My Mind

The light bulb blinked before I turned over and laughed a morbid cackle to burst through the pipes of darkness. Tapping a finger along iron edges as I'm finding it harder to sit still in plain image. Tone raises and I stand up to the girl in the mirror, my eyes gleaming with dire choices to destroy. Legs pumping and running to the door where there I meet a cold wind chill in the blistered night, sores prodded open with a wedge of fear. Hammer and nail, madness at scale. Down the bolted path of dirt with bare feet, white dress billowing in the wind almost getting caught on branches and wires. In the valley I find my home, prancing on broken mirrors looking for the blasted key. A baby doll head with no eyes and a gaping mouth stares into the abyss of my own eyes, pleading to be seen and picked up. Abandon the hope of turning back now as blood stains the cracks in the glass, I wrap my tiny hand around the head and rips from it's rock. The sun bursts over the horizon like fireflies in rage giving a sign that I have picked up the right item. Giving way to the paper background in flame so I have to close my eyes so debris doesn't blind me with the gusts of wind that rumble and whip the glass and world around me. Then the damp sound of wood creaking and the smell of dust makes my eyes flutter open only to see orange sun beams slip in through the window of the door behind me.

Dust blanketed the air, though the white door was waiting to be opened I knew the knob would be burning hot to anyone who wasn't myself. I never wanted anyone to go into this house, not even up the winding stairs and into the other apartment, which I never lived in. White paint chipped at the seams along the crack from an unknown memory and place, maybe it had just come like that, maybe a demon tried to get in--or out. Tick, tock, open the door because when the sun sets I'll be out of time! With a shaking yet persistent hand I turned the knob and flung the door open with a jerk, stumbling over my own bloodied, dirt stained feet over the threshold. A cloud of sorrow and sudden feelings overwhelmed the very process that are my thoughts, murky water in a tea pot. Sometimes thinking of the memories that suddenly flash like trails of ghosts in the kitchen, a little girl doing dishes on a stool, the fire at the dull yellow stove burning plastic, though those memories are there the other ones are not thought about thus not remembered. To my left is a white door with rainbow handprints decorating the frame and center, laughing and perfection goes with that memory but wishing my hands still fit the shape. The door, although fond, creates a pounding mass of pure emotion in my head that I cannot explain as the keyhole begins to bleed red ink down the cracked frame.

     At first I thought of leaving the wired place, hoping to escape before rust and ravaged baby dolls littered the house, but the praying was too late as I blinked and with some sort of explosion of ash a little girl's screams pierced through a thick silence, shaking the very core that be my heart though the stone that it is cracks. I looked down at my feet and saw the baby doll with a torn dress and bruised face, blood pooling down the doll's legs as I stared into the sad expression. The clock strikes a higher setting and dongs for me to enter the room to my left, the door seems perfect in the house of Hell, a Hell I don't remember anymore but I know the place like the back of my hand. It's the wrong house, that I know, but to me and my heart this house was more of a Hell than the other one. Ashen takes a hold of my tongue, can't swallow the words I won't say, as my fingers linger on the black metal knob the cold that it is. Knees trembling and legs carrying me over the threshold, onto the blue carpet under the clouds on the sky walls. Sun speeds up and sets within seconds, ghosts spinning around with a friend in the middle of the room, a little girl drawing and looking up at some one not me with wide eyes and the memory bursts into smoke that fills my head with pain and heart with tears for something unknown. An awkward silence raids the air for a moment before a small scratching is heard to my right in the closet behind the dark wood door. I can't hear the little girl behind it but I know who it is, what color hair she has, the dim dark of her eyes or is it who I think it is? Four steps towards it and I already wanted to run back through the glass to get home, my emotions controlled the gears of this world, my thought process led the memories through this time. "Hello?" I choked out, reaching an open shaking palm to the dim handle.
     
There was no answer behind the wood but the scratching grew louder with each moment I got closer, my head pounding and heart thumping, tear ducts wishing to work. Claws at the walls, metal against metal in a time where hope does not exist. Shadow demons roam calmly through, staring me down but unseen. The moment I laid my hand down on the metal and turned it a wailing began to rumble and crumble the walls so murky, sewer smelling water streamed through the cracks and created a fast acting lake in the room. I found myself under the water, opened my eyes and only saw minimal sun beams shining through into the black water around me, there was no ground beneath me, no walls, the lake never seeming to have any ending. Luckily my brain knew where I was so my legs kicked and though it seemed to take hours I reached the surface, gasping for air that tasted of chalk and September. I pushed my hair against my head out of my face as I breathed harshly, looking around at the grass around the lake, the bare trees and scattered leaves until I locked onto a worn, white gazebo. It seemed foggy here but then again it could've just been the blinding memory of a girl that hated being seen. My breath clouded in my face as I let my arms carry me through the water, it should've been cold but it wasn't though wasn't warm either. Nothing in this world was too cold or too hot unless I let my emotions and memories run free, then a battle would begin.

It seemed like days, calm and long days, before I reached the shore which greeted me with brown, crisp leaves that stretched with cracks and jagged edges. The strength it took to pull my steel body out of the thick, black water was immense and almost impossible to scrap out of the little strength I had. My fists groped the crumbling leaves and stone grass, dirt and little pools of water as I dragged my stomach against mud until I reached thick leaves, my hair unkempt. White skin stained with smears and smudges of lake water with dull aching pain of sorrow and unreasonable torture everyone knows but me. Someday I knew I'd get out of this place but without knowing the time or the day, which week, which hour it was I could've been in here for years--yet I have. By the time my trapped being reached the bench under the gazebo the unmoving sun was hidden by clouds and fog, grey areas heading into my mind and behind my eyes. My voice trembled as I coughed and held my arms close to my chest shivering in the cold, the sky dimming even more as the something about this place that made me cringe yet cry in release. It wasn't something I could trust or confide in; though I already had without even knowing it. When the wind blew softly at my dripping wet hair I felt sick with raw emotion that I couldn't place to a memory just yet, though I was sure it involved the cold due to the small bits of snow that fell in front of my face until frost and ice blanketed the area. The lake was now white and frozen solid but I still feared to step out onto it; this place loved to play tricks on me. Even if I had the courage to stay put and ignore the white tub that sat in the middle of the ice it wouldn't explain why my legs stood up and led me to the edge, my toes touching the place where frosty grass and ice met.

     I didn't know if the ice would hold me as I stepped out onto it, knowing what had to be done and how it had to be done, exactly as I had remembered it last. Part of a recent past in which was the door I entered this world with dying passion to live here forever, to find out what everyone knows but me, to live the life I never could, to die the sick hero I so wanted to be. The tub was simple and white though filled with water, whether it was cold or hot I might never know because I felt my limbs going numb; it meant that I was going to be leaving this world soon. I slipped myself gingerly yet almost nervously into the tub making sure I was still holding onto the lip of the bath just in case this was a trick and I would get sucked into a black nothingness. The water was steaming hot and it pricked the nerves in my body with pain and soothing heat at the same time, made me smile and begin to cry at once. Within seconds I knew what I had to do, held my breath and laid my body completely under the water keeping check that I was still gripping the lip. As the sky above me became blurry with water clouds as I opened up my eyes in the stinging water it was apparent that the sky was churning in a white paint tornado showing a more dull ceiling look, bubbles rose from my nose and mouth replaced by burning water. The fingers I held around the sides tightened and flinched as I could feel myself drowning, the world making an awful hissing and popping sound like wood until I saw it collapse around the tub while my head throbbed in terrible pain.

Suddenly I flung myself in an upright position so water splashed from the trail I left behind while gasping in the fresh air that surrounded the white room of tile and steam from the bath. I gripped the shower curtain in fear for a moment with a quaking and shaking body, with sporadic almost epileptic heartbeats. The hold I had on the curtain made the plastic rip and tear as I pulled myself out of the tub and fall out onto the floor not wanting to be anywhere near the tub any longer. I listened out for a sound, maybe the padding of a cat curiously coming to see what the ruckus was or maybe the footsteps of a mother that was concerned though I knew no one was home it took me many minutes to realize I was alone. My body ached when I got up using the sink as a leverage while holding the white, clouded curtain around my torso staring intensely at the clear water in the bath.

It was then that I knew I had left my mind.