The House

Chapter 26 - Day 3: Sliding into Madness

There are no dramatic sound effects or flashing lights, or views alternating between sharp focus and blurry when one's mind falls apart.

I know that now. First-hand.

It comes at you quietly and in the form of something as uninspiring and unthreatening as layers of dusty shelves carrying random, unimportant items in a shallow closet with no window and no teddy bear.

Wait! I was wrong. There are sound effects. I can hear a muffled keening sound growing gradually louder as the closet door slams shut, just to be yanked open again and slammed again, over and over.

It is me making those sounds, and I cannot seem to stop myself. Every time I open the door, I expect the small room to be back, to set things straight, to tell me that I have not gone insane, but it's not there. There are only shelves and dust and some moth-eaten blankets, and I'm really crying now in loud, uncontrollable sobs.

"Belle? Belle!"

I scream when hands grab mine, spinning me away from the closet, and then I fall quiet, staring up into David's startled face with eyes that have frozen in place.

"Are you here? Are you really here?" I ask, moving towards him, freeing my wrists from fingers I know I am feeling wrapped around them. I reach up and touch his face, his hair, and his broad shoulders. "You are, aren't you?" I sob, pressing my body into his, clinging to his shirt. He must be real because he smells like smoke and sunlight, just as he should since I met him in the smoke and the sunlight. I snuggle closer, breathing him in, taking comfort from his warmth and the fragrance of normalcy.

"Belle, what's going on? What scared you?" he is asking, wrapping his arms around me instead of shoving me away or running for the nearest door, which is scoring him a gazillion brownie points.

"The closet," I croak into his chest.

"Was there a rat?"

I could say yes, and that will be the end of it, but my legs won't hold me, and my mind is flying away in a disconnected haze. I'm trembling so badly; I can barely hold onto him. There is no way that he could believe that a simple rat could have this effect on a human being unless they suffer from some kind of debilitating phobia or ran into a six-foot sewer rat straight out of a steampunk adventure. 

Maybe I stepped into one of those. That would be so much more fun than having a meltdown in this strange house where nothing seems to be what and where they're supposed to be.

"Am I sleepwalking again?" I ask hopefully.

"Again? You do it often?" David is being incredibly kind and patient; he couldn't possibly be real or even here. I conjured him, just like I conjured the room where there is now only a closet, laughing at me with its open mouth. I want to slam it shut again, but instead, I turn my face into David's shoulder. He sits down with me when my lame legs cause me to sag to the point where he probably would've picked me up if I wasn't wrapped around him like strangling ivy.

"I'm losing my mind," I tell him in a shoulder-muffled voice. He's probably not really here, and I'm cuddling the mop, so I might as well tell him the truth. "I don't just walk in my sleep; I paint, I run around on the beach, I enter and leave the house through secret tunnels, I unearth hidden treasures, and this morning I woke up on a bed in that closet that was a room, clutching a scratchy teddy bear. There was no dining room before... where did the dining room come from?"

"Are you having bad dreams, Belle?"

I finally push away from him, looking into his dark eyes, surprised to find a hint of green looking back at me. His eyes are green, but they are so dark in hue that they're almost black. I can see myself reflected in their beautiful gleaming surfaces.