Through the curtains and down the road

His footsteps touch the ground, hollow and empty sounds tapping down the corridor. I wait for his arrival in a old and withering room. It's walls are peeling slowly, pastel blue strips of fading paint littering the wooden floor boards. I've asked multiple times for a broom, something to clean up the withering pieces, as it gives me the unsettling feeling that something is slowly ripping this house away. As if one day the wall will open up and reveal a dark creature ready to drag me into the depths of what I can only imagine to be, hell.

Every time however, he shakes his head, with his angular cheek bones, and he says these three words,"That is unnecessary."

So I wait, I sit on my old crotchety bed and feel the way it dips under me. It is old, and it is crumbling too. The springs are pushed down so that it does not hold in it, comfort. I lay on a rock hard mattress that is also faded. It is pink, or was, and it smells of dust and decay. It lays cold and hard on a frame that is off-white. The color of cold silver metal shines through in some places where it has been faded and scratched, and with even the slightest bit of movements it creaks and cracks giving the illusion that it will break any second. But that does not happen, for its creaking bones stay strong.

One day I asked for a more comfortable bed, one holding a new mattress, a plump one that you could sink into and feel warmth and comfort but once again he answered with a cold voice,"No that is unnecessary."

I wept that night, wetting the hard mattress, and I slept in tears. The next day I got sick because the weather was cold and the blankets were thin and wet. He lectured me, then gave me a cup of cold tea. I suffered the cold in silence, for he forbade me to speak. I sneezed loud enough for him to hear once and he broke the cup he'd given me against the walls of my peeling bedroom.

It's pieces are set in a tall glass vase on the windowsill, to remind me that I may not be loud. Once I looked at its remains and thought of a cracked doll. I did not look at that vase again.

A dresser, containing the contents of clothes, not beautiful or new, stands in the corner, near the large rectangular window, shaded by heavy dark red curtains resembling the color of blood.

The clothes are all formal and dark colored. Grey, black, and white suits lay neatly folded until they are to be worn, and washed. Each one assigned to be worn on a specific day. Monday I am to wear the white undershirt and set atop that a black coat that trails behind me as if I am something considered royal. Along with this I must wear starchy black dress pants, along them thin white lines run down , leading to a pair of old cracking leather boots. The other days contain clothes that are just as drab, giving the reason why I would rather not describe their boring color.

I have a night stand as well, that is white and peeling too. On it stands a lamp. That is also white. The light it emits is rather poor, for it only illuminates the small area beside the bed. Other than the lamp the only other things to illuminate the room are the yellowing Christmas lights that line the top edges of the ceiling. During the night, it makes the peeling walls look like deep scratches, as it casts dark scratches along the strips of missing paint.

A desk stands on the left side of the room, farthest from the lamp, it matches the faded white nightstand and on it lays a batch of old partridge paper, yellowed and looking as if it was burned. Beside it a glass vile of black ink holding a feather pen. I use this pen frequently depicting what I think the world outside of my dwelling looks like. In my imagination beautiful things, things that are shiny and not threadbare fill the partridge paper.

I had once tried to create the illusion that I was in a beautiful forest by pasting my drawings all over the wall connecting them like a puzzle, but once he had seen it his dark ebony eyes hardened and he ordered for it to be taken down immediately.

Reluctantly the walls stay bare of my creations, but they stay in the drawer of my nightstand and when I feel frightened by the looming walls of my room, I gaze at the imaginative places dreaming that I may leave soon.

I doubt that very much for with the first mention of wishing to go outside, I was greeted with a cold hard slap to the face.

Never again did I say the word leave, or any synonym resembling the word.

However nothing stopped me from leaving that haunting room when he was gone.

Once every blue moon he would walk to the front of the creaking mansion and I would watch from the tallest window. He would look up at that window right before he would open the steel door of his truck. I knew that he knew I was there because he looked straight at me even if I had one eye peeking through the curtains.

He would turn away slowly and step into the truck and he would leave. For three days he would be absent and come back at exactly six o'clock PM not even a second later.

Every second that he was gone I would venture outside. I'd run without the cracking leather boots on my feet and I would go straight to a red box slick with shining red paint. It was not sinister, it was not cracking and peeling, and it carried adventures, newly stocked with different book each time I ventured down here.

Books of all kinds, picture books, books with seemingly never ending chapters, blue books, old books, books that smelled of sweet vanilla.

Any genre could be found here, and each time he could only choose one, for suspicion of countless books in his room could be the realization to him that he'd left the mansion.

And if that ever happened, he would never see light of any kind ever again.

Even so the temptations of life away from this bewitched mansion were so tantalizing, it was almost intoxicating.

Constantly drawing with that inked quill, constantly in the same room, eating the same bland meals.

That was all just how it would be forever.

right?