PERHAPS YOU'RE SMILING NOW,
SMILING THROUGH THIS DARKNESS.
BUT ALL I HAD TO GIVE WAS THE
GUILT FOR DREAMING.

TIME — DAVID BOWIE

☾ ✩ ☽

Chicago was home.

The city was dirty and loud and dangerous at night, but it was where Mel had carefully constructed her nest and felt as if she truly belonged. Where her favorite diner sat nestled between an adult comic shop and an Amish Furniture store that always looked closed, where the coffee was always hot and there was always a slice of apple pie sitting in the display case by the register, waiting to be eaten. Where her favorite record store always left the door propped open with a cement block, no matter the weather, so whatever record was spinning could drift out onto the city sidewalk, reaching into ears and pulling patrons inside like how the scent of freshly baked bread does with alley cats.

Where her father's offices were, and where her mother would spend her Saturday afternoons shopping and meeting women for brunch and mimosas. Where Mel's life began, and where she always expected it to end.

But, just as with any benevolent entity, it gave and gave and gave, rarely asking for anything in return. And when your hand reaches out towards it, open and excited and ready to receive, sometimes you're the unlucky person who isn't chosen to receive, but to give back. Miles, Mel's big brother, was that unlucky person on one humid summer night, who was plucked up by this benevolent city and handed over with no preamble or warning, an unwilling sacrifice that devastated the lives that he was ripped from.

And now, a year and two months later, Mel sat on the stripped mattress in her bedroom, staring up at bare walls and trying not to cry. Her eyes followed along the constellation of small holes left behind when she'd taken down her music and movie posters, sports memorabilia, and other various things she'd collected over the years that made their way up to her drywall.

If she stared long enough, she probably could've made a picture out of it, like one of those connect-the-dots, a dog or maybe a flower. A tear leaked from her red-rimmed eyes, and Mel wiped at it furiously.

"Let's go, Melanie!" Diane, Mel's raven-haired mother, hollered from the bottom of the staircase, her voice traveling up through the hallway and landing at Mel's feet, broken and decrepit and sad.

Mel knew that her mother was just as heartbroken to leave their city as she was, she knew that it was where Diane had built her life with Mel's father George and where she raised her kids and spent nearly half of her forty-one years. But it was hard to stave off the resentment that scratched and clawed at Mel's gut like a burrowing animal.

"One se—second!" The sob in her voice was hard to miss, and Mel figured that her mom took pity on her, because she remained silent at the foot of the stairs for another moment, before the sound of the front door hinges creaked, and the house was still once more.

It was a nice house, tall and made from sturdy, white-washed brick, with navy shutters and a bright red front door. A long driveway that was normally the nightly resting place of the family cars—her dad's flagship Rolls-Royce, which Mel can still remember the shade of red it brought to her mother's face when she heard he'd traded in his perfectly practical sedan for this overzealous, over-priced land yacht (her mom's words, not Mel's); her mother's wood paneled station wagon, a big, hulking machine that Mel had spent many hours cramped inside of; and her brother's prized Chevy Citation. Miles treasured that car, washed it every week in the summer months, and promised to hand the keys over to Mel when he went off to college and needed something a little more spacious.

The front yard was lush green, with winding shrubs and brightly colored flower bushes, all of which were meticulously cared for by Mel's father. He took great pride in the curb appeal of their home. (Not that it mattered much any more.) It had served their family well, tucked back in one of the many neighborhood hives on the fringes of Chicago, and the more Mel thought about it, the more she realized how lucky she'd been.

She had an older brother who never turned up his nose at helping her with homework or driving her to school, a mother who always had a hug to give and whose love poured out of every pore, a father with a bellowing laugh and strong hands to catch her if she fell, who loved to have fun but loved his family even more. And she was able to run through the hallways of this great, suburban home, always giggling and smiling, nothing ever too hard or frightening to face head-on so long as she had someone there to hold her hand.

[Again, Daddy! Again!

Again? It's bedtime, Mellie-Bear.

One more? Please, Daddy?

Oh, God, not the eyes, please anything but the eyes... Alright, Mellie-Bear. One more story. But then you have to promise me you'll go to sleep.

I will, I will!

Pinky promise?

Yeah, pinky promise.

Double, triple pinky promise?

Daddy!

Alright, Mellie-Bear, alright. Now, Princess and The Frog or Charlotte's Web?]

These reminders of Paradise lost did little to lift Mel's mood, and as she dwelled on happy memories, her chest swelled with overwhelming sadness. Those memories, that life, it was all gone. Mist on the horizon, wispy smoke from a snuffed flame, an empty theater after the curtains are drawn and the house lights come on. Over, done, finished.

Reality was always changing, always twisting and warping to fit the people who had to live in it. Mel's reality, as repugnant and vile as it felt to her, was now pulling some unseen chord tucked away behind that velvet curtain, and it was changing the backdrop from this grand home in Chicago to small, sleepy, insignificant Hawkins, Indiana. 

With one final, deep breath Mel stood from her bed, and she let her feet carry her to the doorway. A hand, trembling and shamefully small, laid softly over the space just to the left of the door jam. The drywall was rough, cold, but if she held her breath, Mel could swear she felt its heartbeat. These old walls rose and fell with vital breath, a goblet brimming with too much wine, love spilling over and splashing on her skin, red and warm and alive.

As if this house was pushing her along like a parent on their toddler's first day of preschool, a low groan echoed along the paneled hallway just outside Mel's sight, the front door's hinges grinding as it was unlatched and pushed open.

"Mellie, we gotta go." It was her father this time. His voice was steady and strong, and an obvious gag to anyone who knew him as well as Mel did.

Mel knew that they had to get on the highway soon, or else they'd miss precious daylight. And unloading a moving truck in the dark was a very un-fun chore, or so Mel had been told by her parents. This would be the first time she remembers dislocating—the last time being when she was just two years old—and if she was honest with herself, she prayed for a day where she could forget this one just as she had the last.

"Coming," she called, swiping at the skin under her eyes and pulling her bedroom—the bedroom door closed with a soft, final click.

Her fingertips, which were covered in chipping, black nail lacquer, traced gingerly over the banister as she descended the staircase, its carpeting dull and worn from years of feet and shoes treading across it. Every piece of this place was a memory, every surface a reflection upon which she could see her life play back like an old, crackling film.

Around the corner, standing in the doorway, casting his fatherly shadow across the bare, wooden floor, was George Hall. His hands dangled at his sides, displaying his helplessness with sharp, clear edges, and his eyes were red and puffy, like he'd been crying, too. Somehow, Mel wasn't comforted by this.

"Ready to hit the road, kiddo?"

No, I'm not. Not at all.

A sad, complex look was exchanged between father and daughter. His chin was held firm, and he gestured over his shoulder with a nod of his head. No more words were shared. Perhaps because they both knew it would only lead to more unwanted tears. And that was one of the many traits George had passed along to his young, troubled, and tired child: the ability to detach oneself when things got too hard.

[Hold that chin up, Mellie-Bear. Don't let 'em see you cry.]

(He'd told her that after her soccer team lost a match, when she was just a nine year old with scabbed knees and a whole life ahead of her, waiting to be lived.)

Finally, Mel nodded, conceding to the sorrow, but only enough to let it grab at her lip and make it tremble. As she passed the threshold of this cavernous, brick carcass, George laid a large hand on her left shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Yet another treacherous teardrop collected at the water-line of her eyelid, and it fell over her lashes with the kind of relentless force that told Mel there were more just vying to spill over.

Diane was already in the driver seat of her station wagon, glistening tracks trailing from each of her dark eyes, her sadness not quite as silent as George or Mel's, but still just as poignant. Through the windshield, she tried her best to smile at Mel, a true test of a mother's strength, pushing past her own stifling, suffocating grief to show her child some comfort. Or, she tried to, at least.

With one loosely laced Doc Marten hiked up to rest on the foot ledge under the passenger side door of the Maloney's Movers rental truck, Mel turned to give the place one last look.

Just as with the system of tiny holes left behind on her bedroom wall, Mel was sure if she stared long enough at it, the face of this monument to American Suburbia would morph into something else.

The windows on the second level: big eye sockets, hollowed out and empty; and the shutters: swollen tear ducts, ready to unleash a torrential downpour. The front door: a mouth that was stuck in an eternal scream, its maw pooling with bright, red blood. The roof: dark, stiff hair, like the wigs morticians glue on bodies that died a violent death, so families can see those lifeless corpses without being reminded that the person they loved was no longer inside.

A flicker of movement from up in her old bedroom window caught Mel's narrow stare.

Her eyes were wide open, although bloodshot and dry from crying, as a figure looked down on her.

Sunlight glared a white line across the window pane, illuminating a wiry, tall man that was now standing in the room that once belonged to her. The face of it wasn't quite a face, at all, but a blurry hole. Like someone dolloped gray paint on a canvas and smeared it in a circle with their fingertip. Hands that branched out into long, wispy fingers were pressed against the glass, white and open, as if reaching out to grab at something. Her, it felt like.

Goosebumps trickled down from the back of her neck. It had no eyes, but it was looking at her. Mel knew it was looking at her. It wanted to hurt her, kill her. She didn't know how, but she knew. Just as she knows how to stand or how to breathe. Its head—if that's what that faceless chasm even was—slowly fell to the side, like how someone does when they're posed a question they don't have the answer to.

Mel's hand tightened around the side of the truck door, the cold metal cutting into her palm and reminding her that this is reality. This isn't a bad dream or a nightmare, this is real life. She squinted, as if to challenge this boogeyman. Has he figured out how to escape my sleep world? she pondered, have I gone that crazy? As if he could hear her thoughts, the figure leaned forward with hunched shoulders. It's imposing stature and predatory body language sent a icy chill down Mel's neck. While it had no face, no eyes, she knew he was grinning. He was happy.

After a second of holding her breath, the figure pressed up close to the window pane and whispered to her.

Tick tock, Mellie-Bear. The words were raspy and muffled like it spoke through a layer of cloth, but she heard it all the same. He was all the way up in her bedroom, behind glass and drywall, but it spoke as if right in her ear, right on the other side of her face.  Tick TOCK.

It's not real. It's not real.

A quick intake of breath and a blink of the eyes, and the figure was gone.