Ghosts

Word Count: 778

The squeal of brakes penetrates my thoughts as the three people around me begin to gather their things. They prepare for the next stop, but I am the only passenger getting off here. I must get off here. Must. My body tenses in rebellion, my feet unsure of its next step, but I stand. I climb down the dirty steps of the bus. I close my eyes and hold on to the nearby sign post until the bus closes its doors. I resist the urge to jump back to the curb. The child who left this town not enough years ago wants to pound on the doors of the bus and beg to please, please let her back in. I feel my fingers grip the pole until the knuckles turn white and begin to strain. I hold on until my last chance for escape roars away into the distance. When even the echoes of the engine cannot be heard, I open my eyes to behold the sprawl of my childhood. I duck my head and start my descent down the path to the lonely blue monstrosity at the end of the road.

The house is a skeleton. The living room is stripped and barren save a single table with two chairs. Only one of the chairs wears a seat cushion. The kitchen stinks of mold and mildew, cat piss and rot. Nothing has changed. A muffled Christmas carol from a far. Past and future blur in the tune of one song. “I’m leaving.” Hark the herald angels sing~ “…Where?” Glory to the newborn King! “Don’t try to find out.” Peace of earth and mercy mild~ “What about Marcy?” God and sinners reconciled. “I’ll be back for her.” The click of the front door shutting. The opening of a cabinet. Clink of ice in glass. Slamming of bottles, throwing and shattering of cups. A heavy hand striking a crying face not for the first, not for the last time. Waiting for someone to burst through that door to save me.

I slowly climb the spiral staircase to the master bedroom. I am face to face with a broken, tattered rag of a man in a wheel chair, wasted away from the hips down, emaciated, sunken and gray. We face each other and ourselves and say all we have to say in one eternal moment with one buried expression: Shame. One blink and the old man is gone. I have stopped breathing again. My face is pale in the hallway mirror, my eyes clouded over with ghosts. I cannot be here. I run to the nearest door to the outside, pull it open and shut it closed to trap the memories behind me. I cannot be here. I cannot be here. But the bus does not return until morning. But I cannot be here. Not in that house. Not ever again. I look up and see the barn.

Pain. Like a stitch in my side, but deeper, more insistent. My heart rises to my throat and I have to remind myself to breathe. It is my body railing against the memories of this place, the ghost of the whip across my back like a serrated blade, the rip of my flesh and the beads of wetness rolling down the small of my back. The smell of blood. The kick to my stomach that knocks me to my knees. The rope that strings me up next to the stuck pig. The taste of copper and salt on my lips as I wake up alone on the dirt floor. The sting of rope burn around my wrists. The tears that flowed, then dripped, then dried from my face forever. Forgetting how to cry as the pain became the only promise ever kept and my only constant companion. Forgetting how to hurt altogether. If I had died... if my body had given up in one last shuddering sigh... Would he have noticed before his demons had gone back to sleep, sated at last by the blood sacrifice?

I stare at the evidence of my agony on the stud that had served as the whipping post. I cannot tear my eyes from it. I finger the stains and I remember each one. This from the gash on the back of my head when he drunkenly stumbled and missed my back. That as I tried to stand using the stud for support. This one from my face when I tried to beg for mercy. These from my bloody tears. I trace the dark splotches on the wood a final time and wipe the gasoline off of my fingers on a dry rag. I see a wisp of a girl. Scrape. The devastation of her body. Spark. Scared, desperate, imploding. Flames.

I free her today.