She inhaled deeply and ran her fingertips amiably over the baroque printed wallpaper in front of her, cherishing the translucent feel of the timeworn paper.
For some reason, she had grown to love the impression and breathtaking designs of the paper that lined her walls. The paper of her bedroom walls was rather worn and had lost much of its color, but it was frail against the pads of her fingertips and she cherished the fact that she had made it so.
“Willa,” The scratchy voice of her mother called from somewhere within the large house.
Willa ignored her mother’s call and continued running her fingertips over a small corner of her bare wall. Her eyes wandered over the pretty design and her fingers stopped short near the end of the paper, the edge sticking up a little from the last time she had torn it. Willa tilted her head to the side, her long, tangled blonde hair falling over her shoulder and extending to her ribs. Her raggedy shaped nails picked at the edge of the paper, the little flicks and tears fascinating her to no end.
“Willa!” Her mother’s voice called a second time, causing her to freeze, close her eyelids delicately and inhale deeply through her nose.
Willa hummed lightly, not bothering to respond fully to her mother as she continued to pick at the torn paper, pulling it upwards slowly in a straight line. The wallpaper unraveled in light curls as she continued to tear, the nakedness of her bare bedroom wall from underneath the paper in full view as she wrapped the torn paper in her palm.
“Willa,” Her mother sighed from outside her bedroom door. “Are your bags packed?”
“No.” Willa’s soft voice whispered, the sound carrying through her empty bedroom loudly, seeping through her doors for her mother to hear.
Her mother sighed before mumbling to herself, “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”
Willa grinned to herself as she twirled the skinny strands paper in the air, cherishing the gentle whoosh as the weight of the paper crashed with the frigid air. She continued this for quite some time, tearing little paper hearts out of the strands, and ignoring the requests from her mother and the lurid prattle of her parents deliberating what they could possibly do with their eighteen year old daughter who was disheartened in the real world – a world she chose to disregard completely.
As she worked, she thought to herself - she was a normal girl, and deep down inside, she knew who she was - she knew that the being she hid from others beneath her flesh had a sense of humor with an array of witty remarks, and the being beneath her could think for herself, but the infectious strands of her madness took over her senses and swallowed her personality whole, causing her to think and say the erreneous things or more often than none, nothing at all.
