Page 34 of See How They Run

Idon’t plan to move. I am already moving. Climbing the stairs, retrieving my doll who has waited so patiently for me.

I carry her down, carry her into the bloodied kitchen and I show off my endeavours, knowing she’ll be proud of me – not proud in the way my parents were. No, it’s a different pride. A pride I’m worthy of.

My parents are a lesson on the floor. They look like paper people that got left in the rain. It makes me want to gather them up and press them under a stack of books until they flatten.

A fly has started a slow circle over them. I listen to it. I know it will land and rub its hands, and congratulate itself on survival.

I let it.

There is room for all of us here. All the things this world deems ugly, deems unwanted.

My hands fold together, my claws tuck away. They’re clean now because I licked them. Because being clean makes the fur nice, and the fur is mine and I am allowed to like what’s mine.

I sit. I breathe. I take stock for one last moment, and then I rise, silent, obedient, hearing my final calling. Knowing that it is finally time for me, for my doll, for us both to return home. We have done our job, played our parts.

I make my way slowly, serenely, to where the store cupboard is. To where the floorboards are waiting. To where all my new friends are waiting too.

My claws fumble with the wood, and it takes more effort than I expected to pop them open. The sweet smell of musty earth greets us, and we clamber down, as if hand in hand, into the darkness beneath.

The crawlspace breathes with me, heavy and warm, the air thick with dust and the brittle hush of bones. It cradles me with its stillness. Around me, the tiny mummified mice rest, their fragile bodies curled into me, as if they only ever dreamed of sleep.

I press the doll to my heart and feel its weight settle into mine, no longer a curse but a promise kept.

The scratching has quieted, the claws have stilled.

At last, the fight beneath my skin is over.

I am not undone, not broken. I am whole in a way I never was before.

And in this darkness, I finally belong.

THE END