New Home
The intensity of the sunlight bleeds through my eyes, making me wake up with a throbbing headache. I’m lying flat on my back, looking up at the disgusting water-stained ceiling. The left side of my face is warm, and my shirt collar is drenched in sweat. I check my phone to see the time, but it dies as soon as I unlock it. All I get to witness is today’s weather—a chilling 42 degrees. The idea of feeling the cold sends shivers down my spine and around my ribs. My arms start forming goosebumps, but I’m warm. Vah is going to call me anytime soon, but he’ll end up hearing a voicemail.
I desire his soul immensely. Seeing my grandmother’s house empty of pictures and furniture is depressing me further than I already am. I’m on the edge of exploding into tears. Suddenly, I hear the sound of keys jingling outside my door. Before the door opens, I rush to open it first. The sun illuminates Vah’s body, creating an image of a divine-looking deity. Those crimson eyes of his and his entirely white hair both start having a soothing effect on me. A chilling breeze enters the house, making my body cascade into a shiver.
“Syrah, are you alright?” He says with a gentle voice. My name echoes inside my head. I rush into his body, holding my arms tightly around him. “Syrah?”
“Please take me now. Staying here for one more night was a mistake.” Being against his pleasant, warm body rips off the cold and simmers my emotions.
“Do you want to take the couch?”
“Leave it. I didn’t even sleep on it.” He looks over my head, then frowns.
While I wait in his truck, I start crying as I watch him take last-minute inspections of my grandmother’s home. They stream down my face like a leaky faucet. His seat drowns my tears, soaking the fabric into a dark spot. I take my shirt and pull it halfway up my face to let the tears fall on it. The front door closes, which snaps my head to attention towards him. He locks the front door, then heads towards the truck. There’s a slight pause in his step as he looks at me. I turn the radio on to make it seem like I’m not paying attention to him. With the hem of my shirt, I quickly clean my face up right before he gets in.
“There’s no need to hide your tears from me,” he says. I can’t hide anything from him. He’s such a worrying friend. I really like that about him. He starts his truck but doesn’t take off. I look at my grandmother’s house for one last engraving image. One second is enough to make my tears come back again. “Syrah,” he whispers, putting his hand on my shoulder, “tell me what’s on your mind.” I look at him, letting my tears for the first time flow in front of him without hiding my face.
“I miss her. I’ll miss this house. I want to stop crying!” He reaches over to me to give me a comforting hug. I completely drain myself after minutes of crying. “Let’s go, Vah. Take me out of here. Take me home.”
On the road to his home, he continually fiddles with the radio stations. None of the singers gets to say at most five words before he switch to another station.
“Hey Syrah, what type of music do you like?” My mind is on my grandmother, so I can’t think of a radio station he can turn to.
“Go to whatever you like.”
“Ah.” He turns to a station that’s playing a song that I listened to some weeks ago. It’s an all-female punk rock band called Queens of Life. They sound good, and the station is playing my favorite song. The song has a charming melody that makes me softly hum to it. He surprises me by joining in along with me.
“You know it too?” He gives me a nod with a big smile on his face. For the rest of the song, we shout, singing.
We approach his neighborhood, slowly driving down the street. His community is beautiful, clean, and spacious between houses. All of the homes have a unique style. One of them is facing sideways. The lawns are a dark green color, and most of the yards have colorful flower beds near the houses. Every yard has at least two or more trees.
“It’s so gorgeous here. Which house is yours?” I say.
“This one.” I kinda jerk over to my left as he suddenly pulls up to his home. His house is big and wide. The garage looks like it could fit three or four-door trucks in it.
I turn to him to find him smirking at me with his left hand holding up his head. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“If you’re amused now, wait till you see the inside.”
I hop out of his truck first, but I keep my eyes on him. His smile doesn’t go away until we make it up to the front door. He opens the door as if he were a doorman, bowing his head down with a hand pointing inside.
“Vah,” I say, giggling, “don’t do that.” I make him stand up straight, then I look inside. An odd sensation erupts in my eyes, making them shake and tingle. “Whoa.”
“Is something wrong, Syrah?”
I focus my vision on fully comprehending the beauty of his interior. To the left is a big kitchen with a long island. The steps are directly in front of me. There’s a balcony to the right of the steps, to what seems like another large open second floor. His floor is dark, polished wood. My shoes firmly grip it.
“I feel like my eyes are having an orgasm by the beauty of your home,” I say, rubbing my eyes.
“Interesting,” he says, laughing. “Go check out your room. I think you’ll feel the same experience there, too.”
“Where is it?”
“Hallway to the right, the last door on the left.”
I’m extra curious now. Upon reaching the hallway, I notice an open door to my right. It’s a luxurious bathroom with a massive shower and tub. The shower has three showerheads. One is on the ceiling while the others are on two different walls. To the far right is a bright white gigantic tub. It’s damn near like a small pool.
“This’ll be your personal bathroom,” he says.
“Holy crap! Are you serious, Vah?”
“Yes.”
I restrain myself from looking further in, so I won’t get sidetracked. We enter my room. It’s nearly pitch black, but the windows offer some light. There are images on the wall, but I can’t tell what they are. He flips on the fanlight, revealing a lighthouse beach-themed room. Sky, water, sand, birds, and a lighthouse are all painted on the walls. There’s a bookshelf shaped into a boat in the corner of the room. Around the window, the curtains look like fish netting, and at the top of the frame is a lifebuoy.
“My mother painted this room when I bought this house,” he says, looking at the lighthouse. “She wanted me to have my childhood-themed room with me still.”
“Your mother did an excellent job.” I hear him sigh, but I feel like it wasn’t a good sigh.
“Make yourself at home.”
Some time goes by, and I’m still looking at the details of the room. I remember Vah’s sigh, and how it didn’t sound like a good one. Maybe he doesn’t want to give me this room, or perhaps I’m overthinking it. I check my drawers and, surprisingly, find that he has already organized all of my clothing. While looking through my tall wardrobe, I spot a red dress that I wore to my business’s first party. My first time getting wasted, too. Then I see two more behind it. I start to remember the days I would get so spent on alcohol. The thoughts bring my blood to a boil.
One by one, I rip my dresses into pieces. I can’t stand the sight of them, so I throw them in the trash. My mood doesn’t reset itself, so I go looking for Vah. He isn’t anywhere to be found, plus I haven’t taken the time to charge my dead phone. Emotional panic comes crawling back. I feel like I’m going to explode. I head into my bathroom, take off my shirt, and pull down the bra straps to expose my shoulders. Some of the cuts from days ago are still radiating in red. I pull out a razor blade from my back pocket to cut more lines into me.
Two cuts into my right shoulder, I hear approaching footsteps.
“Hey, Syrah, I hope you don’t mind having meatloaf tonight,” he says. His surprise makes me accidentally cut myself too deeply. Blood starts slowly swelling out of my shoulder. I let out a quiet yet loud grunt. “Syrah?” He starts turning the doorknob. The door opens, but I stop it with only a small view.
“Vah, stop. I’m... naked. Like fully naked.” The blood from my shoulder trickles down my arm.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I feel him push off the door, so I close it and lock it.
For a few minutes, I try to get control of the bleeding. After taping gauze to my shoulder, my mood stabilizes. I take a good look at myself in the mirror. My eyes shine a bright blue from the mirror lights. The skin on my lips is dry. I smile to see how dry they are, but I focus more on my face.
“Damn, you look fucked up,” I say to myself. I look at the door, then back at myself. “Meatloaf does sound nice.”
The pain from cutting my shoulder too deeply still haunts me for three hours after doing it. I can’t even nap without it ramping up the pain sensors. The gauze on my shoulder has a pool of blood. After replacing it with a new patch, I wear a sweater and then head to the living room. Vah isn’t here, so I yell for his name. He surprises me from behind the kitchen island by jumping into view. I scream so loudly that it echoes throughout the house.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. My heart is pounding out of my chest. The pain in my shoulder radiates with the same pulse as my heart. I try not to react to the pain by biting my inner lip. “Do you need anything?”
“I need to go to the store and get some stuff.” Suddenly, he throws me his keys to his truck.
“Here. If the truck size overwhelms you, you could take the car in the garage.” I’m at a loss for words.
Before I head to his truck, I notice an oddly rounded key on the key rack. It doesn’t have the metal part like his vehicle does. It’s just a key fob. I head into his garage to find out what type of vehicle he owns. A red sports car sits lonely, gleaming in the garage light. I start to wonder about what kind of job he has for him to have this and the big house.
“Hey, Vah!” I say. Vah comes to the door, leaning only his head into view. I point at his car, extending my finger back and forth. He throws me the fob on the key rack.
“Here you go.” I want to go up to him and ask him how he got the car, but the pain in my shoulder erupts back into my remembrance. I place his truck keys on the rack and take the sports car.
Walking into the drug department, I feel like people are staring at me as I walk past them with my shoulder raised to slightly ease the pain. Entering the medication section, I keep my eyes to the ground. I unexpectedly run into someone, knocking them down to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I say. When the person looks up at me, I instantly recognize who they are.
“Syrah?” Dina says, with wide eyes. “Oh my gosh, Syrah!” I try to ignore her by looking for pain meds as fast as possible. She calls my name, but I keep ignoring her. Then she grabs my shoulder, where I cut myself too deeply. “How have you been, girl?”
“Get off me!” People next to me stop to look at us. My anxiety levels rise as they stare at me, so I grab a random numbing cream and walk away from them. Dina follows after me, trying her best to get me to respond. At the self-checkout, I take a quick glance at her. She’s staring intensely with her mouth slightly open and one brow higher than the other.
“Go away, Dina,” I say, swiping the ointment cream on the scanner.
“Syrah, what is wrong with you? You look like shit, girl. Are you doing alright?” When I place the cream in my bag, she gently clutches my forearm. “The girls back at the club are worried about you. Last time we saw you, you were with that dude with white hair. What’s going on?”
“Leave,” I say, walking past her, “me alone, Dina.” She follows me all the way to the car. I get in the car and push to start it. Before I can take off, she sits in the passenger seat. “Will you fuck off?”
“Girl, talk to me! Why are you acting like this? Is it because of your grandmother?” For a few moments, I stare at the steering wheel, thinking about my grandmother.
“Please get out of the car.”
“Come on. Talk to me. Ever since you told us that your grandma died, you stopped stripping and ditched us.”
Why did she bring that back to my memory?
“Dina, get out of the car, or I’m gonna beat the shit out of you,” I say to scare her away. I’m no fighter, but I have been told I have a resting bitch face. I try using that as intimidation. She looks at me with open eyes. “Seriously! Get out!”
“Fine. Okay. Don’t talk to me.” She hops out of the car and slams the door. “I thought we were friends, Syrah.”
“We never were, Dina.” I storm out of the parking lot, not caring to look back at her. Being away from her presence is an instant relief, yet the memory of my stripping job sours my mood. Tears fall out of my eyes. There is nothing I can do to stop them.
On the way back to his home, I try using the radio to uplift my mood. The Queens of Life band is playing one of their songs on a different radio station. Their music starts to bring my spirit into a neutral state. All the way to his home, I jam to their music with my face wet with tears.
I head into the bathroom and apply the medicine to my cuts. I have to keep my bra off so that the straps won’t press down on them. Walking halfway towards my room, I hear Vah coming down the steps. He turns towards the kitchen. I take a few steps out of the hallway, getting ready to greet him, but I realize I forgot to put my shirt back on. The near embarrassment keeps me away from wanting to talk. I decide that I’ll take a couple of hours to nap to rest my aching soul. As I lie on the bed, the softness of the covers makes my body tingle.
“This feels so amazing,” I say, rolling in the covers.
Something focusing all of its heat on my body wakes me up. Through the skin of my eyelids, something bright shines down at me. I lean on my side with my eyes covered and slowly open them. The first thing I see is grass.
“Huh?” I say, opening both my eyes. I look around and find myself lying on a grassy hill. I’m naked, but there’s a blue fog covering me. “What the hell is going on?” Clouds surround the hill and extend as far as I can see. A single dark bark tree with white leaves sits on the peak behind me. This tree only has one branch, which extends halfway up the trunk, and it too has white leaves. I walk up to it, and the grass under my feet becomes warm. It’s oddly a comfortable warmth that makes me get on my hands and knees to feel it. I even lay down in it.
A small breeze knocks down some of the leaves, landing on my back. When I look over to my left, I see that my hair is the color of the leaves. At first, I panic, thinking I have suddenly become old, but I examine my body and find no sign of aging. Suddenly, a hard barrage of wind hits me from my back, making me retreat behind the tree. With all my might, I hold on to it. The wind is so strong that I have to close my eyes to prevent them from drying out.
While holding on, I feel individual stinging sensations like something cutting me. After a few seconds, the wind stops, but I keep a hold of the tree. Then the weirdest thing happens. Slowly, the tree begins to morph into a human man. He slowly stands to his feet, facing away from me. His hair is as long as mine, but he has three braids going down the right side of his head.
“Well, well,” he softly says. His voice sounds like Vah, but I need to see his face. He turns slightly to the right. All I see is a small portion of his cheek. “Those cuts look pretty bad.” I look down to see what he’s talking about. My arms are littered with red cuts, going in different directions. “Let me fix them.” Each wound slowly turns into scabs and disappears, but doesn’t leave any scars. “Much better, don’t you think?”
“What is this, Vah?” He tilts his head as he’s trying to figure something out. “You’re scaring me.”
“How am I scaring you?” He says, chuckling. “I’m here to bring you harmony, Syrah.” When he turns his face further, a white flash engulfs us, then everything becomes black. I can’t feel anything, but only my face.
“Vah!” I say, screaming his name several times. I close my eyes hard and open them. I’m back in my room, and I can feel again. “What...the...fuck... was that?” I say in my head. My phone alarm goes off, making me scream for a short moment.
The dream stays fresh in my mind. Every detail is still vivid, including the backside of what might be Vah’s body. I quickly write everything down on my phone just in case I forget it later on. For some time, I have tried to make sense of the dream. I can’t get my mind around the branches having white leaves and my hair color. I’m not the one to dye my hair any type of color. My phone’s notification breaks me out of my thoughts. It’s a text from Vah, telling me the food is ready. The aroma of the food sneaks its way into my room seconds later.
“Whoa. This smells good.” I whisper. I head to the living room and see him in the kitchen. His back is facing me, and my mind goes back to the dream of the man who may be him. “Stop it, Syrah,” I whisper to myself.
“Good evening, sleepyhead,” he says, not looking my way.
“How did he hear me? Am I still dreaming?” I slowly walk further into the living room, a few feet from the stairs. “Vah?” I say out loud. He turns his head to the right, then his full body to look at me. In his hair, there’s a small pink bow, which makes me giggle at how kinda random yet cute it looks on him. “You got something in your hair.”
“Oh. My brother, Des, came over and brought his daughter with him. She played dress-up on me.”
“Ah, damn. I missed the fun.” On the counter behind him, I can see he’s already prepared our plates. I head into the kitchen to take a look at the meat. Its aroma smells so delightful that my mouth gets a bit watery. “This looks so tasty.”
“Here,” he says, handing me a fork. “Dig in.” I place a massive chunk on my fork and eat it whole. “Goodness, Syrah. You must be really hungry?” He takes a smaller piece on his plate and eats it.
While we eat together in the kitchen, my mind wanders back to the dream. I focus again on the tree and my hair. Maybe it means a family tree. He says he has a brother, so it may be him as the branch. But what does my hair being white mean?
“Hey, Vah,” I say, putting another piece of meatloaf in my mouth. “Your white hair, does your brother have it too?”
“No,” he says with his mouth full.
“What about your parents?” He shakes his head, no. Now I’m more curious as to what it may be related to. “Weird.”
“Is something troubling you?” When I pop out of my thoughts, I realize I was staring at him this entire time.
“No, I’m fine,” I quickly say. “Excuse me.” To defuse the awkwardness between us, I take my plate to my room to eat.
While finishing off my dinner, the pain in my shoulder comes back again. This time, the pain is intolerable. I have to run to the bathroom to check on my gauze. It has a pool of blood on it. I take dark color bath towel, soak it up with water, and clean my wound. I add more medication, then cover it with a fresh bandage.
After I finish my dinner, I return to the living room and see him sitting on the couch, giving me a blank stare.
“Syrah, can I talk to you?” He says. He gets up off the sofa, takes my plate, and puts it away in the sink.
“Yes, Vah?”
“Are you alright? I saw you storm in and out of the bathroom, and you were grabbing your shoulder?”
“It’s nothing. Just a pinched nerve.”
“Syrah,” he says with a sigh. “Why would you go to the bathroom for a pinched nerve?”
“Well, you know...” I can’t find the best words to lie with. Every attempt I make makes his face contort like he sees something disgusting. “It’s nothing, Vah.”
“Something is bothering you. I can see it in your face and hear it in your voice.” I try again to deny my issue, but I ultimately throw in the towel.
“I’m sorry, Vah,” I whisper with my head down. “Turn around for a moment.” When he looks away, I take off my sweater and use it to cover my breasts. “You can look now.” He covers his mouth, then looks off to his right after seeing my cuts.
“So, was this the reason why you went out this morning?”
“I did.” I place my sweater back on, while he still has his eyes off me. Tears flood my eyes to the point I can’t see him clearly. “I’m doing worse, Vah.” I can’t look him in the face anymore. I’m crying so hard from admitting what I’ve done to myself and the massive pain in my shoulder that I have to stabilize myself on his couch. He gently takes hold of my right arm, which puts a pause on my loud wailing. “Help me, Vah. The pain, my misery, I’m going to lose it!”
“I’ll help you, Syrah. I promise. I will give you all the help you need.” His response makes me cry harder and louder. He takes me into his arms, and his warm body slowly shuts down my sobbing into absolute silence.
