O brave new world

Untitled Part 3

I wake up gasping, a silent scream on my lips. My throat is dry, every breath hurts. Everything hurts. My brain is running a hundred miles an hour, sending me terrifying images that flash by too quickly for me to process. Stop! I want to shout, but it’s running to fast and I can’t keep up. Slow down! I beg, beginning to feel woozy on top of being terrified, but my brain just speeds up. The images are getting brighter, suffocating me. I scream and it hurts, oh how it hurts.

I need something to drink.

With a push I force myself out of bed, making sure to hit my head a few times in the hope that its race will stop. It helps. A little bit.

I pull myself to my feet and push myself along the wall. My head is turning and I’m swaying the first few steps, but then my head slowly clears and I can see again. Hear again. Think again.

My body hurts. My throat is pure agony, but the rest of me doesn’t seem to be doing much better. Like I was in a fight last night, though I wouldn’t know with whom. My mother is locked in her room, and no one else is in the house.

With a rattling breath I push myself into the hall and pad to the bathroom. I turn on the water, wait until it is lukewarm and then drip some into my mouth. It tastes disgusting, water should never be drank lukewarm, but I know anything else would just make my throat worse. And I should know. Every morning is like this. Every morning is torture, and I don’t want to think about the nights. I’d rather just not go to sleep, but my body doesn’t seem to get it. I whish it would.

Once my throat feels slightly better, I’ve cleaned up and put some clothes on, I wander downstairs. My mother is locked up and won’t be coming back for days – there’s no one to tell me what to do. So I wander over to the window next to the front door and look out.

Our house is at the end of a small, quiet neighborhood tucked into a forest. The lot next to ours is empty and the road twists out of sight pretty quickly, but I can still make out the house after it.

It’s a one story, brick, ranch style house with a small room over their big garage. Sometimes I’d see light coming from that window until late at night, long after all the other lights in the house had gone out. I imagine that the son in the family lives there – don’t teenagers like their privacy? The son would be in high school, and one of the two cars the family kept in that garage would be his. He’s tall, has brown hair and wears glasses, from what I had been able to see. I had decided he must be popular – there are always a bunch of guys hanging out with him. His little sister seems to have fewer friends. She, too, has brown hair, just like their mother, and wears glasses. I don’t really know much about her – she normally leaves in the morning and comes back late in the evening. I wonder what she does all day. The last person in the family is the mom; I have never seen a father. Oh, and they have a dog. Someday, when I leave this house, I would have a dog just like theirs. I was pretty sure it was a golden retriever, and it was like the cutest thing I had ever seen.

I watch the house when my mother isn’t around to yell at me. She thinks that watching people will make me want to go outside. And I do, I always have. But she says that it is dangerous out there, that murders and rapists and kidnappers and other shady figures populate its streets. She should know. She’s been there. She’s gotten hurt.

I don’t remember when I figured out exactly how she had been hurt. It wasn’t that hard. I mean, there’s only my mother. And me. Kind of obvious who’s missing. And he should be. Then the way my mother would always carry around pepper spray, how she told me what to do if a man ever got near me, how she put me on the pill the moment I was old enough. She has always insisted that I stay innocent, that she would do anything – even go out there and risk getting hurt again – to keep me safe. She’s a good mother.

But the outside calls to me; beckons to me like siren, weaving enchanting tales of sunshine and fun. I want to go out there desperately, just be there for one hour so that I will know what it’s like. Then I can die happy. Then I can come back inside and never want to do such a dangerous thing again. I’m sure of it.

My mother thinks that the moment I put one foot out the door the sirens will lure me away from her. She doesn’t believe that I am strong enough to resist them, no matter how often I reassure her. And so I’m trapped behind glass, only being able to look, to long. I’m trapped in the tower by my mother, and there will never be a prince that can come rescue me when I let my hair down because the windows don’t open. And neither do the doors.

The boy takes his dog on a walk, coming closer to my house. He tosses a ball around in the empty lot. I giggle as I see the dog’s playful antics – how he rolls over and chases his tail around and around and around. And I’m amazed every time at how high he can jump; how he can time himself just right and catch the ball leaping through the air.

One day, I promise myself, one day I will go out, and I will meet that dog. I will pet him and find out if his fur is as soft as it looks. I will be the one that tosses the ball around. I might even introduce myself to the boy first – I mean, I’d have to ask him if I could borrow his dog for a while. Boys in high school aren’t rapists. Right?

And then, one day, I will run across that lot together with that dog, and I’ll feel the grass tickle my toes. I’ll feel the wind play with my hair. I’ll learn how to climb a tree. I’ll go to a real store and buy something, just for the fun of it, I’ll go visit a school, I’ll get a job, I’ll find a friend, I’ll go to college, I’ll find someone who can paint and capture the sunset for me.

But until that day comes, I will be here. Behind glass. I’m the little kid pressing its nose against the window of the toy store, making its wish list even though it knows it won’t ever get them. I am the princess in the glass tower. I’m the prisoner behind glass. I am Sang Sorenson.

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