It was heard; “Invisible child”—gentle whispers from yellow eyes incandescent, coveting what once was warmth, an unknown lover’s touch echoing forth in a slow familiar drone—“Invisible child.”
There was rest once and at the time of this rest there lived a child, a heart, a reason. She was alone. Living little within, little without; idle solitude—forever awake, forever asleep; protest to the body by will of the mind, by will of the mindless.
A dry mouth opens, there’s a familiar crack of peeling skin—the cellar door; welcoming descent. The mouth shouts “Joshua!” and she knows she’s fading away. Thin hands speckled with auburn freckles rip satin sheets and pull bed folds of an Eternal Sleeper’s sculptured flesh, pulling, ripping, pulling… bleeding. Blood streaked; external veins running fluidly, crossing one another’s paths, connecting, faster, running over palm lines, knuckle wrinkles, fingerprints, dripping. Torn strands of red satin upon a long cavernous face—drip, dripping into its depths; Lips touching the satin move spasmodic to pain. Her shrieks last for hours while a chorus of Ly Bird’s echoing howls reach for her; “Invisible child.” their yearning darkening every creature of the night into silence.
There is a momentary scurry; stumbling and clawing to retreat from bedridden tombs. Soiled, upon belly and chin she humiliates herself into the bathroom and throws herself into the tub. Bruises form, instantly; soft brown turning blue upon edges like blooming flowers. Her thin frame fit within the tub as a shovel might fit into an empty shed.
She was alone, but she once new a voice, a voice that carried her away from herself, from the cabin, from the woods, from the prison; but the voice was gone. Lying in the tub she thought of the voice and began to cry—innocence, love, complete…gone.
A rotted knot in the windowsill grew blacker and deeper each day, the moisture from the hot bath water eating it like a cancer. A breeze ran through the knot hole; “Invisible child”.
“I told you to stay.” She pleaded. “I told you not to run, why did you run?!” An image flickered before her, innocent, loving, complete. Submerging in the escape only pain can offer; hot water eagerly masked her with its thick sting encompassing her body and finally closing upon her face to complete sharpness that deluded into a numbing network of easing muscle and thought.
She held herself at the bottom of the tub until unconsciousness—then letting go while floating above, she began to dream.
