The Lovely Shadow (13 page)

It seems odd, in retrospect, that being
unable to communicate with the world due to my imprisonment
inspired in me a passion for learning new words in order to
communicate more efficiently.

The new game I came up with for the
dictionary was finding a word and trying to guess its meaning
before reading the definition. That game kept me busy for quite
some time.

Occasionally as I randomly flipped through
pages I’d come across a page I’d already been on before. When that
happened I’d test myself on the words on those pages to see if I
remembered their definitions- most of the time, I did.

Finally, my aching back and rumbling tummy
forced me to give up on word games and head down for some food. On
the way down the stairs I had one minor misstep near the bottom and
nearly fell.

In mid stumble I reached out reflexively with
my right hand and tried to grab the banister, but succeeded only in
banging my fingers on the underside of it. Having kept myself so
busy with books, existential thinking, and chores, I had nearly
forgotten how badly I was still injured. The banister reminded me
in a not so gentle manner.

I managed to keep myself from falling,
somehow, but the pain in my fingers made me throw out a few choice
words that I was fairly certain my mother would not have approved
of, even if they were directed at Katelyn.

When I made it to the bottom of the stairs,
(walking much more carefully on the lower half while cradling my
throbbing hand) I had lost most of my appetite and decided that
something simple would suffice for a meal.

I didn’t want to go the Ramen noodle route
for supper again, so I kept feeling along until I found something
truly delightful; a box of Twinkies. I sat on my chair and ate the
entire box.

I learned a valuable lesson shortly after
eating the entire box. If you eat twelve Twinkies on a mostly empty
belly, it will make you very, very ill. I needed to vomit. My first
thought was to head to the washer, but I had not removed my clothes
from it yet, and in my addled state, I felt that it would be nearly
sinful to puke on the laundry I had just washed.

My second thought was my ‘Poopin Bucket’, as
I had affectionately taken to calling it. I rushed over to the
bucket and bent over it. As I removed the towel I thought the
moment might be passing and I would not need to vomit after
all.

A physical force of stench punched me right
in the nose as I yanked the towel off the bucket, knocking my head
backwards and dispelling any myth I may have been trying to
conceive about not needing to vomit. I lost all twelve Twinkies and
some remnants of Pop Tarts as well.

Feeling a bit weak and shaky, I covered my
bucket and went to the dryer to get a jar of water, (the one near
my chair was empty and I did not have enough ambition in me at that
point to refill it.)

I drank about half of it. My throat was still
raw from the acid that had just passed through it, and my teeth
felt fuzzy. I began daydreaming about my toothbrush that was locked
just out of reach, beyond the infamous door, out in the real
world.

I was still feeling disoriented and queasy,
and worse, I could feel the loneliness starting its oppressive
crush on my emotions again.

Glancing up, I could see that the light was
beginning to shift hues again, reddening slightly with an orange
tint, signifying the end of another day, and I still needed to get
my bed set up for the night, and throw my clothes in the drier.

The chores of laundry and bed setting were
rapidly losing the appeal that they’d had during the first couple
days of my incarceration, but I knew instinctively that I needed
the chores to keep my sanity. I intuited that if I gave in to
lethargy, it would be a slippery slope that would slide me straight
into immobilized depression, and I would end up dying down
there.

The thought of dying down there in the dark,
all alone, was as repugnant to me as was the idea of going insane,
and proved to be a great motivator in so far as getting my laundry
dried and my bed set up for the night.

Night came and went, and morning light was
shining through the gap in the door, displaying all of the muted
glory of sunlight into my world of blackness. I awoke and set about
my routine.

Bathroom duties first, followed by breakfast,
followed by cleaning up my mess, followed by setting up my chair,
followed by looking for a good book, followed by checking the door,
followed by sitting on the third step down, followed by a day spent
reading fiction, and finally followed by playing word games in a
dictionary.

It was just another day in the dark, another
day skipping lunch, another day in which my depression threatened
to crush me. Every day, it seemed, was becoming an exercise of mind
over matter; trying to ‘keep my chin up’.

I was losing my grip on what the real world
was. As a matter of fact, I was forgetting what the real world even
looked like. I struggled to remember what things looked like
outside the basement, and more than once wondered if there was ever
really a life outside the basement, or if that world of light and
sound had only been a dream, and the world of darkness and shadow
was the only reality I’d ever known.

I still hadn’t gotten dressed. I had been
completely naked for two full days and didn’t care. It wasn’t like
anybody was going to come rushing into my dark domicile and expose
my nudity.

I spent a brief second wondering if I should
be concerned about my sudden apathy towards the societal chains
that were supposed to separate the human race from that of the
lower species.

I quickly decided that I really didn’t care.
I was not a part of society. I was more like a beast trapped in a
cage at the zoo than I was a functioning member of society, and I
had no need to dress to impress, so to say, and besides, naked was
far more comfortable and convenient than was the bother of getting
dressed, smelling up my clothes, washing my clothes, and undoing my
clothes every time nature called.

Lethargy, despite my best efforts was
beginning to set in. I knew it was happening, but was powerless to
stop it. I began to justify it, in fact. I figured that so long as
I didn’t allow myself to go insane, I could, at the very least,
allow myself a little self pity. After all, I had been trapped, all
alone in the dark by my psychotic mother for five days now, and
there was no sign that my situation was going to improve any time
soon;

The memory of Joe’s voice continued to
flitter around in my head, swimming around in my brain the way a
group of moths will swarm around a light bulb, occasionally
bouncing off its surface with a slight tinking sound every time
contact was made.

I could almost hear the tink every time the
memory of the words made contact with my conscious brain. Just as I
was powerless against my growing depression, I was powerless to
halt that memory from bouncing around inside my head, and was
equally disadvantaged when it came to interpreting the meaning of
the words.

I didn’t waste too much time actually
pondering the meaning of the mysteries that had been laid before me
because I had daily rituals to attend to. The book I discovered
from my treasure box on that fifth day disturbed me.

I didn’t fully grasp the themes of the book,
but I understood enough of them to fear for my own sanity. Lord of
the Flies chronicled the events of a group of young boys
shipwrecked on an island.

Without any instruction from society, the
boys created their own society, and quickly descended into chaos.
They turned tribal and began infighting and murdering each other,
and discovered the horrible beast that dwells in the hearts of all
men in the process.

That beast—that Lord of the Flies—is what
disturbed me most. If that invisible monster lurks in the hearts of
all men, and if the solitude of the island that separated the boys
from society was enough to bring the hidden beast to the surface in
such a violent way, what did that portend for me, marooned on my
own dark and solitary island?

Lord of the Flies took me most of the day to
read, but I still managed to finish off the waking hours of my day
by playing in my dictionary. Then the day ended with my evening
ritual of supper, bed setting, using the bathroom, (washing
machine) and falling asleep while wondering about the meaning of
June.

Day six followed day five with a ritualistic
normalcy. The very fact that I had developed a “normal” routine for
any part of that abnormal existence in the basement could only mean
one of two things;

One: I had an unbreakable spirit and
determination that would seek to create order in an increasingly
chaotic world, thereby allowing me the freedom to live profitably
in any circumstance, adapting to the world around me and ensuring
my survival.

Or two: I was going insane and had no grasp
on just how bad the situation really was.

I chose not to dwell on the possibilities
overlong, but simply chose option number one and didn’t question
the logic behind the choice beyond the point of telling myself that
I was NOT going to be crazy like my mother.

But regardless of the real reasons for the
routine, day six was just like day five, which was just like day
four. I had no reason to believe that day seven would be any
different, and when day seven rolled around, I was not surprised to
find the striking similarity to days six, five, and four.

The only thing that was changing from day to
day was the title of the books that I was reading, and the
incremental level of depression and loneliness that was growing
inside me.

When I had first started reading the books on
the third step, I was able to associate myself to the many
characters and themes within them. As my melancholy grew, however,
I wasn’t able to do so as readily.

I began to forget my own identity. I began to
doubt my own existence. I didn’t feel real enough to be able to
associate myself with anything or anything with myself. The real
world for me had become the imagined world in all the fictional
books I was reading, and the time spent not reading was more of a
dream than an actual existence.

I did occasionally wonder about June, and
what possible implications that cryptic statement could have in
store for me, but I didn’t have enough self awareness left to give
it much serious thought.

All my thoughts became as mist in the wind.
Swirling and dancing images behind my eyes, clouding the world
around me before being carried off to places unknown by forces
outside my control.

By day ten I was no longer leaving my
dictionary perfectly aligned on the top step at night. It was too
precious to me to leave it lying unprotected so far away from me. I
began bringing it to bed with me.

I found strange comfort in the way the
plastic dust jacket that protected the hard cardboard cover of the
dictionary stuck to my bare skin as I slept. Occasionally, as I
moved in my sleep, the cover would rip at my skin, prompting me to
sudden alertness, but rather than being an inconvenience, I found
it reassuring. I would wake and know instantly that my treasure was
with me.

By day thirteen I had no more struggles with
loneliness or depression. I no longer wondered about June, I no
longer cared when I tried the door at the top of the steps and
found it to be locked. I didn’t exist. Nothing existed except the
dictionary and the wealth of communicable dissemination carefully
guarded within its pages.

I had no mirror in my atramentous enclosure,
but I’m relatively certain that by that time I must have looked
something like Gollum. I hadn’t bathed myself in at least a week,
had been naked for nearly two weeks, and had not even attempted to
keep my hair flattened against my scalp. My eyes were always opened
to their widest limit, trying to absorb every last miniscule photon
that happened to be zooming by—or in other words, trying to see in
the dark.

I can only imagine how ghastly my appearance
was with my wide eyes, wild hair and greasy, dirty smudges covering
the entirety of my naked frame. I’m sure that a glimpse of me at
that time would have been more horrifying than a glimpse of my
screeching, wedding dress clad mother in the hallway was.

But my abominable appearance was not enough
to keep June from embracing me on my thirteenth night.

As day thirteen drew to a close and darkness
once again swallowed the oasis of dim illumination at the bottom of
the stairs, I fell asleep. I slept just as I had the past several
nights, with my dictionary wrapped tightly against my chest with
both arms, and my blanket pulled up over my head, protecting me
from monsters, ghosts, aliens, and bad dreams.

Not that any of those evils really mattered
to me, because I no longer believed that any of them were real, and
even if they were real, it still didn’t matter because I no longer
believed that I was real.

In reality, I had originally slept that way
for the afore mentioned protection, but by day thirteen I slept
that way out of habit, and necessity for routine.

In retrospect, routine probably saved my life
down in the basement. If I had not developed a solid routine prior
to forgetting that I was real, I would likely have starved to death
because I would not have seen a need to eat in order to sustain my
imaginary self.

So, routine had me sleeping beneath my
covers, naked, and cradling a dictionary on my thirteenth night
when a noise above me woke me up. By that point in my
incarceration, one would have thought that any noise from above
would have filled me with hope, but instead the noise inspired
dread.

The noise was the dull thudding of footsteps
walking through the house. Floor boards creaked in protest, crying
out as if they were outraged that they also had been awakened and
put to work after so long a respite from the tortures of being
walked upon.