The Seams Have Splintered, Too.

Episode 3.

There are moments when illusion pours out beneath itself, the sinking of a world held by a sieve.

The remarkable thing is not that the ground has always been bleeding below you, but that a part of you, despite the fantasy, knows all along that it is.

But of course the good I'd conceived had capsized. I myself was a sieve.

I cleaned up the shreds of the mirror’s former shroud in the hush of the early morning hour. There was nothing but silence surrounding me. A stiffness that electrified like static. What was I going to do now?

What had I already done?

There was a window in that secret attic chamber, just as the old woman had foretold. But the shroud upon this was thankfully still closed, bound in by a tightly woven seal… its stitches weaving impossibly in and out of the oaken windowpane itself. I didn’t dare to touch it. Only worried over what I could see in the darkness with my eyes, hands hovering inches from the terrible, terrible seams until a desperate anguish got the better of me and I retreated, scooping the remainders of the mirror’s shroud with me, not daring once to glance up into that reflecting face again.

The room didn’t have a key. In fact, it didn’t have a doorknob that I could lock up soundly at all. It hid there, a scarcely visible outline in the walls, one that pushed inward with ease if you knew where you were pushing, but how and when had I ever known? Or perhaps, how had I ever not known before?

I didn’t stop to ponder on it. Only keep moving… I thought, the words dying dull in my head when I realized just how long I had been awake by now. There was no chance I could sleep in the house that night, though, so leaving the velvet shreds beside my sewing machine, I made for my car, ordering Kombucha to follow. Just an hour or two of rest is enough, I assured myself, we can pick up more pieces after.

It was cold as I sat down in the backseat’s familiar flaking leather, but this sort of chill revived me. Kept me grounded to the edges of reality. A reality that made sense to me, at least.

I had kept a flannel blanket in the car from the days I was forced to make a home of it, so with shaking hands, I wrapped this around both Kombucha and myself, taking care to lock the doors while I was at it, to toss the keys somewhere far out of reach…

Havens are gilded security, after all: I needed to secure this one from me.

I was calmer for a time after, mind slowing, lungs breathing, muscles freeing of their frenzied shaking and shivering…

But as I sat there staring dumbfounded at my mystery of a residence, the car windows fogging with the breath and heat of two anxious bodies, I noticed a disturbance in the rearview mirror. Or rather, I felt one there that so wholly consumed my distracted attention I nearly refused to look for it. Curiosity always got the better of me, though. I wish I hadn’t looked, but I did. And I saw…

My face, despite a violent round of scrubbing post-disaster, still held its pasty glow, and when I leaned forward to examine, there was blood, less of it than before, but there the same – a shining, crimson bead slow-crawling from a corner of my lips. I opened my mouth up tentatively, watched the blood slip like oil over the surface of my chin. I opened even further. More of it then, pooling against the walls of my lower lips, staining the whites of my teeth…

I scrambled in shock for a tissue, dabbed at the dripping on my chin before realizing I hadn’t actually felt a thing of what I’d seen. The tissue came away clean.

With trembling courage, I looked back up again. The blood, like some fixed hallucination, remained.

“Oh, Kombucha…” I whined half-hysterically.

She dutifully shoved her head up under my hand, panting with a rhythm that somehow soothed me. Avoiding the mirror, I untied the little bandana around her neck, hung it up over the reflection, and closed my eyes. With the reassurance of Kombucha’s warm body against mine, I shut myself off from the night.

Though I woke up eventually to birdsong and brightness, the morning, too, seemed void of light…