Tajir Beach

VII

It didn't matter that she was afraid of the house, or even that going to the house would be trespassing, something in her made Zee want to go back to the house, maybe it was her obsession, but more likely it was the voice calling her back. The voice was much louder than it should have been, and Zee had no idea what it was saying, she just heard it murmuring, it was never quiet, but because Zee rarely thought her own thoughts, there was nothing to cover the sound of the voice. A calling like that could only mean one thing, returning to the house was the right thing to do, because it was her voice.

So 2 days later, when the aftermath of the storm that had scared Zee off the porch had finally settled, Zee went back to the house and repeated the same actions of her previous adventure. She walked up the stairs of the porch, ignoring anything behind her, again, and she sat on the porch swing and watched the ocean, and on this perfectly windless day, her swing swung, and the ocean, well, the ocean did its thing. Zee thought this was very boring, and very not romantic, and most importantly very, very, not turning her into her favorite poet or inspiring her. So she decided to spice things up a little, she was going to try the window. Not because she didn't know how to open the door, or because she knew or thought it was locked, but because going through the window is inherently more interesting than going through the door. Zee wanted so bad to be interesting, she wanted to be the kind of girl that movies, books, and songs were written about, she wanted to be the girl in famous paintings, she wanted the girl who's name everyone knew, whether they actually knew her or not, she wanted to be something extraordinary.

Zee wasn't anywhere near amazing, the only thing that really stood out about her was her confidence and her stubbornness, and that is exactly what was going to get her into this house because there is no way a house is stronger than the will of an individual, especially an individual with terrible ideas. It occurred to Zee that breaking in through the window may not be a good idea, solely because breaking a window makes broken glass, and broken glass is a pain to clean up, not that she knew how to clean. So Zee stepped off the porch, and finally took the time to examine the house. She was able to see that the house had no boarded-up windows, just that they all had their curtains drawn, even the ones on the second floor. The second floor that she had missed completely, you know, the one with the balcony, and doors that lead into the house, like front doors, but above her, instead of in front of her.

In her quest to be interesting, Zee had tried many sports and clubs and activities of that nature, and so had a variety of skills, not that she was particularly gifted in any of them, but because of all the half talents Zee had, she was able to fuse them into one sort of talent. Zee could sort of climb, it was somewhere between gymnastic climbing and parkour climbing and rock climbing climbing, and it wasn't very pretty climbing but it was enough to climb onto the second-floor balcony of the house and access the doors that weren't the front doors. When she landed on the balcony, which luckily she did safely, the curtains within the house rustled, which Zee attributed to the same wind that had rocked the swing she had sat on. The light rustling of curtains allowed Zee to peek into the house through the windows and glass doors, and though she couldn't see well, Zee could tell the room was a bedroom, a fact given away from the large bed with its headboard on the right wall of the room, and there are very few rooms that have beds but are not bedrooms.

Besides confidence and stubbornness, Zee had luck on her side, the luck that had gotten her safely onto the balcony, and the same luck the had left the glass doors into the room unlocked, and it could have been the same luck that had lead her to Tajir Beach in the first place, but who knows, certainly not Zee. All she knew was that her only way off the balcony was jumping, or through the house, and as everyone there but Zee knew, the door was unlocked, so through the house was her best bet. While Zee didn't know this one of those options was a tad more interesting to her than the other. So she turned her back on the ocean and took a deep breath of air that was supposed to be inspiring, and reached out for the door, tracing the cracked white paint with her fingertips, letting flecks of white stick to her fingers. Next, she reached out for the dirty gold looking door handles, gripping one of them in either hand, and she yanked downwards, turning the handles, and opening the doors. The white curtains fluttered and stuck to her arms as she walked through the doorway and into the bedroom, with the curtain billowing around her, Zee felt like a ghost, which oddly enough, made her feel like she belonged in the house. To her normal self, it was a house, but maybe to ghosts, it was a home.

The first thing Zee did in the room, was throw herself onto the bed, which remained unmade and generally disheveled, but this didn't worry Zee, and it didn't worry her that when she fell backward onto the bed and threw her arms outward, there was no cloud of dust that might be expected of a long-abandoned house. Instead of worrying about things she didn't notice, Zee admired the decor of the room. On either side of the bed there were dark wooden night tables, one held a lamp, a glass of water on a wooden coaster, and a lighter, and the other just held a lamp. On the wall opposite the bed, there was a dresser matching the night tables, it had framed, but faded pictures of a man she didn't recognize, as well as some jewelry stands. On the wall mirroring the ocean, there was a painting, it looked quite intricate, but what really stood out to Zee was the large dragon, mostly because she thought it would make a nice tattoo. To sum it up, there was obviously some thought put into the room, all the wooden furniture matched, and all the fabrics of the room matched, and it smelled clean, so that was a plus. Unfortunately for Zee, though the room was nice, it didn't inspire her.

If Zee were the observant type, as we have seen she is not, she would have really looked at the painting, and really looked around the room, and maybe even seen how the stuff in the room went together in more ways than match. She could have seen the man sword fighting in the dragon painting, and maybe even a sword eerily similar to that man's sword mounted above the bed. She could find it maybe a little uncanny that glass of water by the bed was half drunk, or that the bed was unmade, that nothing in the room was particularly dusty, or most noticeably, that the door she walked into was unlocked, or that the drawers to the dresser weren't all pushed in, and that a coat was thrown over the arm of a chair in the corner. Or more simply put, perhaps the room she was in, wasn't abandoned, or it was, but in a rush. Zee paid no mind to any of these things, she was just happy to have done something interesting.