The House

The house has rules.

Speak soft. Don’t run. There are rooms you never enter, even though the doors stay unlocked. Through the cracks every surface is dusty with stillness.

One door leads nowhere. One step through sends you plummeting to plush orange carpet ten feet below. Never listen to the voice that tells you to open it.

There are children in the bathroom, and they like to play. But they don’t leave the bathroom. At night their laughs turn to screams and water splashes.

A woman lives in the house. She wears a pretty blue dress and long dark braids loop around her ears, and she shows the girl around with pride.

She is not afraid, so the girl isn’t, either.

At the bottom of the hill there’s a pond. The water is crystal clear. Fjian ocean blue. It’s not for swimming. But it’s oh-so-tempting to jump.

When they turn back the windows fill with flames and smoke chokes the cornflower sky. The woman grabs her hand and runs up the hill. The flames are gone when they reach the top, and the air is clear.

The woman laughs, so the girl does, too.

She sleeps on a cot on the kitchen table. Cluttered by books, newspapers, non-perishables. Furniture piles high on every wall and window. It’s no wonder it’s so sparse everywhere else. The girl sleeps with her while the house shakes around them.

She learns to block out the voices. Block out everything she’s not supposed to hear. Until it’s just her and the woman in blue and sometimes the children.

Her reflection in the mirror turns gaunt and pale. Bruise-stains creep darker under her eyes day by day and she shrinks.

“You know I have to go.” she tells the woman.

“But I want you to stay.”

The girl looks out the window down the long driveway. Her gaze is drawn back to the woman. “Okay.”

The house has rules.

And you’d do well to follow them.