The sun is bright in my room and I bolt upright in bed and I’m in a panic because I can’t miss school, not because I love it (I hate it (and I hate almost everything and everyone there except for Stacey and few other kids and Ms Whiting is cool too, I guess) and my stomach turns into a stinging ball of pain when I’m there most days) but because I stupidly hope doing well in that awful school is my only chance, which isn’t much of a chance at all, and I have no idea what time it is and how could I have slept through my alarm? Then I look at my phone and it’s dead and I remember last night and the hallway and it seems far away and at the same time it’s still there in the room with me because the rest of the house is still and quiet even if I’m running around my room slamming drawers and putting clothes on. Why didn’t Owen wake me up? He’s usually awake before me and watching TV (the morning is pretty much his only chance to have the TV to himself) and then I make him and me breakfast with the two clean bowls and I walk him to the bus stop and it’s all fine because Dad isn’t there to yell at us or do nothing. I go out into the hallway hoping that Owen is out there waiting for me (maybe he didn’t come in to wake me up because he was afraid I’d get mad he was coming into my room when he doesn’t let me go into his), and the hallway and the house is quieter than it was last night, and I tiptoe (afraid to disturb something, and maybe I still should be asleep, like I woke up during some secret hour or time I shouldn’t see, that no one should see) into the TV room and no one is there (just empty beer cans on the floor and chip bags and sunflower seed bags on the couch) and then I dance around the big trash bags and into the kitchen and no one is there (just more trash and dish piles and open and empty cabinets), and then I go back to the hallway, our hallway and the floor near Owen’s door is clear (no broken cereal bowl, no mac ’n cheese, no shoebox) and his door is open halfway, so I walk toward it, and my stomach is in that ball of pain, and I don’t want to go in his room now that it’s open. I whisper-yell.
Owen? You still asleep?
(nothing)
It’s time to get up. We don’t want to miss school.
(nothing)
We’ll get in trouble.
(nothing)
I’m coming in. Okay?
(nothing)
I stand there, listening. Maybe I can hear Owen breathing or turning in the covers if I listen hard enough, and the weakest saddest scardest lost-est youngest part of me screams at me to go get Dad, go get Dad, but I will not, no matter what, and I shimmy through the open door, careful to not make contact with the wood (as my face passes by, I notice there’s no evidence of last night’s mac ’n cheese explosion) and I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in Owen’s room and by the looks of it, maybe it has been since Mom left, maybe it’s been for as long as he’s been alive, and I start crying because as bad as the kitchen is and the rest of the house is, his room is worse, because it smells like an unchanged hamster cage and it smells like a dead thing, and I can’t see the floor through a sea of trash and toys and torn up books and clothes and stained underwear and seeds and seeds and seeds, empty shells spit out everywhere, and half-full plastic cups and over-full cups on the windowsill and seeds and smaller seed-shaped pellets that I’m afraid aren’t seeds and are mouse poops (I’ve seen plenty of those throughout the house) and water stains on the wallpaper, and his elevated bed frame has no box spring and mattress (they must be on the floor under everything else) and there are cans of Coke on the platform where the mattress used to be and some cans are on their sides and caked in seeds and there’s one can upside down stuck in the corner of the bed frame, and I can follow the syrupy stain leading down the frame and splashed black on the walls, and I turn away and I see his closet behind me and it has no door and it’s full of trash and I see empty beer cans and maybe full ones (does Dad hide them in here? Does Owen hide them from Dad?), and I can’t possibly see it all, and now all I’m thinking is that I’m going to pull Owen out of here no matter what it takes and not let him back in this place, and then the smell again, like in the kitchen when he brought in the shoebox and last night in the hallway, and I wade through the room whispering Owen’s name, and to where I think the box spring and mattress must be underneath the pile of bedding and I pull away the blankets and it’s the shoebox but now it’s the size of the mattress and it’s the same colour with the same stains, but it can’t be the same, it can’t be, and without thinking I scream for Dad.
(nothing)
And there’s rustling inside the giant box and so I open the cover, and the cover is heavy but I can handle it and it feels wet and damp and cold, and that cold gets under the skin of my hands, and I hate touching it but I don’t let go, and inside is darkness, is all the darkness collected and saved, and way down inside I can hear noises and they are faint but I can hear the slurping, sloshing, wet noises I heard when I held the box and in the hallway last night, the dead thing noises, and I hold the cover open over my head and look down and down and down.
Owen? Are you in there?
(nothing)
Please, Owen?
(nothing)
We’ll go away, okay? We’ll run away to someplace better? We’ll be okay there.
(nothing)
We won’t get in trouble. I promise.
(nothing)
I’m coming in. Okay?
(nothing)
THE SKETCH
Alison Moore
Ailsa moved into the light. She held the drawing close to the bedroom window and studied it. She had found it inside her old portfolio case, which she had opened today for the first time since her youth. The rest of the work—a collection of self-portraits and still lifes—was familiar, recognisable as her own, but this piece—she would swear on the Bible—she had never seen before, not until just a minute ago when she had turned over an unfinished head and found this strange thing underneath.
As a girl, she’d had her heart set on art school, on nothing less than the Slade; she had hoped to become an artist, perhaps an illustrator. In the event, further education had not been a possibility, due to her mother’s illness. “You can get that idea out of your head,” her father had told her. The portfolio had been put away then and had not been opened again while her father was alive, although Ailsa had taken it with her when she married Peter, and again when they moved out of their first house and into this flat. She was supposed to have thrown things out before the move, but she had been finding it hard. In the end, she had brought much of it with her, promising Peter that she would, when she’d had a chance to think about it, keep only what was absolutely necessary; she would be brutal.