NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 168

Now we're confronted by two buildings, one with three storeys, the other one level. I recognize the Bunny House easily. But when I enter, everyone is gone. Not just gone, though. It's almost as if no one ever lived here. The walls are brand new. The rooms smell like a thousand orchids threw up on them. Butterflies float in and out at their leisure, some of them encircling me as if they're trying to shove me out, as if I'm the intruder. I evade them and do my tiptoe run to the steps. But they're gone. Now the hallway ceiling disappears too; all of them. And I can see steps from the third floor leading to the roof. Suddenly I am back in Fantum's hole, waiting for the water to fill it and drown me. That's when the water chooses to put on its best performance. All these years I've lived here, and now it decides to burst the main.

It gushes out from the washroom with two arms. One of them pushes me to the left and out the building. The serpent is nowhere to be seen. It's just the two buildings and me. Then it hits me why I couldn't reach the third floor. Two always comes before three. No wonder I never reached my fullest potential in the Bunny House. I skipped a floor; I missed a lesson. And it's the same thing with Ebony too. I was always her baby. When she died, I thought I had gotten hold of the prison key, and so I leapt to freedom as an adult. Then I realized that my body was ready but not my mind. I wasn't ready to face the world medium or rare. I needed to be well done. So it's much more than just removing her makeup. I've got to inch my way to the top until my new leaves feel the first kiss from the purified sun.

"Are you ready for that, Mary?" the serpent reappears and asks.

So let me ask you too. Are you ready to walk backwards? Go around the circle taking each piece of dirty clothing off, one at a time? Are you ready to come unstuck from the glues of trauma?