The door opened onto a dark hallway. I tried to step forward, but couldn’t. Glued to the ground. Turned to stone. I may have stood there until I crumbled to dust had Malia not shoved me through.

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Darkness is inherently scary, and it shouldn’t be. So are confined spaces. Rather than remind us of the womb, the safest and most hospitable place in our primal memory banks, it awakens our imagination to monsters hiding in the shadows, waiting to pounce. Which means the memory must come from a time before birth, from a shared experience of such terror it was encoded into our DNA.

Sorry, you think in abstract terms when death feels close. The mundane becomes profound. All of this for me, I remember thinking as I stumbled out into this dimly lit hallway.

All of this for me.

The hallway reminded me of the mansion from the board game Clue. I wanted to be Colonel Mustard, but felt more like Professor Plum. Either way, I was sure to be the murder victim, but it wouldn’t come by candlestick or lead pipe. No, no. Nothing as pedestrian as that.

A wall sconce flickered muted candle flame a dozen steps farther down, offering just enough dim light to see the paisley wallpaper, the warped shoe molding. I fluttered toward it like a moth.

As I entered the halo of light, I got a clearer look at the wallpaper pattern. It looked like potted ferns. Or heads of cabbage framed by African shields. But as the images became clearer, I realized the head of cabbage was actually a human head. Peering closer, I saw that the face on the head was mine, silkscreened in faded yellow print on maroon paper. My face, watching with bland curiosity; my head planted in a pot, wispy fern leaves sprouting to each side like windblown hair.

You know how you can animate a series of drawings by flipping the pages? That was how my face was printed on the wall. As I walked I saw my open eyes begin to droop, closing the farther I went. My silkscreened mouth sagged open as though preparing to speak, or scream in agony. A red slash cut sideways across my throat. Red paint spilled out, drooling down the wall. Real liquid, seeping through miniscule slits in the paper that I could reach out and smear with my finger, taste with my tongue.

All of this for me, I thought again, scanning the opposite wall to see the same tableau. Feeling delusional as I watched myself die on a wall that was watching me walk toward my death.

“Cute,” I said to my guide behind me, motioning toward my decapitated head. “Nice touch.”

Mandy-Marie-Malia, her skirt ending one millimeter below her womanhood, reached out and swiped a dollop of my lifeblood, unfurled her long, pink tongue and ran a red track down its center. “Mmmm, Type O,” she said.