The icterical tinges were still only just gracing the sleepy sky, the rising circle of smoldering yellow light shooting glaring reflections all about the snow-laden ground as I crept cautiously up the stairs, one shaking hand pressed to the wall beside me with such force that the tips of my already pale fingers morphed into a ghostly white. I tread slowly, twisting my head back anxiously every few daunting steps to peer through the minute amount of saturnine light that had made its way through my window to see if anyone had entered my room. If perhaps some vagarious turn of events had canceled school for them. When no faces appeared however, I would spin about eagerly and tromp up another small set of stairs.

How long this routine went on for I could not be sure. Until I reached the top; until the fluorescent sheen of the sun danced pivotally high in the sky, finally breaking cleanly through the intransigent clouds. And how utterly amazing it was to finally see the top, the mystery--to think that I had never been here, despite that the stairs came from my room! They each had a desk attached to the wall and, oh, their own room. What joy it must be to have your own room. Alas, just as I had decided to race forward into one of the rooms and explore the glories of this new, recondite world, the screeching movement of something beside me turned me from glee to fear.

It could almost be mistaken for an oggannition if I hadn't heard it so closely, but when i turned around there was still no one there. What was this then? Some sort of mysterious reproach for my obambulating? A booby-trap? Was I to be reduced to the wildest of animals and taunted? To the squirrels the Poloznik's terrorize? To the bats within our walls? To the--wait, that was it! Just a bat. Just like the noises in my room, just a little different. No big deal.

Yet for some reason i could not control the squassation overcoming me, couldn't explain if it was from the bat that had caught me unaware or from being where I knew I should not be. When the squawking rang out again, however, I did not hesitate to take it--cue or excuse--as my time to leave; to turn and scramble down the leering staircase and elaqueate myself. Even rushing through my room, across the hall, and down the second set of stairs however did not relieve me of the cumbrous weight pressing adamantly against my gut.

I should not have gone up there, not without Mandy or Phil. What if they had come home? What if mom had come looking for me? Or Aunt Sue? Now what could happen? What if I had moved something? Left some sort of mark? What if someone heard me? It would be like the time I ran from Michelle and Jenny, I knew already. I would feel the stone in my stomach for weeks, always wondering if I'd get in trouble. It never really mattered what they said to me first to our moms, did it? Just that I ran. Not far, really. Just down the street, to dad's friend, and he made me go back with him. Some badot spiel about how four year olds need to stay near their parents and now not two months later and I was doomed to perdition yet again.

From my new perch however, juxtaposed to the bolted door that locked away the niveous world outside, I remained hidden from anyone who might be downstairs by the wall I now leaned into beside the stairwell. Safe now from being discovered in a forbidden area, I remembered faintly my mother's voice calling out, resonating about the house during my expedition, that Michelle had gotten sick. That she was picking Shell up from pre-school. To be good for Aunt sue.

An enervative attempt at anger stirred within the pit of my stomach at the remembrance of these orders, but fluttered quickly into a passive admittance. Whether from the guilt already numbing my organs or some new realization unfolding within my brain, I was no point in kvetching to myself about how very fatuous my mother was. Perhaps my Aunt was indeed condemned to our couch, for now at least, and it was optimistic to the point of delusional to think she might have any control over me, but what good did it do to terrorize my mind with these thoughts? Especially when there was playing to be done.

Before I could surrender myself to play, though, a mussitation caught my ear, too quiescent to determine what exactly had been murmured but loud enough to alert me to an unfamiliar presence. Curious, I craned my neck and leaned forward to perch on the tips of my toes and peer around the corner of my protective wall, grasping the drywall blithely. I managed to adjust my eyes to the new-found luciferous brightness of the lamp-lit room just as my Aunt, sinking into the couch, yelped particularly loud in pain followed closely with a string of choice expletives.

The white clad body that had been towering over her before I stumbled back to sit on the steps transcending me had to be her nurse for it was embedded into even my head who was allowed in the house. Why then was she inflicting pain, though? Were they not supposed to help her? What about the nurses always crowding around Papa and those doctors who don't let me see him anymore? Aren't they supposed to be helping them get better? Or... or was the last time I was Papa, that I refused to hug him, going to be my last?

He was supposed to go up to the cottage with everyone this summer, teach me to swim. We were supposed to eat the red gummy bears and leave the rest to Mom and Dad. They had to make him better, nithings or not. But, if she was hurting my Aunt... what could these people really be doing if they weren't helping? They weren't magnanimous at all, were they? It was all just a flambuginous, meretricious lie.

Fearful, I curled into myself from my perch on the stairs, tucking my knees under my chin and wrapping my arms around them as I leaned my heated forehead against the cool, textured surface of the wall beside me in hopes to calm myself as I submitted to the pusillanimous reasoning of my mind and waited for the inimical stranger to leave. On occasion a yelp would sound again, followed by softer curses now, as an ongoing iterative until--finally--I heard the tell-tale creaking of the side door, when a few precious moments later I was graced with the draconian roaring of a car starting, I jerked quickly from my lopeholt to watch from the window as the criticaster lady drove off. One safe, but how to get Papa from their egregious hands?

Once the foreign car had gone from my street with the anathema within it, however, all thoughts of Papa were transfused to the back of my mind as I spun around on my heel to check on my Aunt sue for myself. Incredibly startled was I, though, when I found her eyes trained on my figure curiously, following my deliberate movements inquiringly.

Careful not to lose any face or crack into the poltroon that was crying out inside of me under her eyes, I crept forward and lightly pulled on the pack of cards resting on the corner table beside her to divert her attention, "Can we play Go Fish?"

If she was at all surprised by my asking instead of the other way around, she did not show it and the matter was forgotten easily enough as she formulated the traditional, one-sided conversation. Mostly she vented, perhaps squabbled some galimatias about the latest gossip circulating through our family, burning like wildfire, or else working herself into a fit over the way her brothers treated my mom. Something about always joking that my dad had another family somewhere and that's why he really went on business trips. I wondered sometimes if she ever actually thought I was listening to her as deeply as I was, if she realized how often I circumvented my uncles...

I know, I know. More dilly-dallying with nothing more than tilly-vally. Beyond short and hardly a good read, especially when I have so much I need to be writing.

Consider it insight, I guess.