Greenhouse Gore

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE CONSEQUENCES OF TUNNEL VISION

A knock.

I woke to a knock rumbling through the plaster walls from downstairs. The clock said that it was past nine which meant my mother was already at work. I had the choice of ignoring whomever it was standing behind the front door or facing my fate. Slowly, I pulled apart the blinds from the window and saw several police cars blocking the driveway. Numerous people were strewn about the lawn, some in blue uniforms with guns strapped to their belts. They were speaking with a few neighbors while others stayed perched on their porches, wrapping themselves in robes with slippers on their feet. One man dressed in a brown coat was speaking to one of the blues, his fingers absentmindedly flipping through a small notepad in one hand and flipping a pen in the other. He looked up at my window.

I stumbled into my mother's bathroom, tripping over an overturned white bathmat. Her bathroom was a mess, the sink covered with miscellaneous bottles and lotions, frayed toothbrushes and forgotten threads of floss, clumps of dry toothpaste in the sink, tumbleweeds of hair somersaulting across the linoleum floor. I yanked open the medicine cabinet, briefly catching a glimpse of my ghostlike white face in the mirror. I rummaged through the shelves of orange vials, knocking several off them down onto the floor, until I found her Xanax. I twisted off the cap and poured the white tablets into my palm. My hand was shaking. Like pomegranate seeds, I flung the pills down my throat where they encountered a sob pushing its way up from the pit in my stomach where I housed all my horrors.

Another sharp, demanding knock on the front door activated the jolt in my nerves and sent the bottle of Xanax to the floor, the white tablets tinkling across the floor. I dropped to my knees and began to sweep the pills back into the vial, brushing specks of dust and hair tumbleweeds inside as well.

As the knocks grew closer, akin to a mother's contractions when her baby decides it will be entering the world soon whether she liked it or not, I found my breathing more and more labored, the air thick and stifling. I bounded down the stairs, careful to avoid windows and doors until I slinked through the kitchen towards the slide door. I checked the backyard for the police, or anyone else who seemed interested in my demise. For someone waiting in the Veil. It was bare; there was no place for anyone to hide themselves, yet I checked again. And then a third time. And then a fourth. When the coast seemed clear, I yanked the slide door open and paid no heed to the Veil as I escaped through the hole in the fence like a bolt of lightning ejected from Zeus's fingertips, like the wrath of God when he flooded the lungs of sinners.

I couldn't risk going to the Hi-Ho, but I disappeared inside another hiding place: the tunnel slide at the park where I'd taken the worms from the sidewalk after a rainstorm. It was Friday, a school day, so no one else would be here, but me and the worms. I sat inside the tunnel and spent an immeasurable amount of time wiping my wet face over and over, the boiling geysers spewing sobs down the tunnel, static vibrating against my skin with each dreadful echo.

I had abandoned her.

When I saw Mrs. Coffin's face on the other side of the glass and the hallowing glare of the flashlights refracted through the greenhouse, I left Asa inside and didn't even turn my head back once to see if she was behind me. The crawling fear propelled me forward through the night in Creaky Woods, but the guilt kept me awake as it lingered at the foot of my bed. And it lingered now. It jumped over my legs like a four-year-old and threw itself down the tunnel slide, carrying my sobs down to the mulch, before climbing back up the ladder and repeating the process again and again. I had abandoned her, which meant that they'd caught her, which meant she was at the police station wondering whether she should have trusted me after all. Wondered if she'd have the chance to rip her wrists from the handcuffs and tear off that jagged half-heart necklace shackling her neck.