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Before me was a worn desk against the wall, a dresser with stickers covering it, and a twin bed. Glancing out the window, I saw a line of trees visible through the dirty glass. I squinted, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me or if there was a headstone in the woods. Blinking, I walked away, convincing myself it wasn’t an omen.
I placed my hands on my hips as I looked around the small room, trying to place the feeling bubbling to the surface.It was mine.All mine. I didn’t have to share a room with Valerie. I didn’t have to sleep in the car's backseat. I didn’t have to worry I would wake anyone when the night terrors came.
When I walked back out to the living room to Valerie, I couldn’t help myself. My lips turned up of their own accord, and my eyes watered with the first smile I’d genuinely felt in years.
* * *
Dusk was giving way to nightfall when I got away for the first time that day to explore the woods. Valerie was cleaning the trailer, making it a home. And I was in her way, so she told me to get some fresh air, explore my surroundings,and play outside.
As if I’d ever played, as if I remembered how to play. She wanted to forget where we came from, but the wound was fresh, still raw. Even two years later.
I walked into the small circle in the woods and, like an open mouth, it enveloped me.
It was a cemetery, just as I’d thought, though small, worn down. Forgotten.
When I looked back in the direction I came, to our trailer, my heart rate sped up, then galloped when I saw the fresh grave to my right.
I’d had dreams about that place before we arrived, but they never made sense. Not until that moment. They’d started six months before we’d left California. Dreams red and dark, with a sky full of stars. I would lie in the cemetery at night on a fresh grave, eyes wide open, staring at the moon.
Always a full moon. Two snakes writhed on my chest. The hands always came from beneath me, reaching for the serpents, finding my cool flesh.
When I would break free, I would always see the hands pulling the snakes beneath the surface, eyes white. Blind snakes. One albino, one dark as night.
Every night my dream form would stumble back in horror, watching the arms become shoulders, become a body, become a woman. Naked and covered in dirt, red hair fell over her shoulders. One snake in her mouth, half-eaten, the other in her outstretched hand. An offering.
When she reached me, I would grab her wrist and open my mouth to eat the second snake as my other hand cupped her dirty breast.
I would wake up only after devouring the snake’s head entirely. The dark snake. Every time.
I’d never seen the fresh grave in my waking hours until that moment. I couldn’t tell if it looked like the one in my dream or if I was just on edge, making horror real to feel justified in my sleeplessness.
I rubbed my eyes and blinked twice, looking around the graveyard. The dry summer grass crunched beneath my Converse tennis shoes, worn and faded.
The day’s events caught up to me, and sleep was calling—I always resisted it because of the dreams, often staying up too late. I often feigned sleep and slowed my breathing, so I wouldn’t worry Valerie. But now I had my own room, and I could stay awake as long as I pleased. I knew I was still under the microscope Valerie held to me, but I was convinced her watchful presence would ease. Valerie was worried about my mental state and the after-effects of where we lived. It was as though she was always waiting for me to explode, unleash something, hurt her. I believed it was because of the men—the father, his sons. I didn’t take it personal. And she didn’t take it personally that I never wanted to be touched.
My mother and father died in California. Valerie almost died. Or so I thought. I would learn that truth and fiction blurred for her, and her visions were not confined to dreams.
I walked to a worn headstone and hoisted myself upon it. I pulled a book from the back pocket of my jeans, then the flashlight from my front pocket, clicking it on.
Valerie agreed to stop at a bookstore on the drive here, and I’d grabbed a copy ofSalem’s Lotfrom a rummage bin, and a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I should have grabbed Poe for my night reading since the mascot for my new school was a Raven.
I had little experience with proper schools; changing towns and districts since we’d left the ranch hadn’t helped me catch up with the real world. But I loved to read, and I would devour any story put in my hand. At the ranch, I wrote poetry that I often burned at our nightly bonfires. Nothing was sacred or private there. They pressed the family upon us. Everything was shared. Even our bodies, enthusiasm faked or ignored.
I pushed away the thoughts, the memories of probing hands, and focused on the story in my own hands. Before long, the lights in our trailer went out, and Valerie opened the back door, hollering for me to come in soon.
I yelled back that I would, though I wouldn’t, and I knew she wouldn’t notice. Valerie had an early morning interview at a café in Hart Hollow. She’d been on food duty at the ranch. It was her passion to feed people. She was beautiful enough to be a server, but she told me she was applying for a kitchen job. I enjoyed her food, though it never satisfied me, and I always left the table hungry, my slim frame begging for something more.
As the hours passed, the night fell over me like a warm blanket. The heat was still stifling, but I preferred it to the alternative.
The dark didn’t scare me—not out in the open. It was the darkness of my room that frightened me. The promise of no exit, of one door and no way out.
I glanced at the trailer, my room, and the window. There was an old picnic table by the trailer, and I was already planning to push it below my window so I could sneak out easily. My mind was constantly looking for escape routes and exit plans. Ways out.
The women weren’t here; they couldn’t get me. They were dead.
But the mind was a perilous labyrinth, and I often found myself trapped in it.
The nights we slept in the car on the road were my favorite. Though cramped and subject to my complaints, I preferred it to the lumpy motel beds. The car was full of windows, and I could see out, could see danger before it caught me. The nights spent in motels were filled with fitful tossing under the sheets or stories told in my head as I pretended to be gone from the world.
