I had been alone for quite a while, but I had stopped keeping count of the minutes, the hours.
My staccato thoughts were scattered and disconnected from one another.
Melancholy left when he realized his effects stopped doing damage; lately it had just been an empty space that surrounded me in a very dry, windless bubble.
Then a noise.
A car pulling in the driveway?
The neighbors sharing a joke and swapping gossip stories?
No, it was in the same room. It was behind me.
A shuffling? Someone walking toward me?
But they weren't footsteps. No, it was a swift, kind of deep-sounding rustling, maybe coming from the kitchen? Or the hallway around the corner?
Then it was sudden. The shuffling's velocity erupted until it was right behind my head.
I was too drained to turn around, I didn't want to look. But I shook in fear, goosebumps making my skin crawl all at once.
I remained still. Maybe if I was a piece of furniture I would go unnoticed.
Maybe if I stopping doing, it would creep past.
I was afraid.
A breath slithered down my back. A drip of sweat formed under my tangled bangs.
My fear didn't subside even when I recognized the hissing voice that spoke to me in a different tongue.
Of course I knew it. Of course I could place exactly the last time I was unpleasantly visited by it.
Never had it been this sudden or intense.
Usually he was standing outside my window, looking in at a girl crumpled in a shameful ball of disappointment and sadness.
Usually he at least knocked first; it was never him giving me an option, but rather not being completely rude.
But that day, his skinny fingers, one by one, hastened a grip on my shoulder.
I tried to fight it.
I didn't go easy this time, I whipped my hair around, the sweat beads finding new homes on the wall and cold floor.
Another hand tied a stale-smelling, itchy fabric over my eyes. It was just slightly too tight.
Everything was moving quickly, limbs flying in every direction. My shouts turning to growls, bouncing off each of the four walls.
My flailing arms were bound with barbed wire by a third abductor. Cuts never quite surfaced.
I tried to scream, but a clammy left hand pressed and pressed on my strained neck.
Then I gave in. I knew my efforts would be nothing short of fruitless. That any attempts would only lead to my own demise and pain. Vulnerability and my Shame pulled me into a small closet. Depression look on, his minions doing the grunt work.
My captors removed all paraphernalia.
They wiped the door and walls of fingerprints.
Vulnerability, Shame, and Depression stomped into my kitchen. I heard the freezer open, the oven turn on.
They helped themselves to my frozen pizzas and my chocolate milk. I heard their stupid lips smacking. My food being devoured.
They taunted me with insults in their harsh-sounding language and laughed at me through the door.
Realizing worse things were beyond this door than I was willing to deal with, I sat up and reached for the knob.
I locked that door myself. With my own key hanging from my neck on a rusty chain.
I could feel the weight of that key matching my breathing always.
Upon awakening once, I realized that key had come loose and fallen from it's home on my chest.
I didn't look for it, though.
Time was not of importance. Seconds did not exist.
Day was night, and night meant nothing to me.
My eyes adjusted to the shadows. The only ones visible, might have been imagined now that I think about it.
But
Suddenly, a light.
I hadn't noticed the noises from within my own house were non-existent.
The sliver that wandered in from under my door hurt my eyes to look at.
Was this a trick of the mind? Had I gone crazy?
But it was real.
This light was one December afternoon as my chair swiveled around to face what was allegedly a mirror.
"Well, what do you think?!"
The girl in the mirror and I had an uncomfortable introduction.
Similar to when that person you pass each day on campus but never speak to sits next to you on the bus. You both obviously knew the other existed, and only until now was there a pressure to at least say hello.
So, to the Pink-Haired Tara, I mumbled a "Hey."
She smiled. She was cheerful. She was confident and strong.
Of course everyone has a story, but she held herself well.
"My mom is going to kill me," she responded with a short laugh, talking about her new hair color.
A giggle escaped my mouth.
We shook hands finally, very awkwardly, of course.
Her hands touched my hair.
Her hair was my hair.
Her face was mine too.
Then I stared at myself. Pink hair and all.
Of course this new hair didn't keep my enemies off my lawn, or from them watching me sleep.
It did help me see again, though.
I saw that I was worth pretty things.
That I could be who I wanted to be.
That coloring my hair pink meant I had control, a fact I had lost sight of while sitting in that shadow-casted corner.
Lights like this have continued to show their faces. It is lovely to require sunglasses so as to not have to squint from all the happiness and hope.
Also, the pink is gone now.
Completely faded out.
