One Ticket to Fill a Lacuna

Chapter 20 || His Eyes

Chapter 20-      

            I’m in a dark room. Shadows fill the air. Dark. Suffocating. I can’t see. I can’t move. I’m stiff. Silent. Choked. I want to sob, but no tears stream down my cheeks. I want to scream. The sound is stuck in my throat.

            Grass grows underneath my arms that are bound to darkness. The emerald blades stand still. They are too stony: eerily unmoving. They touch the tender palms of my hands, with their scrapes and scratches. They caress the back of my knees, I want to touch the familiar grass, but my fingers are frozen in place. The air is still but lukewarm—like a warm beach breeze wafting into the fall months. But there is no breeze here. There is nothing. I look to the sides. I look up. Darkness. Everywhere. Just pitch black; a pure, bone-chillingly blinding cloak.

            A house begins to materialize in the corner of my eye, but it’s only a vague outline. It’s like a dim light is being shown from behind it, illuminating only its silhouette. I look back up and see a vibrant sky; a blue so intense that I need to shield my eyes. I know this sky. I know it. Why is it here?

            I lift my hand to protect from the overly bright blue painted above and realize that I can move. I sit up tentatively and a chill goes from the balls of my feet to the top of my spine.

            The dream. I realize. No, no, no. I want out. Now. I can’t be here. This can’t be happening.

            But it’s different. No one is spinning me. Maybe it’s because no one is here to spin me in the first place. No one is here at all. There is no dizziness. No giggling. Nothing unclear. Everything is blunt; laid out for me to see. To take in the truth. A deafening silence tells me that there’s nobody left for me and I begin to shake. The tremors come from deep inside and ripple across my surface.

            I jolt. Expecting to be shaken awake, I try to flutter my eyes open. They are heavy—a ton of lead resting easily on my eyelids. I try once more to wake. I am able to let in a small sliver of light. I open them further. More light. Colors. Where am I? The real world. No darkness. But there is still a deep, churning block of gloom resting inside of me—at my very core.

            Blaine and Orson a foggy, sitting next to me. I look down. Stone steps. I know these steps, too. How do I know so much suddenly? I know nothing. There is nothing to know anymore.

            I have been sitting up—not a usual sleeping position—so I question if I was ever really asleep. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe it was a horrible hallucination.

            The sounds of reality come back slowly, leaking into my ears. Cars grumble down the street. I hear wind drifting around me. Blaine and Orson mumble worriedly, their tones hushed and unusually careful. Like they’re scared. Of me? Of what I can do?

            I can’t bring myself to speak. The emptiness of whatever just happened—be it a dream, hallucination, a sigh—consumes me. I can’t push away the open void split in my sense of safety. Everything is too empty; too alone.

            “Tar,” Blaine coos under her breath. I look at her but don’t say a word. Instead, I look behind me and choose to ignore the way her voice is slow; like she’s talking to a small child; helpless and unknowing.

            The blue house is still behind us. The door is directly in front of where I look, up at the house. It’s all real. I didn’t leave the real world. This hasn’t just been a bad dream. Which mean my dad really is…

            I gulp down a sudden ball of tears.

            “Are you okay?” Orson whispers sweetly into my ear. His voice makes my heart flutter while my mind is heavy with grief.