fff#40

was feeling dramatic; tell me wha' you think, nah...
flash fiction friday #40 (inclusion)trigger: bare, beer, bier, bear.
i hated the bed in that room, like a bier, stiff platform on a bare bones frame bolstered with bedsheets instead of funeral flora. plus, growing up in the tropics i had no positive context for attics- places where eerily-resembling children were locked into creepy incestuous relationships, where crazily aging family members were kept away; the staircase warned at every step this was not for the faint of heart, and the feint of heart wouldn’t make the top.
i had been a secret in the attic.
the foreign cousin.
by then i was old enough to enjoy it somewhat. i decided to let them think me exotic and enjoy the perks. the attic wasn’t one. when i left that place, i left it far enough from my mind that i was shocked to recognise the faded, peeling wallpaper that was the most depressing thing about the cramped space- little yellow and pink and blue bears dancing, riding tricycles, juggling, bears wearing party hats, wearing tiaras, groucho-marx-noses+glasses, bears pretending to babies they aren’t in an attic.
thoughts of paleskinned inbred babies hidden away up there until they faded into those whispering walls haunted my sleepspace from approach, making me long for now less-terrifying jumbies of home, to trade some soucouyant sizzle or douens calling for those creaky stairs.
climbing them this time, opener in hand, my unopened bottle in the other clatters against the railings as a barrier to the sound clawing at me from a grave piled with small corpses. when i open the door and the room pulls me the need to breathe outside air drags me across it to open the tiny window. i slide to the ground, lean my head against the windowsill and crack the beer with a toast to bringing the right demons to face down this unexpected return to my crypt.


walk good.