Grave

Red Smith is attributed to the saying “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” I wasn't familiar with this saying when I started writing but looking back on my notes it appears I would write until I bled out. Analysing the words of my former self is a morbid way of time-traveling, bending space with it. 

I find myself bare foot on barren land illuminated by a lonely light. The source, a lantern with its outer glass globe broken, although I only take notice of this after I’ve stepped on the remnants scattered on the ground around it. With my feet cut and bloodied and the lantern in hand, I make my way around the rusted structures of neglected carnival rides.  

I head towards the only building in sight. It’s a house of mirrors and no two reflections are the same. Some of the figures are close to my height but most of them are shorter than me. I see fringes and hair lengths of all types but there’s one distinct trait. There’s a deep sadness present in their eyes. A glare I was once equipped with but hold no more.  

The smallest apparition wears a powder pink puffer jacket. I recognise it from one of the only pictures from my childhood I possess. Upon noticing my presence, she urgently attempts to communicate with me. She looks scared for me, but I can’t distinguish what she is saying, unable to hear through the glass of the mirror.  

It wasn’t a priority of mine to check the structural integrity of the building before entering and now I’m falling through the wooden floorboards, eaten away by rot. I fall onto a concrete dwelling that lies six feet below. I try to lift myself out of the hole but the floorboards crumble and splinter into the nail beds of my fingers. I look around the room for an exit point to find none. It’s impossible, seemingly designed to trap someone in this exact situation that I have found myself in.  

The lantern maintaining its status as a resilient resource, casts its unwavering light to a filing cabinet. It’s positioned a few feet away from me against a wall. This is my way out, it’s tall enough to make up for the upper body strength I lack and the instability of the structure around me. If I can place it vertically to the entry point of the building, I can break through the floorboards and make it back to level ground.  

I try to move the cabinet, but it’s secured to the ground, bolted and beyond my capacity to remove. I open the drawers of the filing system to find it packed end to end with paper and hanging folder files, neatly arranged with thick black text dating the suspended tabs. They’re not in chronological order and the further back I look into the drawers, the more chaotic the handwriting appears. Some have dates scribbled out and others are completely illegible.  

I reach for the piece of paper closest to me, it’s wedged against the door of the drawer and provides a preface this collection. “Here lies the most intimate moments of my life.” I feel a sudden drop in temperature and a wave of nausea sweeps over me. I know these words; they belong to me. I feel an urge to destroy it all, turn the metal trays into a fire pit but have no means to do so. I contemplate ripping it up but looking at the state of my hands I know better. There’s no point in causing myself harm unless it’s to leverage emotional discomfort I'm experiencing.  

I feel like whatever forces are keeping me here want me to read on, so I look at the file names and one stands out. It’s dated 06/02/2018 and reads as follows: “You slid your cold hands in between my thighs, and I awoke to your fingertips, carrying out what was needed to prepare me for what you wanted. You were drunk and I was asleep and by the morning that memory was wiped from your mind.” 

 I frantically search the corners of my mind to find the identity of the man behind the hands. A tall figure manifests in front of me, the face replicates that of a featureless mannequin. Its body is still but as I begin the process of placing a face it starts to sway, lurking towards me in a threatening manner. I stop searching the contents of my mind, realising there are a few heads I can swap out interchangeably. I stare at it intently until its identity is revealed. It becomes still and dissipates, becoming one with the air around me.  

I take a deep breath in and return my focus to the hunk of metal that contains information I swore I’d take to the grave. The following page I pull reads: “I've filed away so many memories in hopes of never revisiting them, but it seems everything must resurface at some point.” With a few sentences redacted, it continues with: “My mother lay next to me in my bed after having a few too many, placing her hand down my pants and asking me if my father ever touched me like this. My mother didn't remember those events the next morning and my father never touched me.” 

I don’t remember how far my mother took things, but I hope to think it wasn’t any further than touching the elastic of my underwear band. I was too young to understand what was happening, but the events were unnerving enough to leave a mark. Later in my life my mother would repeatedly attempt to convince me that my dad is a pedophile. Through incautions or direct accusal. She took many routes to sever the bond I had with my dad, but this was by far the lowest.  

Text written underneath the aforementioned pertains to the figure with a threatening nature. He’s described as controlling, manipulative and has the persistence of a cockroach, in that it never died. “He would get upset with me about lack of intimacy when I had been sick or just wasn't in the mood. I grew tired of his whining, so I gave in and let him fuck me. Sometimes I just laid there and thought about telling him to stop but never did because it was easier to be used than emotionally abused.  

What’s worse than the events of these accounts are the reports of self-hatred. The way the residual emotions drilled into my bones and made a home of my body. How I felt trapped in my own flesh. Paralysed by fear from being mangled while I lay motionless. I return to old habits, biting the inside of my cheeks, turning my hands into fists and digging my nails into the palms of my hands. I can feel my ears going red; my skin flushes when I cry. I sink into myself, falling back onto the wall and let it guide me on my way down until I'm completely slumped over. I let it out, holding myself for comfort the way I’ve done so many times before. After I exhaust myself I Iook up, hoping to see a way out magically appear. Instead, I see writing on the floorboards above me. It’s hard to discern the writing from the dark colouring of it’s surrounds, but as I lift my lantern up, I realise it’s oxidised blood. It’s old but there’s no way of telling how long it’s been there. I can feel a sting in my feet, but they stopped bleeding hours ago.  

The writing on the ceiling reads: “Eram quod es, eris quod sum.” I’ve read these words as inscribed on the stone of a burial place and still remember the English translation. “I was what you are, you will be what I am.”