Sea Spell

Chapter Seventeen

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In the glow of the dimly lit lamp, there had been shadows romping on every solid surface, a haunted manor as the two bickered. Without the sketchy insurance of the lamp, darkness leapt out from behind its nooks and crannies, veiling it's cape overtop the room. Stuffy with its evegunk and heavy layers of sheets that trapped air inside, recycling it in two sets of hectic lungs.
Lanakila wasn't sure why she'd done that- despite frowning upon improvisation, it seemed to be a reoccurring theme for her to sway towards impulsive, gut notions.
She really, really hated herself at times.
Especially times when she was changing.
Now that she had followed through with her hunch, she realized what exactly it had been- a hunch, not a plan. There were multiple tears in the intuitive rips in a screen that problems could zing through, prepared to prophet their instinctive missions.
It was a false lead- a disoriented idea, bashing the lamp. She had absolutely no clue what she wanted to do now that it had been taken into action, and even if she did, it wouldn't clatter a lid on top of her mother's uncharacteristic, boiling temper.

Thrashing hecticly around the dining room, her last standing sense of perspective being the ancient furniture toppling as she collided with it, a wary feeling spiked in her stomach. There was no family echo of her clumsiness, and the ever-graceful, breezy movements of her mother were silently unsettling, as if she was being watched closely, calmly. Clenching her fist aroumd what could be the edge of a wall trim, she huffed as silently as possible, not daring to twitch an eye as she thought analytically.

Lanakila couldn't handle another conversation with her mother, couldn't stiffle through her superior, primly raised gazes matched expertly with parental phrases. It reminded her of Jennifer's Thanksgiving explanations, of how the Matthews family would return for helping after helping, pile their plates high, until their stomachs groaned and they regretted every last forkful. Thinking about skyscrapers of red-lettered paperwork, or the front door opened and shut late most nights, or each "not-right-now' and 'go-occupy-yourself' made her want to be sick. The outburst from her mother had seemed like a rare, possible threat, one she dreaded facing. She needed to be alone, to she could collect herself and consider everything she'd discovered that day so she could map an image of it in her mind.

"Lana? Where are you?"

She raked at her tail with her fingernails, as if the mild pain would snap her into a more practical state of mind. That voice, her mother's voice, the one that reeled you in, then ripped a painful hook from inside of you and thrust you back into shockingly cold water. It was ripe, promising bait, like the syrup she'd dreamed of one night seven years ago. Syrup, over-the-top, flashy syrup. She didn't want to taste it for the rest of her life.

Indignantly reaching for the "wall trim", she recoiled at the slimy curve of a wrist by her side and sprung upwards, swimming towards a tiny, faint ray of light across the room. The entirety of the room felt as if it was shrinking inward, leaning each war-zoned wall and dainty crystal on her shoulders. Since her parents had vanished, first her father, then her mother, she had scarcely managed to shoo all the emotions that came with her new lifestyle away. She could teach herself literature in spare seconds, reek of tuna and chopped shark fins, or hoist her sister into a wheelchair every morning. She could handle these things- or at least, she had been handling these things up until this moment. Now, they snuck up behind her and sprung out like a demented Jack-in-the-Box, memories flying through her mind.

The tinkling of the chandelier crystals falling on one another in a domino effect above her gave away her mother's location. She hurried towards the light, placing all of her trust on it not being a hallucination or a dead-end. The closer she arrived to the crack of light peeking from the ceiling, the easier it was to decipher the upward leading staircase and the upper half of a door swinging off of it's hinges. Diving speedily underneath the door portion, and grazing up against it's splintered edges, she emerged into another ship level, this one bursting with fish that oppositely lit up the haunting hallway. Their neon colors zig-zagged downwards into a gigantic sinkhole, a collapsed portion of the carpeted floor that had churned itself inward. Symmetrical suite doors lined the walls, many of them decayed enough to provide views of once extravagant, classy bedrooms. Light was now able to travel into the level through holes and windows, resulting in a dim light that resembled a mid-evening, beginning sunset.