "Evanescence".
When you ultimately unfroze and act, she was at singing "This wound wont seems to heal…". Your gesture is unique and precise.
"You had to hit the snooze bar, there. The big green one." You teach.
"Sorry, hon. I knew, but " He swallows, shrugging "I just panicked."
In your head, you brain make connections with a recent past. Haley is standing in the doorway, with a pencil, trying to get the tone right.
Exactly like the artist.
"I tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone…" then whining and running to play it back because she missed the modulation.
You sigh as that remembrance pass through you.
"She got quite a voice. I'll have to subscribe her for a choral group or something. She ought to learn to sing with her own voice rather than trying to imitate this signer, Celine Dion or Beth Gibbon." You state.
Caith nods to it, like if for the moment, the only thing he can do is nodding. Time flew a fraction more. The silence invade the room. You barely acknowledge when you lean back on the pillow. Not even when your husband takes your cup back. You are drifting gradually on the other side; the one where all is usually so perfect.
You fall toward an unknown destination again, endlessly.
When you let the sleep wins over you, the light was on, now that you startle back to the awareness, they are off. You glance at the clock. You slept a mere one hour. You toss a bit left and right.
Caith is snoring. You extend your hand over his nose, blocking it a short moment. Then you release it, with a sigh of relief.
"That's better." You whisper, hugging him and placing your knees near his, your breast near his back. Your lips draw a satisfied smile on your face. Caith barely respond to your chilly feet touching his legs. Just a bit of mumbling.
Your eyes stare the wall through the angle of his neck and shoulder. You breathe on his skin. One of his hand hold on your arm, squeezing it like the linen. You wrap around him.
You give quite a war to the slumber assaulting you. But eventually, you must have slipped in it again. You hear Haley.
"Maataa!Daddy! Look at me!" she is calling,happyly.
And you are no more in your room, but in a field, pulling on a kite cord and laughing like the Summer that just went. Taggard and Caith are fishing fishes and you are with Haley, fishing clouds. Everything is alright, everything is fine. Nothing bad can happen. Both of your feet stand up in heaven.
Word Count=2265