The Worst Kind of Wonderful

TWENTY THREE

✖️The Worst Kind of Wonderful✖️

"Family love is messy, clinging and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper."

Eva Burrows

Chapter Twenty-Three~

The voices outside of the door had quieted to a whisper but they persisted, hushed, for some time. I wasn't sure how long we were there: standing, waiting, watching the dark with weary eyes. It must have been a while before Atticus's office door opened and shut, cutting off the conversation and submerging me in a giddiness I could barely contain. This was it, this was our chance to leave the hall of Hell and enter the promised land.

We crept, slowly, calculatingly, powerfully like beasts of the jungle through the dark to the door, turning the handle slowly. I held the thing that almost killed us tightly against my chest, now keeping it secure was the bloodied rag that'd once been pressed against Benjamin's back. His shirt found its rightful place over ghostly skin while my eyes were still lost in the dark, illuminated later by a stream of silken sunlight which breathed down the hall from the glass ceiling of the main lobby.

We were so close; one might've felt it in the thunder of Ben's unfaltering steps or heard it in the steady solidity of my breaths. The meeting still went on but there were those who walked the halls now, light tapping and a feeling of unease indicated that. Potential sunk into me, itching, scratching me from the inside out as our exit looked me in the eye and I looked back. That door was the wardrobe to Narnia or a gateway to Hell, but no matter what, we knew there was a fight to come.

Benjamin sat back on his heels: eyes edging the floor, back arched, arms crossed, when we finally reached what was his own vast abyss of the unknown. With less regard to Ben's feelings than he had earned, my hand reached wood and metal as I worked my way through to the other side. Air. A gust of sweet spring air wrapped us and bled dreamy floral breaths into our mouths and throats. Sunlight fell like the golden feathers of an angel, wrapping us in buttery smooth heat. I could breathe again but Ben kept his lungs tight, fists clenched as if to hold to the moment when he tasted real air and saw the vast blue of the sunlit sky, for the first time in what I knew ached like forever.

Run. The air was swarmed with a vibe that was intense and temporary and screaming at me to move from those architecturally dominating stairs that swallowed and started the building. Ben was walking in a daze but his hand had found mine, it was comfortable until I felt a tug. A force pulled my arm abruptly so I was half running half flying down the stairs, I couldn't contain a laugh when I realized the look on Ben's face as he moved with me.

We moved recklessly and carelessly like children, limbs flailing as we skirted our small community, covered by the woods. Movements were made quickly and without judgement, as it became a dance of celebration from our fight to free ourselves from oppression. We finally stopped behind my house, legs scraped by branches, leaves matted in wild hair but smiles still plastered on flushed faces. It was kismet that I met this moment, where hope was a thing you could see and feel and taste and kiss squarely on the mouth in welcome. Here with someone who'd returned to my life, sunlight in his wild hair, earth in his beard, freedom glowing in those endless eyes I knew my sister loved. I knew those eyes. They felt like childhood and familiarity.

Moments passed with words unspoken until, without consent but also without regret, they passed my lips. "Welcome home, Ben." I whispered, breath still ragged from the run.

"Thank you." Was all he managed before stumbling out of the trees and into my backyard. I watched from a slight distance as he tugged on the door, finding it locked he reached where our spare key had been for so many years. He remembered. The shiny thing, the key, was recovered and buried within the lock until it clicked.

"Welcome home," I heard him repeat under his breath. There was a hushed breeze singing overhead now, cooling the air with the promise of a storm to come. The air had become thick with that electric buzz of pre-lightning nervousness and heavy with a stirring fog that hadn't quite settled. The weather changed so quickly it felt like an omen.

"Goodbye home." I breathed; slowly, deliberately, like the last words they were, before entering the building that had singlehandedly contained my life and memories for just short of two decades.

The smell was different, like pine and lemon and something new. There was a floral scent, light and fresh, that fluttered in my senses, childlike and feminine. Andrea was here.

"Ben." I hissed out into the expanse of the kitchen, trying to warn him of my older sister's presence. A creaking floorboard upstairs set my already nervous mind on fire. "Ben!" I tried again.

"Mia?" It was too late.

"Hey An--"

"Ben?"

❂