I Am Iris

Chapter Ten: You Can Be My Puppet

At some point in the apartment building I had dropped the animal crackers, but I didn't care. Eating could wait.

"Moth? Moth?!" I called as I scampered into our apartment. My tone was tainted with desperation with an unknown cause.

Something was wrong. I could feel it. Moth said she'd get out of bed today... So where is she? Why isn't she answering?

She promised.

I felt for the light switch, but when I flicked it nothing happened. Everything was black. I was surrounded by a cold and aphotic room. I couldn't see anything at all. Moth could be standing right beside me, smiling in a golden gown, and I wouldn't even know it. I tried the light switch once again, but it was unsuccessful. I tried a lamp, but that didn't work either. Then, I remembered. Silly me. The bills hadn't been paid. But that's all going to change.

Moth promised.

"Moth, are you sleeping?" I pressed. "You promised!" I croaked.

I stumbled towards Moth's bedroom, gripping the wall for guidance. My hand searched until it held a door knob. I didn't close the door, did I? Moth did get up.

Moth kept her promise.

I pushed the door and, with a long creak, the bedroom lay before me. I hopped over onto where I remembered Moth's bed to be. I was kneeling on a collage of fabric, but that was all I felt. Where was she?

My eyes were beginning to adjust now. I could see a thick rug beside the bed. I could see a heart shaped pillow near my feet. I could see a crooked calendar hanging from the wall.

Then, my heart jutted to a sudden stop, my breathes escaped broken, and tremors crawled up my spine like spiders. Every inch of my body was shaking violently.

Moth's body was laying motionless and awkward on the ground.

I collapsed to the floor with the grace of a falling skyscraper. I thrusted the feather boa off of where it was knotted around the head of the bed. I could barely see what I was doing through the watery haze in my eyes, but I managed it with clumsy fingers. It was harder, though, removing it from its tight grip around Moth's frail neck, that was badly bruised and significantly darker than her natural pigment.

My quivering fingers freed my mother with one last, yet shockingly nimble movement, and then tossed the thing aside.

I gripped Moth's wrist so hard my fingers ached as I felt for her pulse. There was nothing. It was still. As still as the ocean's waves on a windy day, leaving you both expectant and mystified.

I pressed my white hand limply above her heart. My head buried into her chest and I let her hair fall protectively over my small figure. My hands clung desperately at her back, but throughout the whole time, she was dormant.

"You promised me you'd get up- that you'd try." My voice cracked. "But you didn't!"

Without hesitation, I grabbed the boa and ripped it to shreds. Feathers floated lazily through the air around us. When the last feather escaped my grip, my head fell to the hard floor all on its own. This is what it feels like to shut down, I realized. This is what it feels like to care.

I cried. I cried for the first time in ten years. Sobs emerged from deep within me, feeling so familiar, yet as if they were still strangers. Tears flooded from my eyes with such force and speed it almost amazed me- but not quite.

"You- you didn't keep your promise. You left me!" I choked out in a raspy, broken voice that I don't think even seemed belong to me.

I pulled at strands of my white hair and fidgeted around and around again. No matter where I was, it still hurt. I bit at the tips of my fingers, clawed at my arms, and I beat my head onto the hard floor. I could still feel the pain. It was impossible to override, to replace, to forget.