The child in the house
A child lives in a large house that shrinking every day, and no matter how much they try, they cannot bring themselves to leave it.
They look out of the window and imagine a different day, one far ahead of them when the doors have swung open. They have merrily skipped outside, to a day better and happier and where they are worth so much more than they are now. But they haven’t anywhere to go, they thought watching a small crack works its way from the wall to the ceiling, and once they do leave, they can’t come back. What if they had nowhere to go? Well, perhaps anywhere would be better than this? But anywhere cannot be reached until they open the door and step through it. Then the child cries, as another floorboard snaps and a chip of plaster patters down on their head, and the room is half the size it was yesterday. Or was that the day before?
It was a strange place, though they didn’t know that, the house so cold and dim. The child liked to sit by the fire, close their eyes and pretend. It might be something happy. Sometimes it might be something sad. Often it was just something. As the wallpaper faded and the plants withered, everyone who came to the house was presented with a mannequin whom they liked. The child in the house began to carry a candle with them wherever they went so that they never left the fire that made them so much warmer. It didn’t make them feel any better now.
The mirrors would whisper to them. The glass couldn’t help it; they’d tell them all the reasons they should be scared of the outside, their skin, their hair, their fat, their friends. They had friends once, but now they had the house, the bannisters on which they would run their fingers, and the hallways in which they would lie down and inspect the floor.
Pipes and weirs ran through it like veins and lymph, and they drank from it at the rusted sores that were the sinks and showers. Each day was the same, except the house never was, for as much as they would have liked to, they couldn’t stop the crumbling.
They never escaped that house. After so much time, they didn’t know how to.
