THE ROOM
I was alone in the room. The only sound was that of my own breathing. "Victoria?" I called. She'd disappeared. I swallowed. The air was thick and heavy here, like it hadn't moved in a long time. I sat down on the floor after awhile, not daring to move. My eyes darted around at all the random assortment of stuff.
I knew this stuff.
I got up, and walked delicately to the corner, afraid that if I tread too hard some avalanche would happen, or an alarm would go off. I reached the corner and my hand grazed the lime green handles of a pogo stick Bobbie-Jean and I had shared when we were younger. I slid my fingers down the metal frame and stared at it. I'd never been able to balance right on it. She'd been a pro.
My eyes shifted to a basket ball, that lay on the ground. The dimples nearly all worn off. Brian and I had dragged that ball around on like five years worth of tours when we first started. It had finally been lost in Germany when he overshot the throw and it bounced out of the barricaded area and a fan had snatched it up.
I bent down and picked up a broken GI Joe doll. His arm was completely missing. "Moooom," I could almost hear ten year old me, in tears, "Aaron broke GI Joeeee...!" She hadn't cared. She'd told me to let my brother play with my stuff and not to be so upset over material things.
"You cried forever over that," Victoria said, leaning over my shoulder. My heart pounded wildly, as it had when she'd first started showing up. She looked at me funny, evidently hearing the change in my heart rate. She shook her head. "You used to trust me."
"Where are we?" I asked.
Victoria didn't answer. Instead, she walked a couple feet away and picked up a notebook. She flipped it opened expertly and held up a page. In my sloppy nine year old script was her name, labeling a fairly good drawing of her - for a kid anyways. "You used to love me." She threw the notebook on the floor haphazardly.
She started towards me, but I turned away. If she wasn't gonna answer my questions, then I was gonna ignore her. I started walking past all the stuff. I saw baseballs I'd had signed by players at Spring training, a CD single that Kurt Cobain had given me before he died, my first guitar, my first drum kit. I saw a teddy bear that a fan had given me a long time ago, a clear glass jar with a handful of change with a story behind it. Photos of girlfriends and buddies and dogs and a goldfish bowl with purple rocks on the bottom. I knelt and picked up a book - a dusty copy of The Catcher in the Rye, one of the only books I'd ever actually finished.
I shook my head, "I don't understand why all my stuff is here."
Victoria was leaning against the far wall. She rolled her eyes.
I looked at her. "What did you do to me?" I asked, suddenly remembering the excruciating pain I'd been in before I found myself here. "Where am I? Where's Brian - and Melly?"
"Why are you still asking about her?" she demanded. "I told you I didn't want her near you and you skip right off, the moment I'm not there with you, and fuck her..." Victoria's words were venom-laced, and she spat them at me. I backed away as she crossed the room quickly. I backed right into a chair I recognized from my principal's office in elementary school, and found myself sitting as she leaned over me, her eyes scarlet.
"I'm s--"
"Don't you dare tell me you're sorry," she hissed into my face.
I kept my mouth shut.
She leaned into me so hard the chair leaned backwards against the wall. "I told you once not to make me angry Nick," she snarled. She drew away and vanished... and with her went the light.
In the darkness, I felt a feeling of panic rise up in me, making my skin go cold. "Victoria?" I shouted, "Victoria?" I gnawed my lip... panic... panic... "Vicky?" I tried, in hopes that a softer tone, a more personal name, might draw her out. "Vicky, please..."
I don't know how many people know this about me... but... I hate the dark. Particularly when I'm scared to begin with. I jumped at the slightest sound - something sifting. The water in the fish tank making a plink sound. A loud, far away hum that seemed to fill the air. I crouched to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. "Vicky, please," I begged. "Im scared."
I felt like I was six years old again... the sensation of the pantry cabinet surrounded me. I used to hide there when he came around - my mother's boyfriend.
"Vicky," I cried.
"Do you know why we are here, Nick?"
Her voice echoed from every direction. I turned, desperate to see where it was coming from. My heart slammed in my chest, pounding a tattoo that I was certain she could hear... wherever she was.
"I don't even know where we are!" I cried, panic rising through my voice like the bile in my throat.
"Nick, Nick, Nick," her voice, condescending and full of pity, moved around the room, engulfing me entirely.
I moved frantically through the dark, only to find my hands up against the wall. I crept along it, on my stomach, one hand over the other, searching for a way out of what had suddenly become a tiny, cramped space, the size of my mother's kitchen cabinet. There had to be something.
I knew there was once a door somewhere here...
"You've never really known what was best for you, Nick," she said, and suddenly her voice wasn't surrounding me. It was directly behind me, in my ear, in fact. Her hand closed over my shoulder, and my blood ran cold, like ice through my system. "You've never recognized that I was what was best for you... even after all this time."
"Please," I whispered, my breath heavy, "I just want to go home."
Her laughter was loud and cold. It sent shivers down my spine and through the walls. It was a terrible, unearthly sound. "Ohhh Nicky," she crooned, "Don't you see? You already are."
And my hand connected with the door... just as it opened, free from my prodding, and I saw my mom's ankles, her feet in the thong sandals she always wore, with the little bead that was affixed to her big toe, like a toe ring. I froze.
I looked at Victoria's hand on my shoulder. "I don't wanna be here," I whispered.
Bad Romance by Pengi
