Stairwell

Her vision tilts, shifting suddenly upward as she falls backwards. She looks from dusky grass, stone fountain bubbling with dark waters, up into the soft grey of the night sky, and then her field of vision is consumed by white.

She anticipates hitting the floor, braces for the inevitable impact, but it never comes. Instead, her lower back collides with a metal railing, her hands finding the smooth top and grabbing, halting her trajectory. The leftover momentum jerks her bad shoulder hard, and she hisses out a pained breath through her teeth.

The door closes without her notice; cutting off the low light glow of the garden and the frozen entity within.

Head already tilted upwards, she stares into the cascading spiral of an ironwork staircase. The metal closest to her has been spun, delicately wound into decorative twists. Iron flowers and leaves litter the topmost of the railing, just below the flat metal handrail. The steps ascend far behind sight, moving in neat circles into the heavens.

The space is too large to be a turret, but the ideal of being inside a tower is absurd. Although, she should know better by now than to pass any semblance of judgment on the manor’s interior.

She brings a trembling hand to her shoulder, fingers searching for the depth of the wound, but once more she finds nothing. There is a gash in her sweater where the knife tore through her, but no corresponding wound beneath. She can still feel the icy burn of the blade breaking flesh, the sharp precision of its sting, and yet her skin is unmarred. No tangible record of the violence dealt to her.

Her hand falls limp at her side, exhaustion pulling at her limbs hard. She feels heavy. Tired. The idea of traversing these stairs -the endless, numbing climb to the top- nearly undoes her. Tears prick at the corner of her eyes, her chest constricting with a sudden melancholy. It’s too much. She can’t possibly make that journey. Not now. Maybe, not ever.

For the first time since she’s entered the House, she doesn’t want to go on. Doesn’t want to fight, to flee, to survive. She just wants to rest.

She slowly sinks to the floor, legs folding up towards her chest, until she can sit on the cool tile. Her head lolls against the railing, too big for her neck to hold. She just needs to close her eyes. Just for a moment. A second. Nothing more.

Her eyelids droop, a slow blink, another, until they remain closed.

She's thirteen when she decides she can't live at home any longer. It's far too young to know the realities of this decision, but old enough to understand if she remains in this house she will die. Death is still a nebulous concept; she understands that things stop, that people, animals, things simply cease to be. It is this cessation that feels like the natural conclusion to her current life. If she cannot leave, she will cease. 

(Later death will feel closer. More an intimate friend than a concept she doesn't quite grasp the gravity of. It won't feel as scary at fifteen. At nineteen. At thirty.)

The decision is made on a cool summers night when she's sitting on their front deck porch. Her mother has been sleeping a lot lately. Sick with migraines that keep getting worse, her mother says. Even at thirteen she isn't stupid enough to believe the lie. She's seen the bottles of liquor her mom has stashed around the house, heard the clink of her empties as glass rattles together in their recycling. The drinking started a month ago and has been increasing steadily since.

That evening is one she tries immediately to forget. She's been getting better at detaching, and sometimes she can even feel herself leave her body. Tonight is one of those nights where she hovers just above her own head, fuzzy and safe. The events from an hour ago are already burnt ash in her mind, the dull ache between her thighs the only reminder she can't quite erase. But being detached helps.

She's looking out at the dark asphalt of their street, street lamps illuminating patches of tar as the night settles in. Their area of town is quiet, and only a few cars pass by. She wishes, with every new vehicle, that she could find herself in their back seats. Driving away, away, away.

The front door opens. He comes outside. She doesn't turn her head to look. She imagines herself far away.

She awakes in the rabbit hole. 

The fading fragments of the dream memory cling to her for a moment, a lingering ill ease that dissipates once her eyes fully open.

Floating. Free falling in reverse. Her body rises up, up, up through her own version of Wonderland.

The buoyancy is disorienting. She can’t seem to find her centre of gravity and her body rocks with the motion of some unseen water. Back and forth and back and forth. Gentle, unassuming.

A kaleidoscope of colour swirls along the walls, rainbow hues shifting in perpetual motion. Objects hang benignly in the air: chairs, cutlery, clocks, candles. They’re items from the House, she realizes; the decorations from the party intermingling with the foyer balloons, the costumes from the dressing room, and bushels of flowers and errant topiary sculptures. Bit pieces of each place she’s been trapped. Below are further remnants -the heavy gilded frames of the vestibule mirrors, loose crystals from the chandelier- suspended in mid air, growing into small specs as she ascends.

It takes her a while to notice the stairs trailing the wall, the unravelling iron spiral. She hasn’t left the stairwell at all; she’s merely bypassed the stairs themselves. Her body is grateful for the reprieve, but her psyche is unsettled. The House has made yet another impossible thing, within a realm of impossibilities, possible.

She feels as though the trip to the top should be longer, but the ceiling comes into view shortly. Either she’s been asleep for longer than she though, or the illusion of depth skewed her earlier perception. There is a small landing jutting out high on the wall where the stairs come to their nature conclusion. She’s carried towards the landing and deposited on its stoop by a gentle, unseen hand.

The archway of the entrance is large, white stone arranged in a medieval display of architecture. An old wooden door is set back within the wall, heavy wooden planks held together by two horizontal metal strips. An ornate ring handle lays against the door, metal gone dull with age. She lifts the handle and pulls.

The door is heavy; it’s weight making movement difficult. She leans back, careful not to slip over the edge as she uses her own heft as leverage. Incrementally the wood moves, groaning as it slides open. Her feet sitter further out along the tile, toing the line between solid ground and freefall. She’s not certain if the kindness extended to her on her journey up will be there again if she finds herself tumbling over the threshold. With this uncertainty in mind, she eases around the door, fitting herself through the open sliver into the room beyond.