Extraordinary Sickness (on hold)

c h a p t e r . e i g h t e e n

Suddenly I was running. I was running through a vortex of familiarity, which was eerie and distantly sweet all at the same time.

Apartments and houses like building blocks scattered the dingy town. I was wandering through this picture that I pulled out from the cardboard boxes in my mind, and everything was covered with a layer of dust. I hardly recognised it as my own. I supposed that when your home is so unrecognizable that your bones grow apart from it, it isn't your home anymore.

The sidewalk was crumbling like a century old cake. The road was sporting an unshaven face of greenery. Sprigs of green exploded from the ground like angsty pimples.

Everything was growing up, with me removed from the picture.

The brittle trees quaked in their roots, numb to the chilly air that hardened my skin. I realised that they were the only occupants of the neighbourhood, trees. No one else seemed to be shuffling around.

There wasn't much difference between us and the trees anyways. We sat in our roots and drank up whatever light that could be deemed consumable. Our branches rarely brushed each other's. The nutrients we absorbed were rarely shared.

I wandered deeper into the quieter part of the city, eventually coming to my block. The apartment building loomed up ahead, not unwelcoming but certainly not friendly. The dark bricks and darker windows almost seemed to glare at me.

Once inside the building, I climbed over my abandoned bike to crawl up the stairs. Dust exploded from my feet as they always did, and my nose filled with the lovely scent of stale dirt.

My heart was racing. It quite literally felt as though the pulsing organ functioning within my chest had taken leave, jumping out of my body and sprinting down the street. It was cold, clammy and painful. I couldn't believe that I was that out of shape however, and only then did I realise the fatal weight of my anxiety.

On the fifth floor, I tumbled up to the door that was a sight for sore eyes. I pounded on it the way the bakers pound on bread. I took in a deep breath to try to gather myself, and smoothed down my sweatshirt.

"Mrs Smith? Mrs Smith, are you in there?" I called, desperate to see the beautiful black face of the old woman.

She wasn't coming.

I grew impatient with waiting, and bounded up the next set of stairs. I rushed to the front door and didn't wait a moment as I barged the door open.

It all happened so fast.

The whole room was trashed. My mother's papers abandoned on the floor, like they were pieces of a puzzle that somebody got up and walked away from. The chairs were flipped and the rug curled back like it was a band aid barely clinging to an open wound.

I stepped in and peered closer into the living room. The boards I had worked so hard in hanging up over the windows were pried loose, letting the pale light to spill in like a gasous milk. Gross. It all disgusted me.

The typewriter sat  in the thick of it, in its shards and broken metal pieces. It was the king, the center, the pulse of the destruction of my home.

The muscles in my stomach tightened and I thought that they would wrench themselves out of my body.

"Mom?" I shouted, raiding the rest of the house. I wildly searched each room over and over, calling and eventually screaming  their names.

It was no use. I didn't know why I was lingering for so long.

It was no use.

The air was colder on my bike. It froze the dampness from my tears onto my face, so it was like I was wearing a mask of my sorrows. My bike was okay though.The wheels needed to be pumped up a little bit, but it felt just like before. It was just like cycling through a cemetery, even if  the ghosts were gone.