Haunted House

She was always there. She was always in that room. That damned, grubby, hazy, little room. She used to imagine herself as the ghost who haunted it. The room of little ghost girls. Only she was the only ghost there. Why were there scratch marks on the doorframe? She hadn’t done that, had she? Dove looked down at her nails, now. Dried blood. But no, she must’ve imagined it. She was sitting in the warmth of a kitchen. It wasn’t hers. She didn’t really own much of anything, Dove Burton. A quiet, orange seeped into the walls. There was a spotted white and blue teapot which reminded her of a mushroom. She’d heard a story about a girl the size of a mushroom once. Where had she heard that? It was all in her head, in the end. Nothing was real.

He’d read her that one. Underneath those creaking planks. Hidden away. Dove didn’t like remembering his voice. What he sounded like. It was like nothing else on this earth. It scratched at the walls of her mind, the darkness infecting her bloodstream. She sat there, eyes on the teapot for another hour. But, she wasn’t looking at what was in front of her. She was looking at what she always did. Him.

She was always in that room. She’d never left. Had Dove Burton ever really existed before that place? Before that man? Before she was taken. Ripped from childhood. Like a doll’s arms, hours and hours of sewing that fine stitchwork to have it unravel and torn apart so easily. She’d only ever had one doll. He didn’t allow her much. No mirrors either. Who is this 24-year-old woman that sits up in the kitchen she doesn’t belong in, until the embers of a red fire burns to black ash? Until the smoke withers to nothing? Dove never notices. She’s never there.

Did the others see the shadows and ghosts that ravaged her mind? Did they see the horrors beneath her eyes? Why Dove Burton was nothing more than a wisp. Did they see that?

Of course they did. But how do you purge a house of a ghost, when the house itself is the one who does the haunting? He is always there.

That man. He is the flinch that freezes the gentle hands which mean no harm. He is the freezing cold kitchen at night. He is the door which cannot be closed. He is the dullness in her eyes. He is the scars on her skin, and by far, the scars burnt inside.

There are fleeting moments. When she feels rain on her skin, after years of confinement. The melting sunrise lingering on her face, the happy flowers who blossom outside her window. The temporary feeling of what it is to be safe, when she is nothing more than a bundle of blankets in a warm bed. When she was freed. When Dove left that damned room. She was told she would never see him again. He was the one behind bars now. Scraping on a forever locked door. Fingernails bleeding.

But how do they stop him from visiting her dreams? Those hands are still on her. She can feel it, she can feel him, he’s still there, and Oh God, he’s in her room, she’s in that room, she’s back in that room, and she can hear him, God, she never left, she never left, she’s still there and-

But no. No matter how hard he tries, she still wakes to the flowers outside her window. Knitted orange, and red quilts cover her. He cannot get her anymore. She left that room 3 years ago.

There was a new doll stitched on her bed. People find fixing up inanimate objects easier than living things. There is no pain to be felt, is there? No recovery needed. Dove doesn’t need a new button on her eye, she needs those gentle hands to be put inside her brain. Wash away the dirt, make me new, sew me up, make me better.

It had been like this for three years. She was always in that room. She never had a way out. She could not forget the pain. She could not scratch off the skin he had burnt with his fingertips. But there were ways now. Dove drank and smoked, and ran, and sat, and cried, and slept, and tried to see how long she could stay in the cold bathwater for, where it was so quiet, and sleepy, and all she had to focus on was holding her breath, and how dark it was, and there were no voices, and there were no sounds, and everything was getting darker and she burned, and there was nothing only the water, and she was slipping away, and there was only numbness, water filled her head, and she was slipping , and falling, and there was nothing left, there was nothing, no breathing, no air, no life, no prison, a touch of death.

And there were hands on her again, desperate, pressing, searching. But Dove Burton didn’t feel these hands. She didn’t feel anything.

She was finally out of his room.

That damned room.