Through Glass(24)

“Can I see it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Not until your birthday,” he scolded, his face a playful jest of parental wisdom.

I smiled widely at the odd way the look contorted his face while covering my mouth in an attempt to keep the laugh inside.

Laughing was too loud, laughing was dangerous. The first time I had laughed after the blackness came, the sound of death had rung through the air in warning and the noise had caught in my chest. It was the last time I had laughed.

Do not make noise.

I knew it was all in an attempt to stifle joy, but I could find joy even without laughing. Although that joy did hurt sometimes.

“I wish I could hear your laugh again,” Cohen signed, a look of joy on his face that took my breath away.

I pressed my hand against the glass, my forehead resting on the cold pane as I looked at him, my eyes meeting his.

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t be able to hear me. He smiled as he read my lips, the old nursery rhyme ringing true yet again.

“I would ride right to you,” Cohen signed back as he winked at me. The small gesture sent my heart into a comfortable rhythm that I remembered all too well.

“I would let you.”

He smiled and pressed his forehead against his window, his eyes looking right into mine from across the gap.

We stared at each other for minutes, hours, days; who knew. Time had no meaning anymore. We merely looked; each lost in our own memories, our own fantasies.

Our own wishes.





It had been three days since I had used the last of the food and still they had not come. They had been late before, but not like this. Cohen still had some of the brown packets left, but there was no way for him to get them to me. So I had gotten weaker and weaker as my body resorted to eating itself. My already emaciated body didn’t offer much in the form of nourishment, though.

Everything inside of me hurt; my abdomen ached and throbbed. The dull pulse of hunger had moved into my joints and what remained of my muscle tissue the longer I went without food.

I moved aside another pile of trash, hoping to find something, anything, to eat. I had known it was hopeless before I even came down here. Anything that I would find would be two-years-old and, besides, anything that would have been left would have been carried away by the rats before they had moved on.

It was pointless, but I was desperate. The pain in my stomach grew and I winced, the air hissing through my teeth as I tried to cope with the pain.

I pushed through the trash pile that spilled its way out of the refrigerator, trying to ignore the occasional graduation announcements that were piled with the rubbish.

Bills, pictures, rubber bands, screwdrivers. Random things that were all useless to me. I pushed them aside, my vision fading as I searched, my head spinning with each movement.

I had searched each pile of rubbish one by one as I became more and more desperate for food, finding less and less. Now, I was at the last pile. At least, what I thought to be the last pile. I may have lost count, but I wasn’t going to start over.

It would be a miracle if I didn’t fall over right now.

I pushed another large pile of wrinkled invitations aside, letting my fingers trace the letters of my parents’ names for a moment before throwing it into the heap of junk I had already sorted through.

The invitation fell down amongst the others and I couldn’t help smiling at the memory of Cohen sitting at my counter. The touch of his lips. My smile grew as the memory came back strong, surprise filling me at how vivid it felt; as if it had only happened yesterday. It took the pain in my stomach away for only a moment, the swoop of joy replacing it.

“Cohen,” I whispered his name aloud, not knowing why. Was it a farewell? Was it a plea? A call to the memory?

His name was like warm honey on my lips, the flavor as foreign to me as he was in many ways. I saw him every day, yet it wasn’t the same. The touch and the taste of him was as distant as the sunlight now. At least his memories were stronger than the others.

I moved away from the pile, my body heavy and pained, to push my back against the kitchen island while hundreds of old spider webs fell around me as I collapsed against the wood paneling. I pushed the cobwebs out of the way, letting the sticky things fall over my clothing and attach themselves to my skin.

Two years of confinement in this house, of trying to find a way to fight back, of being trapped, and this is how it was going to end? Starving to death in my own kitchen.

The irony was not lost on me.

I suppose it was better this way than turned to ash. It was still a victory over them. The thought brought a smile to my lips, the need to laugh coming on strong. I wanted to let one good guffaw out, one last laugh. To say, at least once, that they didn’t have control over me.

I smiled and let the chuckle escape, throwing my head back against the paneling of the kitchen island as the rippling happiness swept over me. The feeling leaving quickly as my vision dimmed to black.

I shook my head, trying to wake myself up. My eyes opened to the kitchen and my mother’s face swam before my eyes.

My eyes widened at seeing her there, surprise rocking through me. I sat up, but her face faded at my movement, her smiling face fading into the grey. Great, I was hallucinating. As if I needed more of a reminder about what was coming for me.

“You come to get me, Mom?” I laughed as my vision faded, only to return with another faded memory of my mother. Her, looking out the window, scolding me not to hide in shadows. If only she knew how true her words were and how little there was that I could do about it.