The Arrival | The House of Voices #3

Sixteen - Thumps

Thumps

 

Parish

By afternoon, Parish had been thrown into two different memories of October’s. Three different nurses had come in, trying to find out what he was screaming about. Twice, the Warden had ordered them to take off the strait jacket. But with the memories and the screaming came the injuries, and in the end they’d decided to leave the jacket on.

Little did they know that the wounds were not self-inflicted. That the cuts and scratches were given to him by unseen forces and that, despite the straitjacket they had put him in, there would still be wounds where they wouldn’t see.

The first memory came in the morning, when Parish was still mostly under the influence of the sedatives that had been shot into his system. He woke up, groggy and sleepy-eyed to find himself in the center of a very comfortable queen-sized bed. The duvet that covered his legs was white, decorated with pale pink orchids and spiraling green creepers, and the walls surrounding him were washed out and white in the light of the moon that spilled in through the wide un-curtained windows.

The wall that held the windows was the only unpainted wall, maintaining a rustic air with its original red bricks.

The room was huge, almost twice the size of Parish’s own room back home, with dark, varnished, hardwood floors and expensive-looking furniture. But for all its space, the room was practically bare. Except for a few framed photographs on the wall above the large writing desk on the other side of the room, there were no knick-knacks or tokens to suggest anything about the person whose room it was.

There were no clothes strewn about the place. No personal photographs, no collection of rocks or pressed flowers, no stray shoes on the floor. Not even a book on the long, detachable bedside shelves on either side of the headboard.

And yet, Parish knew without a doubt whose bed he was lying in. October’s.

October scooted back against the pillows and yawned sleepily, bringing her fist, as well as Parish’s, to her lips to shield her mouth. When she finished yawn, she blinked around the room, wondering why she’d woken up.

Deciding to go downstairs for a glass of water, October threw off the duvet. She was wearing a pair of yellow shorts that stopped around mid-thigh; they had green dinosaurs on them.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and slipped her feet into a pair of bright, fuzzy slippers. Grabbing a hair-tie off the top of her bedside shelf, she tied her hair in a loose ponytail by the nape of her neck.

In the surface was the glass window, Parish could see her reflection. She was still as young as she’d been during the first memory – the night her uncle and aunt died – but there was something about her that made her seem older now. But other than the bags under her eyes, there was nothing different about her reflection.

As she brought her hands away from her hair, Parish saw faint marks on her skin, on the inside of her wrist.

This is when the self-harm started, he realized.

She gingerly touched one of the marks with a finger, and Parish felt a pang of pain hit him. He wasn’t unfamiliar to the feeling. He’d hurt himself many times in his past, too.

Wincing, she put her hands down and moved towards the door.

Her fingers had just closed around the glass doorknob when something slammed into the wall by her door. There was another thump against the door, causing October to let go of the handle and stare at it in horror.