two eyes and a heartbeat

Sometimes, home isn’t four walls: it’s two eyes and a heartbeat.

They were painted, she thought. Not even cartoonishly painted, as though a child drew them out of boredom, scrawling casually with brightly-coloured crayons. No, these were gruesomely realistic: dark, sombre colours and dried paint with drips, they almost seemed like the real thing.

One was green. Forest green — dark, woodsy green that belonged in the deepest, darkest corner of the forest. Not home. It was ringed with long, black lashes, and wide open, ready to see anything she tried to do. Sometimes she thought it squinted at her when she did something in the opposite corner — but then again, there was always the other one to watch.

The other one was blue. A piercing cerulean, this one was the one to watch out for. While she only thought the other one squinted at her sometimes, she knew that this one moved. Twitched, really. It watched her with jerky movements, day and night. She once thought that it stopped at night, but one night when she went to sleep it was still there, twitching, staring at her.

The worst was the line. A sharp incline and then decline, depressing past the norm, and inclining back up to the norm. Flatline. Then the sharp incline came again, and the cycle repeated itself. Over and over again. Sometimes, it sped up when she was scared of the creature in the corner: the incline came faster and faster, and she almost couldn’t see the flatline anymore. But when she went to sleep, it slowed. She watched it sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep. The incline was occasional, but it was still there.

Two eyes and a heartbeat. The only home she’d ever known.

She had been in this room for almost as long as she could remember. Left with old stuffed toys and books, it was up to her to entertain herself.

She had never seen another person in the room before. Food was always there when she woke up in the morning, neatly laid out on her table, ready for her to eat. Lunch and dinner came out of a flap in the wall, white hands delicately placing the tray inside the room.

When she was five, the books appeared. There was no one to help her learn, but a recording was left behind in the night, playing softly in the background while she slept until she woke up. She learned how to pronounce the letters herself, sound out the words, read the sentences — all by herself.

Some days she woke up and her skin felt soft, not greasy and sticky after days of huddling in the other corner. Her hair smelled nice too, and she felt like someone had scrubbed all the dirt off of her.

The room was once pristine and white, but it lost its shine soon after she moved in. The walls, once so bright her eyes hurt, were brown now: dried blood stuck to them, crusted from years of being there. Even when those pieces finally fell off, marks were left behind — the walls never again returned to their pristine whiteness. There were even indents too — from when she clawed at them in terror.

The only things that had never changed in all her years of living here were the eyes. Still the same shades of blue and green she remembered from her childhood, they were kept in their original condition, regardless of the blood she sprayed on the walls.

And, of course, the creature in the corner. He never left her alone. Not even after all these years.

On the other side of the wall, she sat, crossing her legs on her large, spinning manager chair. Armed with a clipboard in hand and dressed in an ironed, bleached white lab coat, she furiously made notes, watching carefully.

Sometimes, the girl inside the wall screamed, clawing at the walls, ripping at everything she could get her hands on — including herself. Blood often sprayed at the walls, ruining them, but everyone knew not to pull her out of the room. It was too dangerous.

The woman outside the wall uncrossed her legs, moving her computer mouse to the right. Her hand shook fiercely, watching her sister fall asleep inside the room. She moved the eye back, and gathered her things. It was time for her to go home and sleep too.

Inside the wall, the girl was fast asleep.

Every night, she had the same dream.

It was her only memory of being “outside of home.” In it, there were people with her: two older adults who must have been her parents, and someone else — a girl, who looked like her, but older. More mature. More in control. Her sister, perhaps.

The dream always started off the same way: a montage of photo-flashbacks, snapshots of her and her sister at the park, her family at an event, her family on a trip, her and her sister at the beach. Everyone smiled, dimples and all.

Then the dream focused into her sharpest memory of all. She was downstairs, trying to walk, when it happened. Her mother was in the kitchen, baking something amazing — apple pie, it must have been. She could smell it from where she was, and she tried to make her way over to beg for some.

When she finally got to the kitchen, her mother squealed in delight at seeing her, picking her up and placing her gently on the counter, beside the knife she had used to cut apples.

But then the dream turned dark.

All she remembered was her hand reaching out to hold the knife, to cradle it. The glint of the knife kept calling to her, begging for her to try using it. She resisted the urge, remembering what her mother said about how knives are not toys and she should not touch them, no matter what.

Then the creature turned around. Its matted fur was bursting out of awkwardly small clothing, and its eyes were red and hungry. Its claws gingerly held the delicious-smelling apple pie that had just finished baking, its mouth curling into a toothy smile.

Then it was all a blur.

A scream — her own, probably. A flash of red, almost like lightning in the small kitchen. And then footsteps: quick, hurried footsteps that screeched to a halt right in front of her.

There stood another creature, almost identical to the one she had just killed moments before.

She screamed again. Red was all she could see.

In another room, far away from the room, the woman woke with a start.

It was always the same dream she had, for the past twenty years.

Her mother lay in a pool of blood, her clothes slashed to pieces on the white kitchen tile. Blood had sprayed all across the countertop — those expensive marble countertops her mother cherished so much, worked so hard to maintain.

Her father was in a similar position. His glasses shielded his eyes from the splatters of blood, and his mouth was still open. She could almost hear the bloodcurdling scream he had let out when she had just got off the bus.

She was coming home from school when it happened — from band rehearsal, to be exact. They had run only about five minutes late that day, but she still missed the bus. As soon as she stepped foot onto her street, she heard it. That scream. She knew it was coming from her house; she could feel it.

Bolting down the street and crashing through her front door, she found the house eerily silent. No one was where they were supposed to be. She kept shouting, over and over again, but no one answered. Finally, she stumbled into the kitchen. It smelled sickly sweet — like something sugary, mixed with the rusty smell of blood.

It was there that she found her parents. But not just her parents. In the midst of all the blood, her baby sister lay there, sleeping peacefully. She was doused in blood, and her hand was clutching a knife as if it was her life force.

Meanwhile, on the stovetop, almost picture perfect, sat an apple pie.

The next morning, the woman in the pressed white lab coat sat down again, in the same chair she had been sitting in for the past ten years, armed with a clipboard once more. As a teenager, they had given her the chair to amuse her while they took notes on her younger sister; as an adult, they gave her a chair to symbolize their respect for her strength these past two decades.

They had only ever let out her sister once. It was after a month of inactivity, when she was thirteen. The woman had been so excited to see her — it had been over a decade since she had last seen her sister outside the wall, over a decade since she talked to her, laughed with her.

She was so excited she almost ran up to her sister and hugged her, but they held her back.

“We’re not sure if she’s totally stable yet,” they said. “We need to monitor her for a few days just to be sure. If she’s okay by then, we’ll let you see her and take her home.”

Her heart fell when she heard that. She was eager to leave with her sister, bring her home to those four amazing painted mural walls that she called home.

Her eagerness was what killed her that day, though. As the orderlies held her back, she saw a glimpse of her sister and let out a shout, hoping to catch her attention. Her sister looked up, dazed for a moment, but then her mouth curled up into a sneer.

The next thing she knew, the two orderlies bringing her out were on the floor and crying out, and there was blood everywhere. One of the orderlies that had been holding her back took her by the arm, dragging her away.

“We need to go now, miss,” he had said. “It’s not safe for you here.”

She touched her cheek gingerly, scared of what she might feel there. Sure enough, a drop of blood smeared onto her finger.

She wasn’t sure whose it was, but her heart dropped a little. She resolved to work here now, to monitor her sister and to make sure this would never happen again.

They were never quite sure why she attacked them once she came out, but they knew for sure it wasn’t safe for her to be let out anytime soon. They sedated her and wiped her memory and put her back in the room, until they were sure she was safe again.

That was ten years ago.

Now, after almost a year of inactivity, the woman outside the wall was ready to let the girl inside the room out again.

The girl inside the room blinked.

The wall was open.

Two people were walking in cautiously. She stared at them, unsure of what was going on.

“We’re letting you go now,” one of them whispered softly in her ear. “You can finally go home.”

Home. The word alone made her heart sink. What about the home she had known for over twenty years, then? The eyes, the heartbeat? Was she destined to return to the life of four plain white walls again?

Taking her first step outside the room in a decade, she took a deep breath in. She braced herself for the inevitable transition back to the world she once loved, back to the world she was so familiar with.

And then she saw it.

There stood the creature from the corner of the room, taunting her in a white lab coat. The creature from her dreams. The creature she fought so hard to kill, so many times.

She launched herself at it, screaming a battle cry.

Green eyes met blue eyes for the first time in ten years.

The woman stared at her sister, shocked at how she’d grown over the past decade even though she had been watching her day and night for the past decade. But she didn’t even have time to register what was happening before it happened.

Hands. Pain.

A burst of light.

Then it all faded to black.

The orderlies were shouting at each other, trying to get the right equipment to get the girl under control again, to save the woman. They shouted at the girl too, but their cries fell to deaf ears. Shocked into inaction by what had just happened, they watched with bated breath at what happened next.

The girl kneeled beside her sister, gently clutching the prize she had just clawed out of her sister’s face. She took a deep breath. The creature wasn’t dead, not yet. She had one more thing to do.

She tore at her sister’s chest, ripping apart everything she saw until she found it. Then she ripped that out, too.

It sat in her hand, quivering, until finally it stopped moving. And the creature died, finally.

Her battle was over.

But only then did the magnitude of what she had just done finally strike her.

She looked down again.

It wasn’t the creature she had just slain — the creature she thought she had just slain. No, no, no …

It was her sister. Doused in blood, still clutching the clipboard that held all the notes she had taken while she waited patiently all those years, her face was stark.

Then the memories came flooding back.

Those creatures that haunted her dreams, from twenty years ago … she saw them again in her mind, clothes torn to shreds and covered in blood, but they weren’t creatures. They were her parents, eyes still wide open in shock, mouth still gaping in a scream.

The creature that had haunted her for twenty years in that room … the creature she always fought to destroy in the corner. She looked down at her arms. The scars were in the all same places, it couldn’t be …

She fought to kill the creatures each time, but in the end she had only been fighting her thoughts, her mind, her conscience, herself.

For the first time in twenty years, a single tear rolled down her cheek. And then another. And then she was sobbing with all her heart, on her knees beside her sister. Her sister whom she had just killed.

She had only wanted to go home again. Defeat the evil monsters, then go home; wasn’t that what all the stories were about?

Sitting here, clutching the only home she ever knew in her hands … wasn’t this it?

Then why did it feel so wrong?

Sometimes, home isn’t four walls; it’s two eyes and a heartbeat.