Take Me Home

Prologue

She woke with a start, the smell of burned paper sliding over her consciousness. Her eyesight was blurry against the light that wavered, dancing in the pitch black room. She watched, as her harbored breath shuttered to a steady beat of potential panic, as a puff of smoke slid out from under her door. She realized two things as she watched, paralyzed, a dark tendril of the smoke slip through the cracks in her door.

One: the last present her mom had ever given her were black out curtains for her 14th birthday and she only owned a single lamp that sat on the other side of the room. No streetlights or moonlight could reach her second story window, no matter how hard the nightly vixen tried.

Two: she could hear music playing. Her first thought was that she was stuck in a traumatic horror movie, but the smoke in her lungs burned as she swallowed down her fear. The smoke shifted with the flow of the piano, almost as if the music was taunting the smoke to slither further into the room.

Suddenly her lungs that had been paralyzed before, gasped into action, the movement throwing her into action. With renewed breath, she threw her legs over her bedside, dragging her favorite pillow with her shaking fingers. She shouted as she ran into her makeshift bookshelf, feeling a towering stack of books collapse and hit her bare feet.

She threw open her door, covering her mouth with a corner of the pillow. She gagged against the smell of dirty smoke; a brief thought that the house smelled oddly of an old bookstore drifted into her mind before being replaced with the fear. She waved her hand in front of her arm, as if swimming through the smoke would clear the brick wall of advancing smoke.

She blinked past the stinging fog, trying to focus on where the smoke was coming from. She took a step forward, using the wall adjacent to her bedroom as a guide. She noticed with relief that along the wall, the smoke wasn't as thick, only a small haze drifting along the border. She could see a thick rope of the smoke trailing from the living room, which was also her father's office.

The music was louder out in the hallway and she could now tell that the music was her father's piano, the heavy notes of the bass clef making her heart pound. She ran straight for the doorway, towards the sound, the smoke so thick that she had to duck her head into the crook of her elbow.

"Dad! Dad...Dad! What the...?" she frantically yelled over the music as she turned into the living room. Her question was cut short as she took in the new surroundings. The smoke was thicker, darker than the amateur smoke that had woken her up. But she could see through the haze enough to see her father's swaying form as he sat at the ancient piano.

She narrowed her eyes, confusion etched into the underlying panic. She searched for the source of the smoke, eyes flickering, trailing the rods of dusty smoke. Her eyes traveled past the ceiling to floor bookshelves that lined the living room; they floated by her swaying dad, hesitating on the music paper that littered the music stand and the ground surrounding the piano. She looked at the floor now, sensing a pattern as they seemed to line up as if thrown. She followed the line of music, her eyes jumping to a pile of the yellow paper, their edges burnt, and smoke furling their edges. But there was no fire, no flames eating at the ruby carpet.

She took a step towards the pile of paper just as the music stopped. She swirled her head to where her father was just turning around, arms outstretched as if in the middle of a yawn.

She blinked once, twice, before finding her voice.

"Dad?" her voice was hoarse, a deep itch irritating her throat. She cough into the pillow that was still held against her in a defense stance. "Dad?"

Her father stopped stretching, a blank, sober look plastered onto his face. She watched as her dad blinked her soft gray eyes and finally smile fondly in her direction, warmth spreading to his cheeks.