Work Text:
There is a stranger in your house.
The knowledge sits wrong, chafing against you like sandpaper. But it is heavy and true, and it makes you want to claw your skin off, the urge to get rid of the feeling almost overwhelming everything else. Everything sits wrong under it, too big with the texture all wrong; ill-fitting, like gluing two wrong puzzle pieces together.
The stranger walks with near silent footsteps, like they’re afraid of being too loud. They slide with socked feet on the polished wood floors, and they sit on the kitchen counter, lit by the glow of the microwave, and stare into the darkness. It crowds them, as suffocating as it is a comfort.
Step 1: Breathe
Breathe in. Feel the air tickle your throat, the way your lungs expand and contract with each breath. Hold it close, because this is something you never thought you would feel again. The scent of the worn couch and the lingering smoke of candles long blown out enter your lungs, and it smells like home. Memories leap to the forefront of your mind, blurry and tinged with amber around the edges. Laughter and flashing blue eyes are the clearest, along with the distinct smell of woodsmoke.
Breath out. The smells leave but the memories linger.
Step 2: Close your eyes
It is dark in the kitchen. The microwave clock glows a faint teal, displaying the numbers 1:34 proudly. Weak starlight filters through a window.
Close your eyes. Good. Now lift your hands and clasp them together.
Do you feel it? Take in the feel of your hands, the way your bitten nails throb with each beat of your heart, the ridges of your knuckles. Now, what about the scars? No, no, don’t look. Keep your eyes closed. Trace the scars on your hands, follow the lines you know are visible and the ones that aren’t. Feel the dried fluid that’s settled into your nail bed clump and fall away, ignore the weight of the stains that never wash away. Scratch at the calluses on your palms, hold them as they shake. Memorize them.
Move your hands up your arms. Your hair raises, goosebumps making the skin feel new, and a chill runs down your spine. There are scars there too, bumpy and raised, and they criss-cross over the muscles of your biceps like roads. You follow them with your fingers. It ends somewhere under your jaw, and you follow the line of it. To your ear, then your hair, grown out to just tickle the junction of ear and jaw. You trace your cheekbone and the constellations of freckles that dot it. There is a scar that runs with it, bisecting your face horizontally. It is knotted, a ropey thing that branches down to the left past your nose and dotted with stitches that hold the skin closed. You hate it.
Eyebrows and then your eyelids. You press down then, just to see the bursts of light that flare to life. Green and yellow, like starbursts. You move to the bridge of your nose, then go to your lips. They’re chapped things, the skin rough and flaking as you lightly brush your fingers over it. You pull at a piece, and blood wells up, coppery and sharp in your mouth.
You stay like that for a moment, hands cradling your face and blood filling the cracks. It feels like…something. Yes, something. You think that it’s better than nothing.
Step 3: Listen
You drop a hand back to your lap and place the other over your chest. Your eyes stay closed.
Thump
Thump
Thump
It’s steady, a pulse beneath your hand, beneath your rib cage. You’re quiet enough that it seems to fill the kitchen with its rhythm. Marching on
Thump
On
Thump
On
Thump
and on. It’s surreal to you. This whole thing is surreal. Your breath, your skin, your heart, they all feel fragile like frost. You took them for granted once. Never again.
It’s sort of trance-like. You sit there, hand on your chest, eyes closed against the world, and listen. Your legs grow numb, your neck stiff. The counter is cold, but your hand is warm and the
Thump
Thump
Thump
of your heart is a consistent companion. The sound of life, you think. How strange. You think you could fall asleep like this; you feel more content than you have in a long while.
Step 4:
The stranger opens their eyes. Drops their hand. The sound fades, even though they know it sits just under their skin.
It feels less like sandpaper now, they think. More like a suffocating blanket. Less like wrong puzzle pieces and more like lumpy clay. They will look in the mirror later in the morning and still see a stranger in their home. But it’s a face that they think they can learn to know.