Paint Me Saved ✓ Book 1

36. Gone with the wind

Leonardo

Growing up, I underwent a weird experience. There were days when I would return from school and nobody would be home. The help would be busy with their chores and my nanny would be off in some room, talking to her friends on the home phone, completely unaware of my arrival.

In my company-less room, I felt the walls constricting me. I tried screaming, hoping someone would come to rescue me before the walls squished me but my voice cemented.

Sweating and laying in a pool of it, I muffed my ears to the ever-growing, ever-rumbling sounds of the moving walls. I focused on my heartbeats, thumping in my ears and pushing into my ribs. Rendered breathless and immobile, I clawed at the marble floor only to slip. The walls quacked the floors.

Laying at its feet, I hoped for mercy.

For a brief moment, those shuddering structures would halt. The drilling sound would cease. The floor would stabilize and so would my drumming heartbeats.

Within seconds, it would begin all over again.

Skylights would sway, and the furniture would disappear from my sight. Only a hazed vision would remain. In those final moments, before the walls squeezed my life juices, I would attempt another scream.

That was all I remembered, shutting my eyes closed. The next recollection - of my nanny's soothing voice, being picked up from the ground and laid on the bed - appeared clearer.

Reality would jolt me back.

The walls never moved. The ceiling had not fallen.

My nanny had narrated that incident to my father several times, all of which he concluded as my need for attention.

It was the therapy that channeled the truth to come out. As a child, the defeating silence of the mansion affected me. It made me assume the walls were coming to get me.

While I hoped for some respite as I sat on the beach, all I could think about was Zemira. About how I abandoned her in the apartment.

The crashing waves and the salty taste of the sea breeze couldn't soothe my flaring senses. Yet, I sat there - a man who had a home to return to but never felt more homeless.

After I arrived at my apartment floor, I stood in the hallway. With hope bursting in my chest that Zemira would still be inside and fear of never being able to see her again, I pushed the door open.

The note I left for her was my way of telling her about my incapability - I could never make her happy. I could never match her love. It was my means to convey she needed to move on and away from me.

Yet, I couldn't stop wondering if Zemira would have ignored all my hints and still decided to stay with me.

I walked across my apartment.

No muffled music streaming from any room. No tap tap tap of a pen against the laptop flap. No gargling slurp of her smoothie.

Deafening silence prevailed.

It was then that I felt it again - the rumbling of the walls.

Starting slow, it gradually quaked the floor. I was scared that those walls would collapse on me again with the only difference - nobody would jolt me back to reality.

I walked around the hall, ignoring the tremors rippling on the floor, ignoring the moaning cries coming from the corners of my apartment.

My sight drifted towards Zemira's bedroom. It was cleaned up. Abandoned.