Crimson Defiance

Voices from a distant star drifted through the cracks around the door, finding their way through old wooden doorframes and dirty aged carpet, echoing through the ventilation, acutely distinguishable in the calm of night. Some were familiar and pedestrian --- colorless tones amidst the clamor of alien tongues. Cold linoleum on bare feet. Harsh fluorescent light on pale skin. Vivid memories of a hand shattering innocence on my mother’s face. I blinked several times to focus my tangled mind on this new incident. Perhaps it was important.

“We were worried sick about you!” came my mother’s appropriately worried and astonished voice. It sounded hallow and vague, the high notes were all that pierced the floorboards to my ears.

“We found him walking around out by the old harbor.” These were the strangers, the outsiders, I could tell immediately. Their voices were authoritarian, confident, deserving of gushing thanks and promises of heartfelt returns.

“Where are your shoes? Where’s your car?” Out the bathroom door, down the stairs and to the left, there standing in front of the door would be Uncle Chester, blue and bitter, with two officers flanking his sides, each with a face that said they’d been through these sorts of things plenty of times --- we’re professionals, ma’am, they’d want to say, just like in the movies. My little brother Jeremy would be standing near the back, peeking around the corner at the adult commotion, his wide-eyed expression never letting on to just how much of it he understood.

After exchanging identification, they’d depart, leaving my mother to interrogate him further until he was fed up and stormed out, after which she’d find anyone that would listen to tell them she was worried he might be getting Alzheimer’s or something worse. What would happen if he got hurt and was never found? Sometimes she’d talk to no one, walking off into another room continuing her one-sided conversation. Much like her words were finding their way to me now, they would find their way to Uncle Chester, wherever he had gone, and he would sit for hours in his room trying to forget that he was forgetting. I’d come in and find him there, his grey-blue eyes pleading for company, his gnarled knuckles gripping the hand rests of his favorite rocker, and he’d ask me if I was doing okay in school in his even, deliberate voice. Sometimes I’d even wear my old high school hoodie just for him.

“Your mother wants to put me in a home, Winter.”

Occasionally I would argue, assuring him that no, my mother didn’t really mean it, she was just stressed, and other times I would just keep quiet and let the question hang in the room, listening to the careful creaking of his rocker and the ticks of his clock collection --- all perfectly timed to tick in unison. Sometimes it felt pointless to fight it.

I looked up in the mirror, staring at my bloodshot eyes and the ugly brown roots beginning to show through the black. All of the capillaries in my face seemed to scream for attention all at once and I knew then that I wasn’t really going to do it. Small pricks of crimson defiance would suffice.

Downstairs it was getting quiet again. Mom had wandered off, probably to put Jeremy to bed, and I knew if I went down there I’d find Uncle Chester in his room. He’d say hello to me and we’d both pretend the other didn’t know. I turned on the water to drown out the silence.

Even through the coursing water I could still hear the laughter and the shouts as Uncle Chester would carry me around outside on his shoulders, zooming through invisible corridors. Christmases dressed up like Santa Claus and stories about Vietnam. Dad’s funeral, mom’s second wedding, and losing my virginity so my boyfriend wouldn’t dump me too. Stardust memories that twinkle for an instant and then fade, swallowed by the black of space.

“Of course I love you, Winter.”

Occasionally I would let that boy fool me with his sweet words, figuring that my friends must be jealous, and other times I would make out with his best friend during his big football game. That was before I graduated and left my life behind to work in a dead-end low-wage local job. I turned the water off. I would quit tomorrow.

A knock on the door startled me.

“Winter? Are you in there?”

“Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute!”

“They found your uncle. He’s home now.”

“I know, I heard.”

“Go say good night to him.”

“I will.”

I waited a moment, listening for the sounds of her footsteps. When she had left, and I had cleaned up, making sure everything was as I had found it, I flicked off the bright lights and emerged back into the shield of darkness. I could have fumbled for the light switch, but I was comfortable sensing my way through the familiar hall. Today’s scars didn’t hurt that much.

-- Written in December of 2005 for my Creative Writing Fiction class in a fit of last-minute finals panic. I apologize for its incredibly pukey angsty-ness. --