The House Across The Lake

Black

Though the relief washed away the fog of that strange trance, the loneliness returned. I scanned the room half-heartedly for Evan's halo too distracted by the random strangeness of what had just occurred. I suppose if this were a movie, a spotlight would cause me to squint, and recover, all perfectly poised, just like a real movie star. Maybe I would have done one of those overly-dramatic monologues you always enjoyed performing whenever you were acting center-stage.

Just like at the end of your monologues, the volume of music increased. Emotion and sensation alike heightened. However, while the drumming of the bass caused a wild reaction from everyone else, it pounded against my skull so fiercely that it induced a minor headache.

I could hear the strobing lights ringing, and the sickly sound penetrated down into my stomach, where the wine swished at every stumbled step I took, the room rapidly blurred so I walked blindly into any direction to escape. Soon, I noticed how even after the minutes passed by, the liquid coating the back of my throat continued burning.

I remember thinking how strange this was, how I had little more than a drink. I was not that intolerant to alcohol after all.

I recall a horrible cold washing over me, probably the blood escaping my face as an unforgettable but indescribable fear stopped my heart for a beat or two.

It was then that I knew something had gone dreadfully wrong.

I know little about what happened afterward.

As my senses seemed to combine into one, the sensitivity of everything around me swirled around my feet, causing my legs to feel ticklish and weak. Everything dimmed. Darkness flooded the floors and the walls as if a thousand tiny spiders were flooding the room, plucking my feet from the floor. I felt like a piece of orchard fruit as I wondered if gravity had selectively released me. Would I soar into space? Would I be consumed by the stars?

At least, I would be away from this place.

In reality, I wasn't floating. I was falling and whether my head bashed against the floor, whether I acquired a momentary delirium from the trauma, I don't really know. In those last moments of conscience, a shadowy figure loomed above with the strange outline of a man underneath a floppy hat.

When even the shadowy figure disappeared from my sight, the nothingness consumed me.

When I regained consciousness, violent pains imprisoned my sight behind two stubborn eyelids. The migraine was almost unbearable. Very vaguely I recall a metronomic thwack. It was accompanied by swishing water and the scream of an unoiled hinge. It was the sound of oars dipped into the water, connected to a cheap rowboat but it blasted inside my head more terribly than even party's booming "The Monster Mash." The calming serenade of crickets and light rain pattering against the rowboat sounded like nails grinding together in a broken machine. The cool wetness of the droplets on my face, the type of rain we would run outside to play in as children slithered down my cheek clammy and uninviting.

There was a whirring in the distance, maybe the motorboat of a late-night fisher, or a car racing across a lone country road. It was the only sound I found tolerable in those first horrid minutes but it faded gradually into the distance alongside the slowing oars. Soon, it and the oars stopped altogether.

The boat ground against something smooth underneath; rocking the inside of the boat and my insides. A wave of nausea passed through me and my body ached. Worse yet, the disillusionment dissipated. The confusion of the drugged drink was replaced by a cold, barren feeling. Fear, I thought to myself while swallowing a wave of vomit.

I feigned unconsciousness, unprepared for the reality I would inevitably have to face once my capture knew I was awake.

The boat rocked against something stable underneath. The shuddering wood indicated my captor shifting. We had reached our destination, whatever it was.

It did not surprise me when I smelled old-age, felt the wool of an old suit coat scratch against my skin as my capture hoisted me over his shoulder like a rag doll. The thought of my face posted all over the entryway of Wal-marts on Have You Seen Me Posters, sucker-punched my sanity. The realization that I had been taken against will was too much. The wishful thinking of waking from a horrid dream but still safe in my college issued bunk was worse than the overcrowded community room.

The reality was little different from those nightmares succeeding in your fearful tales, plaguing me when we were little. The ones you always woke me up from with tears in your eyes because I had been screaming. You did not know it but I heard you repeating "I am sorry" under your breath like an incantation. You hugged me into calmness until mom and dad could take your place.

You were not there to comfort me that night though. You couldn't be and still, knowing that I would not wake up a child with you by my side brought me at last, fully into the realization of what was happening to me.

My body went rigid which must have alerted "him."

He stopped.

Pushing past the throb in my head, I willed myself to open my eyes. The vomit I had swallowed perhaps minutes before at last painted the back of his suit and slacks a November orange-brown.

At that point, we had waded beyond two-foot grass and the consistent showering of fizzled sticks. Now, slabs of cracked concrete invaded the greens and browns of autumn with a stern grey. It was a porch, or what was left of it.

He breathed in deep, heaving my body up and down with the inhale-exhale-

-inhale-exhale.

He was waiting for me to struggle I think, but Will, I was just too afraid. 

To be continued