Silent Pantomime

Chapter 26 | Love and massacre

Chapter 26🌌:

How come being invisible is apparently magic and glowing diamonds in the sky aren't? Something turning invisible in a movie is usually a massive deal, and it is supposedly crazy just because you can't see something. Yet a movie will brush past the night sky as if it were dust, and acts as if these great boulders of fire and ice that glow from light years away are just a way to set a scene. A lot can happen at night: hours are long and slow, it's a calming but ominous atmosphere - one night can simply last forever. People could fall in love or there could be a massacre, or anything in between. Anything but magic. Flying is magical in movies, and so is time travel. But aeroplanes exist and so do time zones - so why is starlight often dismissed?

I was walking slowly on my way back to my dad's house, my legs going against all forms of speed as if a swelling lump of led was dragging me to the centre of the earth. It was almost impossible to imagine that just this morning I was running in the rain, just desperate for attention, and now I was trudging inanimately. Normally if you use your head, your heart is supposed to follow, but whatever hole that was inside of me was battling against any logic I owned instead. I knew full well that if my dad cared enough to care I would be screamed at, I also knew that my two absolute favourite people would be moving in by the time I would get there. I still didn't care about the consequences or how much my life would have changed with two of daddy's little angels in the house; I thought I'd be angrier or feel some kind of resentment, but to be honest, when I think of my dad, I feel absolutely nothing.

Families are strange anyway, there is absolutely no denying it. In a heavily stereotypical and 'conventional' family, two beyond tired adults are given a screaming devil to mix with their pain, sweat and tears; and the screaming devil is bought up to be screamed back at in return and gets punished for growing up. These are meant to be the first important relationships in life and a child's first experience with love. Do constant arguments and being forced to do chores really deem as love to you?

I sighed as I stared up at the dark blanket that was tucking in half the world. But I smiled at the shining diamanté's stitched onto the velvet fabric. 

They knew all my secrets.

Despite the amount of detours I wanted to take, I inexorably ended up at my house. A flashy red Mercedes was parked outside, and despite how dark it was, I still found it too bright and obnoxious. I had just been in a house with three of my favourite people, and now I was walking into a house with just three people. Not even my least favourites though, they didn't even make it on that list. I took a deep breath before I unlocked the door. It was still my unbirthday, so it was my party, I could cry if I wanted to.

Walking into the house, I was expecting complete chaos. Katherine didn't come across to me as someone who would lift a finger to help with moving boxes, probably because it would "break her nail" - a terrible tragedy really. Annika also didn't seem very capable of helping out either, by being too busy yelling at someone for going to McDonald's. When I walked in, there was chaos alright, but not the kind I was expecting.

Instead of hearing arguments and complaints, I heard laughing. Confused, I walked into the kitchen to the source of the noise that wasn't familiar in the house at all. I saw a sight that almost burned my eyes out: three people sat at the table in the house I grew up in, all laughing and being happy. A dad, a mum and a daughter - I guessed my dad was the only one that got a do over, and me and my mum were still at the starting line. None of them noticed me staring at them from the doorway, their sixth sense being blocked out by their sudden cheerfulness. Part of me thought I was going to be sick, part of me wanted to walk over to them and yell "Hey, I exist,"  but the main part of me didn't feel anything.

Slowly I walked over to the table they were sitting at, and sat down on a spare chair. "Hi," I whispered out loud, the climax of the laughing completely evaporating as they all turned on me. I could feel my step-mum-to-be's face immediately scrunch up in disgust, but once again no flare of anger sparked. No one spoke for a while and I could almost hear the laugh of whoever had been watching me the past few weeks.

"Where have you been?" My dad finally snapped after what felt like an eternity. At least one of us was feeling angry.

"A friend's," I replied nonchalantly. He nodded slowly and I heard Katherine scoff far too loudly. "Is there a problem?" I turned to ask her, there was no sense of sarcasm or cheek in my voice, I just wanted the truth. She looked momentarily flustered as if she had expected me to ignore her animalistic remark.

"Nothing," she said provocatively and tilted her head to the side, showing me her overly white teeth.

"Some girl came looking for you," Dad said again and I half nodded.

"I know."

I heard Annika, who was next to me, drop her fork on her plate rather abruptly. "Did you know the lipstick you are wearing comes from slaughtered goats living in poverty from Syria?" She asked me and I wanted to laugh. Of course she would say something so random and out of context like that, of course she would.

I guessed tonight really was between love and massacre. A loving family and a slaughtered daughter.

I was about to stand up, not really having much to say. I never expected my dad to have a huge reaction to me disappearing, but I guess that was the whole point of the experiment. At least my three fake friends became real after it, friends are better than families anyway, they don't stick around just because law tells them to. "Oh Hazel!" Katherine said in a raspy shrill, "I'm moving those nasty old curtains from the living room, they look even older than this house," she cackled. My mum's curtains.

I looked at my dad as I stood up, I was too lazy to argue. "Okay, I'll move them in my room then," I said. I knew Katherine wanted some negative reaction out of me, but I ignored her as I stared at my dad. He had made little eye contact with me, but I made him give it to me. I didn't know if he even knew that they were Mum's curtains, the ones that Mum had been so excited about when she had bought them. They were bright pink and tacky, but so perfect to add a glow into the living room. He probably didn't recognise that though.

"Do you even remember her?" I whispered at him as I walked out.

The moment my feet left the kitchen, I could hear the build up of conversation and laughter again. I grabbed the curtains that had already been ripped off the rail, strewn on the sofa, and replaced with newer ones, before I slumped upstairs.

As I walked into my room I dropped the curtains on the floor to hang up the day after. I laid down on my bed, wanting nothing more than to sleep. I stared out of my window at the stars, the only things in the galaxy that would have been able to correspond with my feelings. I didn't care what Hollywood thought, they definitely were magical. In a way I wanted to pray to them, however my my body was far too exhausted for my brain to think. I wasn't exactly feeling much anyway, which was the problem. I wanted to be jealous, I wanted to be angry, I wanted to be hurt. But I wasn't, not one of those things. I was tired and empty and I missed my mum.

"I'm sorry I let you down," I whispered to the curtains, in a way to 'talk' to her. And instead of that feeling of being back in my own bed that you usually feel after being away, I suddenly had never felt so unwelcome to my own space. "I'm so sorry," I repeated again.

Then as I was about to fall into unconsciousness, my head of course thought of something I hadn't thought about in a very long time. Monsters.