X-Marks: Rising Shadows

Burn

Outside in the lower-city, under its dark lamp-lit sky and between the allies of its clay-built homes, I stood in front of a broken door. I rocked on the soles of my white shoes and twisted my bracelet around my wrist. I was waiting to be let into my father and sister's house. I was coming back home.

I wanted to kick myself in the gut. I would feel the same, anyhow.

Against the dirt steps of the clay home, I shuffled my feet and looked around the corner. The teal colored windows, the only two left, were boarded shut.

I could have shouted, or tried to knock on the door again. If I was at the wrong home, at least I was wearing my white coat. It was the only thing these lower-city people seemed to fear. I had already spooked a few on the way here by knocking on their doors. I was just trying to find directions. But in a city without streets or numbers, it had turned into an impossible task. Almost impossible.

I continued to rock my feet on the steps and took in a deep sigh. The smell of a hot pot simmering was seeping from the deep cracks of the decaying door. The memories of its taste both consoled and stunned me as a sweat washed over me.

This was the place. No doubt, and unfortunately.

But this time I didn't want to be back through that door. This time I wanted to be kept out.

"I told you I heard something!" a girl's voice shouted from behind the door.

"You know I can't hear nothin' over that stove," a man shouted back.

A pair of steps strutted towards the door and turned the wobbling knob of the door.

The door gave a quick jut before it swung open.

My father stood at the door, wearing a baggy t-shirt that was dingy with coffee colored stains. His dark pants slouched at the hips and were gathered with a string at the top. His bare toes curled backed as he looked me over.

"Still don't feel real, I tell you," he said holding the frame of the door.

As he continued to stare, he let out a deep laugh from his round belly.

"Come in, come in," he said and moved his arm from the door frame, "I'm sure you've got to be some kind of hungry. You've always had an appetite on you."

That was a lie. I had always been more of a picky eater. Sometimes skipping meals rather than eating something I didn't like. He didn't know me at all.

I followed him, watching the slight limp of his left leg and walked through the empty hall that led into the single room of the home.

It was a cramped room teaming with broken wooden chairs, hand quiled blankets lose of their stuffing and stacks of wet boxes filled with papers. The two windows that were boarded up only let in thin strips of light from the outside making it hard to see the corners of the bleak room.