by Boris Bacic
“I know this seems tragic right now. But in a few years, you’ll be laughing at this,” Jill said as she looked at her little sister who was silently trying to hide her tears.
Cheryl shook her head incredulously.
“I just hope Tom and Paula end up together and miserable with each other for the rest of their lives.”
Jill laughed.
“You know, that’s exactly what I hoped would happen to Rob. I used to stalk him online for months after he cheated on me, and I hoped that he’d end up miserable in life and realize what he lost. But you know, once you find your own happiness, you tend to forget about your exes. And I think that’s the best form of punishment you can serve them.”
Cheryl smiled at that, albeit vaguely.
“I hope you’re right.”
Jill looked out the window, towards the blackness of the night. Charlie would be going to bed soon. Jill should give him and Lee a call.
“I guess it’s pretty late. We should probably start sorting things tomorrow instead,” Jill added.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep, anyway. I’ll start tonight.”
Jill nodded.
“Alright, then I’ll join you.”
Cheryl looked up from her half-finished meal.
“You don’t need to feel obliged to stay up because of me,” she added solicitously.
“I don’t. I’m just really interested in the treasure trove we’ll find digging through our old things,” Jill grinned.
Cheryl nodded.
“Alright, if you say so.”
Jill nodded back, complacent that Cheryl believed her lie.
Chapter 8
“Anyway, I’m doing well in college,” Cheryl said.
She was sitting next to her mom in the moonlit bedroom, listening to the steady beeping of the EKG machine. She only partially saw her mom’s face. In this state, she looked like she was peacefully sleeping. Except Mom never slept on her back. She always slept on her side, covered all the way up to her cheeks with the thick blankets.
“I got a lot of friends there, too,” Cheryl continued. “But some of them aren’t actually friends. I thought they were, but they aren’t.”
She shifted slightly in the uncomfortable wooden chair.
“Tom and I aren’t together anymore. He cheated on me with Paula. Can you believe it? With Paula,” she chuckled. “God, I’m such an idiot. I should have seen it coming a mile away. But it all makes sense now when I think about it. He always asked about her and eyed her up, but I was just too blind to see it.”
She sighed deeply, suddenly feeling melancholic.
“I wish you were awake right now so you could give me some words of comfort, Mom. I feel like…” her voice trailed off, cracking a bit in the process, as newfound tears welled up in her eyes. “I feel like Jill and I are strangers. I can’t really talk to her about this.”
She sniffled. The tears streaked her cheeks, and she wiped them away. The floodgates were cracking, and Cheryl finally gave in to the sadness. She didn’t even realize the weight she had on her shoulders until she started crying.
She cried for her mother, she cried for the stranger-like relationship she had with her older sister, she cried for allowing herself to trust and love someone who wasn’t worth it—
A sound snapped Cheryl out of her self-pity.
She raised her head, sniffled, wiped the tears from her eyes, and looked at her mom’s face. What was that just now? It sounded like a raspy groan, but it was so soft, so quiet, that she barely even registered it.
Cheryl opened her mouth. She tried calling out to her mom, but no sound came out. Instead, she continued staring at her mom, patiently waiting for the sound to come again.
And it did.
But it didn’t come from her mom. It came from the corner of the room. Long, raspy, stretched-out groaning, more akin to wheezing. Cheryl pivoted her head, ever so slowly, and focused her gaze on the darkness of the corner.
There was a shape there. A humanoid shape that she couldn’t quite discern. Cheryl thought she saw its part of body—shoulders maybe?—heaving up and down with extremely slow motions. It was in fact so slow, that Cheryl refused to blink, just to see if she saw it right.
She did, she was sure of it. Her eyes burned from being held open so widely and without blinking as she watched the figure in the corner and listened to its soft, intermittent raspy breathing. Even sitting next to the obnoxious beeping machine, she could hear the breathing of the figure. And then it produced a clicking sound.
The door opened slightly, letting in a sliver of light, and a bony hand poked through the crack. Cheryl quietly jerked in her seat, unable to produce as much as a gasp. The hand fumbled for the switch, and the room was bathed in a meager orange light.
“Oh, there you are,” Jill said, opening the door wider.
Cheryl jerked her head back towards the corner of the room where the rasping figure was just a moment ago.
There was no one there.
Just an old flower table with an empty vase sitting on top of it.
“Cheryl? Is something wrong?” Jill asked.
Cheryl looked at her and noticed the concerned look on her face. She just then became aware of how out of breath she was, but she swallowed and tried to hide it with a fake nod.
“Yeah, I’m fine. You just startled me is all.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“It’s fine.”
“I guess we’re both a little jumpy, huh? I don’t think we’re used to the house being this quiet.”
“I guess not.”
Cheryl’s heart was still drumming in her chest from the imaginary figure in the corner of the room, so she didn’t fully focus on Jill. Jill must have noticed this, so she smiled and said, “Well, it’s getting kinda late. Do you wanna start going through our things, or…?”
Cheryl looked at Mom, and then back at Jill with a frown.
“You know what, maybe you’re right. We should just do this tomorrow morning. It’s not like we need to rush anywhere, right?”
“Yeah. Guess not,” Jill gave her a reassuring smile. “You gonna go to bed soon? I took a peek inside your room, it’s still as tidy as ever.”
Cheryl sensed some passive aggression in Jill’s timbre.
“Yeah. I’ll do it right away,” she nodded.
She wanted to be with Mom a little longer, but she suddenly felt uneasy staying in the room. As she stood up and approached the door, she glanced at the corner towards the flower table one more time. She then flipped the switch to kill the light and gently closed the door behind her.
Chapter 9
Jill slept on the living room couch. She wanted to sleep in her old room, the one next to Cheryl’s, but she found the room to be too cluttered and too cold. Only one peek inside was enough to tell her that sleeping in there would not be possible.
There were old boxes and toys from Jill’s childhood scattered around the room. The bed was stripped of the bedding and covers, so only a musty mattress remained. Books layered with patinas of dust covered the shelves. Essentially, the room looked like an attic storage rather than a room a child used.
Cheryl’s room, on the other hand, was as clean and flawless as ever. The walls looked like they had been painted with the fresh pink paint just recently, the bed was neatly made, and all of Cheryl’s things seemed untouched—exactly how Jill imagined that Cheryl left her room when she moved out.
Seeing the incongruity in which her mom maintained the two rooms hurt Jill a little bit. At the same time, she wasn’t really surprised. Mom always favored Cheryl, and she never failed to show it—whether by announcing it publicly to all the relatives by bragging about the beautiful, smart daughter she had, or with all the attention she constantly gave her.
When Jill saw her room in such a mess, she wanted to just pick up her things and leave. Screw you, Annette, you have your favorite daughter, let her take care of you, I have my own life. But something
wasn’t letting Jill leave. Some pathetic form of compassion she felt for her mom?
All these years living her own life with her husband and son, she thought she was over her mom and no longer cared about her as a human being. But deep down, she still longed for her attention; the attention that only Cheryl received.
And it terrified her.
She reminded herself once again that she had her own life. She had a great husband, and a beautiful son, and she would never treat him the way Annette treated her.
Jill had a short video call with Lee and Charlie after dinner with Cheryl. They were doing okay, even though Charlie spilled the beans about Lee burning the pizza and causing the smoke detector to go off. He retold that story while laughing, and rather than scolding her husband, Jill laughed it off along with them.
Lee wasn’t happy about Jill not coming home until Monday, and offered to come there over the weekend. Jill was tempted. She already missed him and Charlie, but ended up saying no. They already had plans for Charlie during the weekend, and they couldn’t just cancel all of them to wait at Jill’s old home.
With a heavy heart, but feeling immensely regenerated from the short talk with her family, Jill said goodbye and soon fell asleep on the couch.
She had a weird nightmare. In it, she saw herself sleeping on the couch and a figure watching her from the doorway. She couldn’t discern any details on the figure since it was dark, but Jill remembered feeling immense dread building up inside her, even though she knew it was a dream. She tried shouting at herself to wake up, but the more she did it, the deeper she seemed to fall into sleep.
And then, the figure looked at her. Not at Jill sleeping on the bed, but at the astrally projected Jill who kept trying to wake herself up.
She suddenly jerked awake on the couch. The first thing she noticed was that it was still dark. Jill looked around the room, even though she knew there would be no dark figures watching her. Eventually, her heart rate slowed down, but she was too awake to go back to sleep. After some tossing and turning, she decided to take a walk around the house, and maybe find something to snack on.
The house seemed even more void of life during the night. The rooms somehow contracted, seeming even more cluttered than they were during the daytime. She was suddenly overcome by a profound sense of sadness. Some of the objects reminded her of her childhood, and more specifically, of the time when Dad was still alive.
He’d have his spot on the sofa from which he’d watch TV, and no matter how enthralled he was with the game on the screen, if Jill ran up to him to tell him about something or ask him a question, he’d immediately give her his undivided attention.
“What’s up, Marshmallow?” he’d ask, sometimes before she even opened her mouth.
She didn’t remember why he started calling her like that, but it stuck around, even after she grew up.
Jill went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. There was old food in there, some of which had begun to turn moldy—cheese with black and white patches, yogurt with an expired date, a jar of pickles that looked ancient.
Jill found a jar of half-eaten Jif, but upon searching the kitchen cabinets, realized that there was no bread anywhere—at least not one that wasn’t older than two days. It didn’t matter, she’d just eat it with a spoon. She wasn’t really hungry, but she had a strong hankering for peanut butter. She was glad Charlie wasn’t here to see his mom being such a bad example.
She opened the kitchen drawer and retrieved a tablespoon. Just as she was about to open the Jif jar, she heard footsteps upstairs. Cheryl must have been awake, too. Jill hoped that it wasn’t her kitchen rummaging that woke her up. She proceeded to open the jar and stick the spoon inside. She rarely ate peanut butter. They had a bunch of peanut butter in the apartment, and Charlie ate tons of it, so most of the jars were bought just for him.
More thudding footsteps came from upstairs, going from one end of the kitchen ceiling to the other. Jill had just finished licking clean the spoon, but decided that it wasn’t enough, so she stuck it inside the jar for one more round. Just then, more footsteps came from upstairs in the opposite direction, hastier and more aggressive this time.
What was Cheryl doing up there?
Deciding to see if everything was okay, Jill put the lid on the jar, and placed the spoon on top of it before heading upstairs. The hallway was dark, and it took Jill’s eyes a moment to readjust. Everything was still and the only sound present was the loud ticking of the wall clock. There was no sliver of light coming from under the bathroom door, so Cheryl must have returned to bed.
Now that Jill was up here, she realized that she needed to use the bathroom. She tip-toed down the hallway, and stopped halfway through. She heard the familiar beeping of the EKG machine in tandem with the clock, sometimes resounding at the same time, sometimes lagging behind. Glancing left, she saw the door to Annette’s room slightly ajar. The crack was black, with no visibility into the room whatsoever. Jill approached the door and her hand hovered above the doorknob.
She was tempted to peek inside, to make sure everything was okay, but that permeating darkness didn’t allow her to do so. She was afraid that she’d see her mother in a different position again. She looked back at Cheryl’s room. The door was closed. Jill turned back to her mother’s room. A part of her really, really wanted to peek inside.
Jill grabbed the doorknob and shut the door, before turning on her heel and going to the downstairs bathroom. She hurried back to the couch in the living room. feeling a little uneasy all of a sudden. However, she fell asleep faster than she thought she would.
She was woken up by the pleasant smell of coffee permeating the air.
Jill opened her eyes and propped herself up on her elbow. She heard clattering and sizzling in the kitchen. The sound of sizzling was accompanied by a distinct and pleasant redolence of eggs and bacon. Jill wasn’t hungry, but she could definitely go for some coffee.
She yanked the blanket off her and clambered to her feet. She shuffled her way to the kitchen, where the clattering was much louder, annoyingly so. Cheryl was at the stove, placing strips of bacon into the frying pan, allowing the bacon to cook in its own fat. When Jill walked inside, Cheryl looked at her and said.
“Good morning. Sleep well?”
“Not really. You?” Jill asked drowsily.
Cheryl shrugged.
“Breakfast?” she asked.
Jill looked at the table and saw two plates with scrambled eggs. There was also a mug of steaming coffee next to one of the plates. She suddenly got a warm feeling inside her from seeing her sister making breakfast for her. Despite not feeling hungry, Jill decided to eat out of courtesy to Cheryl, before moving on to the coffee.
“What, no pancakes?” Jill sardonically asked when Cheryl finally finished cooking and sat down to eat.
Cheryl looked at her incredulously for a moment, and Jill feared that her sister wouldn’t get the sarcasm. Luckily, Cheryl chuckled a moment later and said, “Sorry. I make terrible pancakes. Not like Dad.”
“Dad didn’t always make great pancakes.”
Cheryl stabbed a piece of the scrambled eggs with her fork and stared at the ceiling, contemplatively.
“Either his pancakes were really good, or they went in the trash. Remember?”
Jill laughed.
“He used to always brag about learning to make pancakes from Nan. He really gave his best whenever he tried making them, didn’t he?”
“He did. And then Mom would flip out because he always made a mess in the kitchen. Remember when he stuck the pancake to the ceiling when he tried flipping it?”
Jill almost spat the eggs out of her mouth at that memory. She instinctively looked for the pancake mark up on the ceiling, but realized that it was too moldy and cracked to see it. Jill remembered that day clearly.
She was ten, and Cheryl was four. They were sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Dad to make them breakfast. Mom was out shopping, so it was his duty to feed the kids. He asked
both of them what they’d like to eat, and they agreed on pancakes. Dad made the best pancakes in the world.
He had finished making four of them, and had the next one in the pan. At one point, he grabbed the pan and asked the girls if they wanted to see a cool trick. Naturally, they said yes. Then Dad figured that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, but it was too late. The girls were too excited and he had to go through with the trick.
Dad shrugged with an ‘oh, what the hell’ and flipped the pancake. Except the flip was actually a soar towards the ceiling and before they knew it, the pancake never came back down. Cheryl and Jill laughed hysterically while Dad panicked, muttering ‘your mom is gonna kill me’ and frantically dragging a chair to get the pancake off.
He was far too late, because Mom walked in the next moment, and when she saw him reaching for the pancake on the ceiling, she dropped her grocery bags and grabbed her head.
The next thirty minutes were filled with all sorts of colorful swear words coming from Mom, while Dad repeatedly apologized. Eventually, he had to get a spatula to get the stuck pieces of the pancake off. That part of the ceiling forever had an oil stain until he and Jill moved out.
It became a part of their lives so much that the family hardly even looked at it. Except for Mom. She glanced up at it pretty often and complained about the ruined ceiling—mostly in Dad’s presence. He would hang his head down, but when she wasn’t looking, he would wink at Jill and Cheryl.
“So, I guess we should finally start sorting through our things, huh?” Cheryl asked.
“Yeah. We should probably check up on Mom first, though,” Jill added.
She said we, but secretly hoped that Cheryl would be the one to do it.
“No problem, I got it,” her little sister said, much to Jill’s relief.
“Alright. I’ll start with my room. Make sure to take notes of everything valuable you wanna keep.” As soon as she said that, she felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity.