In the closet wall toward the back, behind the cedar plank where Dad had the contractor install some silly safe because hethinks the criminals in this city are literate enough to look up floor plans.
It isn’t frantic. It is exploratory.
The claws must be tiny. It is a small thing, this sound. In any other house, to any other girl, it would be vermin. But to me, it feels like someone knows my name and is practicing writing it on every single surface. That they’ve made a song of it, have turned it into some cursed thing that haunts my every step, that plagues my ears and torments me.
‘Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run, see how they run.
They scatter and scratch in shadowed halls,
Whiskers twitching, as the darkness calls,
You’ll never escape when the silence falls…
Three blind mice.’
I open the closet, and the smell of cedar and wool leaps for my mouth. My eyes go straight to the left shelf, to where the mouse doll now sits.
I tell myself I am not moving toward it, that I am standing still. That the doll is not in my hand. Why should it be? I did not pick it up.
It sits, it sits, it sits….then I blink, and it is in my right hand, staring back at me.
I recoil as if burned, and nearly drop it on my foot. The weight of it is all wrong for its size. It’s heavy as a book. Its dress gives under my fingers, thin as paper that has been folded and unfolded a thousand times. The felt of its belly is rough and greasy with age. The seam in the middle bulges slightly, as if whatever is inside has shifted toward the nearest exit. The thread of the overstitched seam has loosened and I can see the darker interior fabric, a brownish gray that looks so horribly similar to the patches on my skin.
Its whiskers float an inch from my face and I smell something; lavender sachets kept too long near dust, the damp cardboard smell of basements, a sweetness that is not sugar but grain.
I put it back, carefully though. I arrange its dress where it has bunched, smooth the skirt as if it needs to be presentable for someone else. My heart is stuttering like a trapped moth. I am not afraid of toys, but this is not a toy. It belongs to the category of objects that are made to feel alive… no, that’s ridiculous. Ludicrous.
I step back, and the scratching stops.
Only, it’s such an immediate cessation that I cannot trust it.
I stand there, in the threshold of my closet with my sleeve slipping over my wrist, and I listen for the negative space a persistent sound leaves behind. I swear the quiet has pupils, that it’s looking right back at me.
No.
I am not doing this.
I am not engaging in whateverthisis.
I let out a hiss as my hand finds that unmistakable prickle under my skin once more.
I will burn this off. I will scald the itch right out of me. I will drown the fleabite suggestions in my very nerves.
I strip quickly, and the air hits my skin like a hand. The fur is more extensive already. The patch on my back now connects to the one at the base of my neck. Au naturel is not a look anyone has ever accused me of, but this is obscene.
I turn the shower to a punishing temperature. Water beats the hair down until it lies falsely flat. I let out a scream, reaching for my razor and I slice. I slice, and I slice, and I fucking slice until all that awful hair is now splattered at my feet, no longer connected to my body.
But it’s not enough. It doesn’t feel like I’ve purged enough. I shut my eyes, I stand there until all my skin turns to prune, until the water loses its torturous heat and, only then do I get out.
I rub myself down with the white towel so hard I could have sanded furniture with it. I throw the towel in the basket, and it lands with a disgusting weight.
When I step back into my room, the scratching resumes immediately, because it knows I am alone again.
I want to scream. I want to claw at my skin, to rip every single piece of flesh off my once perfect body.
A sound from downstairs, a real sound, a clattering of something in the kitchen tells me my mother is home.
