Hey, Look! Your Room is on Fire

by Jade Robinson

I sat in the room, blank faced. Empty just like my heart. I couldn’t feel anything, and it hurt. In the center was the deep shadow of doom. I begged for emotion, begged! Yet, I felt nothing. Funny as it may seem, I don’t hide the truth when I’m alone. I let my emotions flow like wild flowers in a field. There laid two knives beside me; that was it. My only companion were two forsaken knives. They wanted to drip my blood, but I begged for them not to deprive me of what little I had left. Half mad people should not be left in a room alone.

My fingers gripped the small packet in my hand. Chills filled the outer layer of me and the inner. When I was younger, he had touched me. I didn’t stop it. I only let him do what he wanted to me. Now, I am scared and sit in this white room, and I feel nothing. There was no pain, sorrow, love, hate, anything. I had been starved of his grip and would never taste trust again. He would never understand, never taste my wrath or revenge. I stared at the wall with shiny eyes. Then, I touched my scarred heart, filled with lost and found memories. I just sat there, Indian style the same as eight years ago. I didn’t move just like then, I just let him do what he wanted.

“I CURSE YOU!” I screamed to the empty space around, knowing he would never hear me. It was my fault, I presume, because now I didn’t even care, but I did. I felt pain, then I didn’t. A girl looked at me from the other side of the room from where I was facing. She had the same look I did. There was the lost innocence and trust. Together we titled our head and stared at one another. Infuriated by the girl constant motion and mockery with mine I threw my dagger.

The blade tossed over and over again the fell into the girl’s heart. She still looked back at me, yet this time with anger. Her face was now shattered and broken. Her lip slightly lifted above its old place. Why wouldn’t she go away! I screamed in madness and hollered. I hated her and felt nothing but the deepest animosity and hate. My fist balled to my sides.

“I hate you, I hate you, and I hate you,” I whispered the words in my head. The suicidal tendencies enraged inside me. My eyes bulged in my head and I could feel veins popping on my side. Know my anger stranger on the other side. She mocked my every move. Was I mad or simply in a state of mind? Emotions this unknown creature had given me emotions, why? I held up the second blade and determined what I should do next. He had hurt me now this girl was going to try the same.

“Hey, look! Your room’s on fire.” The girl spoke at me as I was lost in the haze of my thoughts. My head turned the same as hers staring all around at the orange flames erupting from every side. I sat in the middle, not moving not doing anything just like six years ago. I didn’t want to repeat the tragedy but I was immobilized. Flames started wrapping around my arms feeling through my skin, wrapping me in pain. It grew around me in beauty and, distress almost. “Oh, sweet agony and pain love my soul to death” I sang the words in my head. As the girl looked back with flames around her, too.

“Run, run please for both our sakes.” I shuttered as the words reflected off of her lips. She commanded me and for, some odd reason, an inner strength grew in me. She had given me what I needed to go! Six years ago, if I had this inner voice, I would not be here in this mad house. But that didn’t matter now, the only thing that was important was survival. I slowly got up and crawled to the mirror. I touched the girls broken face as she reached out to touch mine . I bowed my head in a slow stance and a silent plea of thanks.

With that I got on my two legs as the smoke started filling my lungs. Tears welled in my eyes as a hard cough escaped my lungs. “Run, run please for the both our sakes.” The words came back to my mind as I started to sway from the smoke. I fell back to the ground and covered my mouth with my hand. Gray mist filled my eyes shielding me away from the door, yet nothing was going to stop me from what I had to do. She had driven me to move on, to continue. With a slow stride I moved out of the open door as it closed behind me. On the walls in the hallway there were mirrors, that echoed out the figure of the girl. She was crawling, like me, stopping when I did, peering back at me. I could feel the heat raging on behind me. The scorching winds of time were coming upon us, and if we didn’t hurry when the door burned down we would feel its wrath.

The girl’s face was on every wall, on every mirror, staring back. There was no more deformation, no more cracks in her expressions. I hadn’t hurt her a bit, she was always whole, I just didn’t see it. Now she was driving me, driving me onward to a new beginning, out of the House of Mirrors.

She was crazed and mad with anger from her past. Yet in her demented state, her inner subconscious led her to survive. Maybe that’s why she keeps screaming those same words, in thanks, or maybe just, maybe…

“Hey look! Your room’s on fire.”