In This House IV: Final Chapter

It’s funny, really, the fight or flight response. Once it is triggered and the adrenaline is dumped into the bloodstream in a last ditch effort to keep you alive, even a thirty-something launrdromat worker with early-onset arthritis and a jacked-up knee from years of playing intermediate netball can transform into someone, something unrecognizable. So primal is the body’s response to danger, or some percieved oncoming danger, that it can override rational thought. In fact, all thoughts are lost in the delirium, in the thoughtless void we have become so unaccustomed to, which leaves only the senses to remain as present. Low, thumping heartbeats become jackhammers in our ears, our pupils dilate to uncover a legion of often imperceptible details around us, and our limbs hum with an electric vitality that brace us for all possibilities. 

As she reached the end of the slick, wet tree-trunk which had imploded upon the house, she planted her hands on the house’s wall, and, without thinking or seeing or guessing, leapt from the crumbling laceration in the roof which, had she been present enough to acknowledge, surely would have accredited to some God or saviour looking upon her.

But it remains safe to say that those seeming physical enhancements that come as a result of the body’s emergency response do not render it indestructible. 

And so she leapt from the house which had doors that shifted and windows that vanished and hallways that ended in choke-points. She leapt, but the wind which blasted sideways in freezing sheets took control of her and spat her from the air and her arms and legs flailed and the storm carried her along as if it were some companion ushering her away from this wretched place.

She crashed onto the ground awkwardly. Underneath her, her leg landed upstraight on a bed of pineneedles, and then followed the rest of her body ontop of it. She landed with a thud on the forest floor.

It wasn’t until she tried to get up, fighting against the howling torrent of wind, that she realised her leg had snapped at the knee. A bone, glistening white as if polished, cut through the skin from her calf.

She looked at it, confused, for she could not feel the pain, although she knew she would. She touched it, ran her fingers along the pale, moon-white shard of bone that had plucked through her skin, and studied it as if it were some ancient relic that was not her own.

Above her, the trees bent back and forth and to the side, threatening to surrender their post against the storm and topple ontop of her. 

With her good leg, she hoisted herself onto one foot and began towards the treeline. With the wind to her back, she hopped along at pace. Her shattered leg dragged behind her as if she was hoising along a rotten deadfall. The ground underneath was soft and marshy, which made it more difficult and the muscles in her good leg were now burning-hot and aching.

She reached the base of the nearest tree and planted her hands upon the trunk.

Turning around, she took in her surroundings.

The house stood in the middle of a small, miry clearing, and the forest circled around closely. 

(the house)

She squinted against the lashing rain. The house was not a house at all, but merely a six-by-four dilapidated shed. Outside of it, a rake lay on the ground, rusted and time-worn, and an upturn cattle trough. One of the planks on the shed had loosed, and clattered hysterically in the gales. 

She wiped the rain from her eyes and face and tossed her hair across her shoulder and began forth deeper into the forest. 

The wind, which snaked it’s way through the tightly-packed trees, howled an oddly human-like cry. It pushed her forth and she welcomed it’s guidance. Her hands were no longer hers and were a steel-blue colour and, as she hobbled through the dark forest she looked not like a woman but the ghost of a woman. 

She reached a small stream which had swollen upon it’s banks and sprayed water across the trees and foliage around it. Bracing herself, she hopped, as fast as one can hop, and lept for the opposite banking, her fingers plunging into the moss and mud. Landing on her stomach, the impact forced a grunt from her throat.

(my mouth)

With her fingers, she patted frantically along her face, feeling the rise and fall of her lips. She rolled her tongue around and licked her lips and felt along her teeth. When she stood again, she inhaled, and cried out ‘Help me!’

Her lips were numb and slapped together gracelessly and it came out sounding as ‘hemme!’

The wind carried her voice away briskly on it’s path into the forest and beyond.

Somewhere, she thought, her echoes will be heard.

She resigned her hopes to the storm’s journey, and hobbled onward into the darkness.