Visions of Fate

14. FATIGUE AND FEAR

The door was locked when I got back home, a sign Mom was still hooked up with her job. I searched under the welcome home rug she used to hide the key, exactly like she had promised, in the prospect that she wouldn't make it home on time.

I unlocked the door and stepped into my living room, shut the door firmly behind me, immediately getting swallowed by the darkness in the house. The highly acquainted darkness, a cosmic force in my own home that sucked me dry like a black hole for seventeen bitter years.

The curtains in the house had been pulled down and the lights turned off, thickening the darkness and exaggerating its empty space, devoid of human presence. The house smelled cozy, homey and the a subtle mix of cleaning products and cooking smells, though one very familiar scent lingered in the air. The one that hadn't been realized until today. Until the moment I'd stepped outside this walls and inhaled the thick smell of nature.

Depression.

Because that was what I suffered for so many years, what I had to endure because of my parents. And it wasn't until I got a taste of what I didn't have that I realized what I suffered from; Depression, loneliness, fear, and anxiety.

And the truth was, I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to succumb and surrender to all my memories I had suffered all my life. Standing right there, in the very scene of the event, I was washed up in the memories, in the events that felt like they occured too long ago.

But, as I swallowed the homey smell on the room, I was hit with one fact. This was still my home. This wasn't just a house that backed up all my bitter memories, it was also the home that saved all my good ones.

Every single birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving and every other holiday I had ever celebrated was spent in this house. And I had to admit, they were really good memories. Memories that were saved in a photo album that would live on to be displayed to my children and then their children.

I had to acknowledge the fact that, even though I had spent my whole life locked up in this house, I was out there making new ones merely five minutes ago, and that was what mattered the most.

So, I shrugged off my jacket, turning on the lights, and jogged up the stairs with a particular skip in my steps. I walked down the hallway that felt especially lengthened now, feeling exhausted, drained and slightly giddy. Because, as much as school was bad, it also had its good perks. Like Zara, Benjamin, and the best of all, Abi.

Getting to know these three was the best and only good part about my day in school. I found myself replaying the events that took place from lunchtime till the end of school hours as I flung myself on my mattress, the lie I skillfully crafted dominating all others.

I still remembered my words clearly, the way I had managed to convince them that I was from a neighboring town.

"You mean Larksville?" Benjamin had asked.

"Yes," I replied immediately, making my story as believable as I could. I told them that my mother had just lost her job in our previous town and, when she had heard about the job opportunities here in Ravenswood, she rushed over and enrolled me into school almost immediately.

"What about your dad?" Abi asked, to which I said that he had stayed back in Larksville, promising to visit from time to time, which really wasn't much of a lie than it sounded.

So, with my story clarified, it was mostly easy to act clueless and reserved, seeing as I was new in this town and had no friends, and blah blah blah.

For a person that avoided lies the way ants avoided laziness, I sure was good at it. Though my lies almost cracked a fracture when Abi had handed me some pennies when she insisted half her meal wasn't enough for me. She'd instructed me to go get some snacks from the vending machine beside the lunch lady's food cart at the end of the room.