Through Glass(22)

However one escaped my purge and built a web in the filthy bathroom at the top of the stairs and, in one day, the flies were gone from the room.

So I stopped battling them and, before too long, the maggots, flies, wasps and gnats that had been plaguing me were gone, left to be someone else’s dinner. So the spiders stayed.

I still had rats to deal with, but they mostly kept to themselves and there was nothing I could do about that.

It had taken me some time to get used to the cobwebs and the wispy nets that they would build in the most inconvenient of places. You couldn’t see them with so little light to reflect off the shimmering surface. More than once I walked into a bug covered trap, yet I was no longer pestered by so many other bugs and so the spiders would stay.

Webs and all.

I smiled at Frances again as she went back to her hunt, my mind back to the stink that was protruding from the packet I had emptied into my already filthy bowl.

The smell of rot reached my nose and I cringed, hating the idea of even putting a spoonful of the vile tasting sludge into my mouth.

The gruel was as black as everything else. The taste as bitter as it looked.

At first I had refused to eat it, convinced it was poison or something worse. However, after a week of starvation, Cohen had begged me to eat, promising to show me one of his pieces if I so much as took a bite, so I did.

It was as gross and gritty as I had expected, but the painting made up for it. The first real piece of Cohen’s art that I would see through the darkness across the gap.

It was me, sitting in my window sill and wearing green. He had been painting me that day, but I didn’t look like a leprechaun. I looked beautiful. That one painting still sat right by the window where I could see it every day if I wanted. A memory of that last perfect week.

I shook my head, willing the memory out and took another bite of mush. My face screwing up at the disgusting taste.

I tried to ignore the flavor, willing it to be something better. Waffles with strawberries, that’s what I was really eating. Fluffy bread, the too sweet berries… I could almost remember how it used to taste. I could almost trick myself into believing that was what I was really putting in my mouth. Almost.

The gruel was all I had and I ate it, day after day. The bitter taste and the texture of dirt were almost nothing to me now.

“Sometimes, I think you are onto something, Frances,” I mumbled as I cleared the bowl, setting the once white china upside down on the counter, wishing there was a way to wash it.

“Maybe bugs are the way to go.”

I trudged back up the stairs, wondering if it was Tuesday and I could take a shower, but I hadn’t heard the bell this morning. My water wouldn’t be turned on for another few days, so I had to be content to go and spend the rest of the day in my bedroom, one of the only rooms that the Ulama hadn’t really touched.

They had ransacked everything. Everything except my room and my brothers. I had searched through the house in the beginning; looking for food, weapons, or anything to make light, but they had taken almost everything.

They had taken the light up toys from my brothers’ room and smashed every battery operated object they could find. They had taken the food, smashed every light bulb. I had searched for weeks, yet found nothing useful.

I think that’s when I knew that nothing was going to change. I still held onto the little glimmer of hope, but overall, no. Nothing would change. I had closed the doors and vowed never to return to the bedrooms. They were sacred ground now.

I walked into my room and looked around, grateful that this room had been mostly untouched. The bed was still in one piece, the sheets so dirty from lack of washing you could see the perfect imprint of my body. My desk still stood under the window, the dark curtain pulled over the glass so as to keep me hidden as well as to keep the noise dampened.

Almost everything was the same. Except for one thing.

I had covered my walls with my life. What was once painted a sunny yellow was now covered with every picture of my family I had been able to scavenge out of my destroyed house.

From every inch of my wall my family smiled down at me; my mother, my father, all four of my brothers and scattered amongst them were pictures of Cohen and I through the years. I had pulled the pictures from frames, from albums and every other place I had found them in an attempt to fill my walls. I had ripped faces out of other pictures; the jagged edge of the pictures the only white that remained in my world.

I could lay down in my bed in the small sanctuary I had built, look at the smiles and pretend I wasn’t alone. I had only placed the smiling pictures on the wall, not the ones of angry brothers or scowling mothers.

Only the smiles.

I fell down onto my bed, my body protesting the exertion of the small amount of energy I had saved up by going down for breakfast. I kept the groan inside my throat as I turned to face the picture of Cohen and I that I had placed right at eye level. The picture was one from his high school graduation. He was smiling at the camera as he held me against him, both of our grins wide and cheesy.

I raised my hand to touch the photo, my fingers hovering above it as I pretended to touch his face. I kept them there, away from the surface, not letting my gritty skin come in contact with the precious picture. As much as I wanted to hold the picture, to press it against my chest and run my fingers over the surface, I didn’t want to ruin it. I didn’t want to lose the memory.

Everything tightened inside of me as I looked at it. Cohen’s hand was against my arm, his other wrapped around my shoulder. We both grinned widely as someone—my mom, I think—took the picture.