I wrap a thick robe around myself and race down, feeling for the first time in what must be forever that I need someone else around me, I need another human being.
The kitchen’s stark marble gleams as I walk in.
Mom’s face appears behind a grocery bag, and she starts unpacking all the items one by one while I remind myself that we’re not those kinds of people. We don’t do hugs. We don’t do pep talks. Emotions are for the weak, at least, pathetic ones like fear and longing are.
“Did you know that girl, the one from the video? What’s her name, May?” She asks.
“Maya.” I correct and then shrug. “She’s a nobody.”
“She is now.” My mother smirks before looking up from her purchases to my face. I know she’s not concerned about what happened, only that if I was involved, there are no consequences for me. Afterall, she brought me up to be a mean girl, a bitch. She carved me into this ice-like image of herself, and she revels in my viciousness as much as I do.
Her eyes skim over me the way some do a prized piece of art. She’s looking for flaws, things that need fixing. Beneath my skin,something flexes so quickly it’s gone before I can acknowledge it, but I know she doesn’t see the fur. I know it’s all gone.
And gone for fucking good this time.
“Dad?” I ask.
“Dinner with clients. I might go to Pilates at seven if I can get into a class,” she says, which is code for I will be there but also not in any meaningful way. “You’re sure you’re okay? You seem?—”
“Tired,” I say. “It’s been a day.”
“You know, sweetie, if you need to talk about anything…” Her hand makes a little circle, a charade of a word she doesn’t want to say because acknowledging awful things is not refined.
“We weren’t friends.” I say, voice flat as a runway. “And I’m fine.”
She nods back, nice and respectful.
Ilie in bed with the lights off.
Dinner was hours ago and yet, I feel hungry. No, not hungry, ravenous.
The scratching is a metronome now. Not constant, but constant enough that it becomes my new normal, with the tambour like a memory of a heartbeat.
I keep waiting for it to become narrative, to scrape in a discernible rhythm, a promise to turn into words.
I should be able to sleep. People sleep in far worse conditions. Some have to sleep with the sounds of sirens and city noise right outside their windows all day and night, and yet I can’t stop my brain from focusing on it.
My windows are double-paned. The air hums.
The monster under my bed is polite, and remains inside the wall.
When I close my eyes, it moves closer. It is psychological, obviously. I am doing this to myself. This is the content of my character leaking out of my ears.
Fine.
I can weaponize that like anything else.
I will not give this sound my full attention, because fear is fed like a child.
I think about the school prom, about how I will arrange my hair and how I will choose my next victim now that Maya has been adequately dealt with. I count, not sheep because that is exactly the wrong animal right now, but steps down the main staircase. I am at twenty-two when I stop counting because I realize with horror that my hand is on something. Touching something.
My eyes snap open, but I’m too frozen in fear to move.
The doll is on my chest. The doll is on my fucking chest.
The weight of it pins me as surely as any intruder. Its whiskers brush my chin, and the irritant of them is so shocking and precise it makes me gag. My arms are by my sides, as if I arranged myself ready for a coffin. I cannot remember getting up, I cannot remember opening the closet. I cannot remember walking through the rectangle frame of the door at all.
I know I didn’t do this, I didn’t put this doll here.
