Spaghetti Family part seven, the chasm of tears

I feel pinned down and burning all over.

I know instinctively this is Lesley, and her face scans the house in an authoritative manner stomping about, as I realize I’m no longer able to speak as I try to open my mouth and tell her to get out.

My form melds into the floor and I feel my human form fading away. Red clumps of stringy hair like dreads climb over me like hanging vines, and I feel strangely comfortable yet uncertain of what is to come next.

I close my eyes, trying to remember us being happy, and I try to picture Robin and I holding up our son Manny. But, it’s blurry and now Robin is a … green duck. And I’m some red mop puppet thing… weird. Manny kind of looks similar, but more felt-like. But, even as we look different, the feeling of love and affection and family and belonging still are the same. The best and never to be replaced.

It feels so fuzzy and I feel so weird, like myself only more wired and not as concrete.

“Get…” I finally start to get the words out. It feels like I have mushy cotton or sand in my mouth, and my tongue is itchy. “Get out of our house..” I rasp.

“Can’t do that, dearie. Have too much work to do. Have to remodel this dreary weather…” she strolls about as she speaks, touching the furniture and the walls in a disapproving pointed way.

“Where are they?” I say with a violent cough.

“Where are who?” She doesn’t look at me as she asks, still sizing up our home.

“Where is my fiancé Robin and my son Manny?” I start to cry again, feeling my strength start to gather back. It was gaining in my feet first, now my legs. I wanna jump her, surprise her. She must have a weakness. She scoffs and shakes her head as a response and I feel hopeless.

She looks as though she has an imaginary feather duster and goes through the whole living room with a light sort of touch as it starts to reform slowly back into the old nightmare house. The time aches on slowly and with every step she takes, my heart breaks.

I feel like a readying soldier, my anger of her destroying our new, safe family home becoming too much. I start to size her up, too. She’s not too tall. Maybe 5’5. Not muscular or strong on the arms particularly.

I realized that her weakness might be in something other than physical, after all, as she was eyeing our family framed portraits with a sullen expression, her fingers tracing the edge of the frames sadly.

I got up and sighed wistfully, “Yeah, I remember that vacation.”

She jumps about a foot in the air and turns with a shudder. “What?” She spits out.

“That…” I stand up straight and go over to the picture with all three of us at the beach, and I’m wearing sunglasses. I point to it with a stupidly large grin on my face. “Vacation. Super fun. Had a great time. Robin was complaining about the sun being too hot. Manny found me some abandoned sunglasses as he was taking a walk by the beach. We all built a sand castle. Robin and I made out under the umbrella while Manny swan in the water a bit.” I chuckle and she recoils a bit visibly.

“So what?” She says, but it has no bite to it.

I smile softly, realizing it is working, and go to the kitchen to bang my fist gently on Robin’s family calendar hanging on the wall.

“No more recurring June 19th. We got a proper calendar of dates. Birthdays and holidays and more vacations..” I say happily, looking at the next years circled in bright blue marker by Robin for a potential vacation.

“You’re all delusional. If you’d like Roy to be under the new management here like he was before, you’ll see how vastly different our styles of handling lessons are…” she growls out.

There was a sinkhole of a pause and suddenly there was a subtle alarm in the distance. The floor boards beneath us started to tremble.

“You’ll all be…” she seethed and I took several steps away. The alarm got louder, faster, deeper and more resonant.

Her gritty yellow teeth were shown brightly, and I felt my heart beat go to my throat again.

“Dead.”

The blaring alarm was so excessively booming that it shook the whole house like it could tear it to shreds. It was then that I saw a burning, black chasm open up in the middle of the house.

I dared to look down as the alarm went deathly silent. Lesley also went silent, but her eyes were screaming at me not to look. I did anyway.

Below, I saw my beloved family lying at the bottom, but the endless chasm of tears seemed to have no end.