As It Always Is

It is night in the house, as it always is. When the sun is high and the sky is pale blue, still it is night. My dream comes, as it always does. I am on the outside looking in. It is night on the ground, as it always is, and day in the sky, as it always is. Lights shine from the windows, and there is a happy family, laughing and talking in the living room. I knock timidly on the door, but no one heeds me. I knock more loudly, but still I go unheard. I bang and shout, but the door is still closed. I try to open it, but it is locked. Then it turns into a window, locked and shuttered from the outside, and I am on the inside looking out, as I always am before the dream.

I am lonely, as I always am after the dream. It is at these times that I contemplate escape. But I calm down, as I always do, and my thoughts escape instead of me. For, as I always remember, I cannot escape, except by destroying some part of the house. It is such a pretty house, and repairs would cost money I do not have.

Even if I could escape, I tell myself (as I always do) that no one would know me. I would be a specter, a specter in my own hometown. And then I think, as I always do, that perhaps I am a specter, for I neither eat nor sleep. Eating brought back memories, memories of a time when I did not have the dream, when I did not live in this beautiful, ghastly house. Sleeping brought on the dream, the hopeful, tantalizing, lonely dream that still comes to me when my mind wanders, as it always does.

Then I think, as I always do after the dream, that I am mad. But it does not matter. I am here, as I always am and always have been. There is no escape, as there never is and never has been. It is such a pretty house.


Now that I think about it, I know I must be dead, else I could not be here. I no longer eat, as I always used to. There is no longer food to eat, as there always used to be. I no longer sleep, as I always used to. There is no longer rest to sleep for, as there once was. I did not notice it if I died, as I had always thought I would. On the other hand, I cannot be alive, so I must be dead.

If I am dead, why am I still here? Perhaps I must find a way out, a way for my spirit to be free. If I am dead, it does not matter that the house is pretty, as it always was. I must escape this torture. I cast about, looking for something to help me escape this misery. I find an old chair. I launch it at the window, hoping to escape this loneliness. The window shatters, and the shutters begin to splinter. I seize the chair again and hurl it at the shutters, breaking through, escaping the darkness. I see the light and the pale blue sky. The chair sails out over the trees, free in a way neither I nor it ever could be--until now. I jump out, elated that I am free. As I crash on the cement, I feel my spine snap, and know that I cannot have survived that short flight. As I drift out of myself, the last thing I ever remember is being extremely happy, knowing that I have escaped the house forever.

March '97
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