The Attic.
I received the letter in the mail about three weeks ago and I’ve been driving for two days straight. After my wife tried to talk me into letting her go with me, she tried to talk me out of going altogether. My Father had murdered my Mother and then shot himself. And in some way, she said, I was better for it. We might have never met, she pleaded, might not be raising our two daughters. “Hell, your Father may have even killed you”, she said, “He was a monster”. We hugged and I held her and I didn’t share with her what I sincerely believed: A monster was what my parents had saved me from from.
According to the Police report I was still in my bed when they arrived. Sixteen years, seven Foster Homes, six months of incarceration and one lucky Halloween party later, I met Judith. She was the one who handed me the letter detailing the court trust and the ownership of the small house I had lived in for six years, the same house I was now standing in front of. Somehow it was still here, a two-bedroom vagrant of a building tucked back at the end of a drive, grass long dead, paint peeling, windows dark. I gripped the small brass key, thought of what I needed to know, and stepped forward into a secret to confront my monster.
It was like breaking open a box. The door creaked open revealing broken glass, dust and wood floors dark with mold and age. I entered the kitchen and awkwardly stepped over the spot where my parents bodies had fallen. My memories whispered their silent roars of hatred at each other. The dim hallway was not as long as I remembered, nothing more than a cramped pale alley of stucco leading to two bedroom doors. My bedroom door was open and the room was empty. Nothing hinted that I was ever here.
That my small life had ever lived here, slept here, had feared here.
I looked up and there it was. The attic. Just above me. That very same small ceiling tile stared back at me, daring me to lift it open. My hands were damp with sweat and I seemed to not breathe enough, but I leaped up and knocked the tile away into the shadows, shaking. I took a breath and sprung again, gripping the sides of the small attic crawl-way and with some effort, lifted myself inside its meager space.
I had reached my monster.
