The First Giving pt 1
Fern could always differentiate her daydreams from reality. For instance, she knew she was having a particularly pleasant daydream because of the lack of curses that her mother was spewing at her. In this moment, her mother was kind. Holding her head in her lap and softly singing. This was her mother. Not the ghost that knew how well it could haunt this house. With her bright yellow hair, reminiscent of hers’, evenly soft strokes swayed through her locks. Her hairbrush had been entombed, and in its place was a daydream that had lifted her off to sleep.
Her unconscious mind was less kind, though. Rough images of crooked smiles and dilated eyes flashed by, and feelings that were meant to be buried, rose into her chest, causing the most vile noise to come from her mouth. Gut wrenching, grease-covered hands grabbed at her from all sides and let go, and suddenly she was falling. The start she awoke with was interrupted by songbirds’ calls that had crept in through the cracks in her window. She had assumed a long time ago that at least some of the bills in this house had not been paid, because there was never a huge effort put in to fix these broken things. Her bed creaked as she got up. The meager beddings sloughed off, and she got the first smell of herself. She didn’t absolutely reek-due in large part to her proactively rag washing herself in the bathroom sink-but there was an odd smell lifting about the room. Much like her window, the shower was a lost thing she wasn’t sure would ever return to its usefulness. It remained to collect cobwebs, and when she would try turning the knob, hoping for some semblance of a normal home, she would pick apart the cold rooms built by the spiders taking up the empty space.
