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This writing was accepted for publication in the 96 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “I Pull the Strings” Down in the Dirt (v121) (the Jan./Feb. 2014 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

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From Above

Terri Muuss

He’s coming. I look out of my bedroom window just in time to see our tan station wagon pull into the gravel of our driveway. The car leaves its red taillight behind like a stain. My heart begins revving; I feel sick. The engine is shut off and things heighten: kaleidoscope colors, adrenaline pulling all into a center point, edges, warping bed, table, desk, a tug of war, white static snow falling, my mind—reverb on a guitar. I hear a baby crying down the hallway—in my head, in my ear, a tunnel deep inside. Is it a neighbor’s baby? Pick it up. It’s deafening—a movie version of a baby crying on Dolby surround sound, then a banging, banging, banging—a headboard banging? A door banging open? The heat? It’s just the heat coming up in my cold room. The pipes. The heat coming up, shaking the ground, a volcano—no, no, a hot spring with steam shaking the pipes. It’s so cold. The heat coming up through the wooden slats of the floor, coming up—Shhhhhh—coming up. The Father coming up the stairs. The stairs. I can hear him stealing up. A poisonous gas floating up the staircase. Holding breath. I know exactly which stair. The fourth one. The fifth one creaks—the section of banister missing a pole. The eighth stair, I am so cold. I am shaking, shaking free from myself. I can see me, a movie actress, playing a part. I am playing a part below me. Shhhhhh—I am floating. Below, I can see me: cold and shaking. I know there is static in that girl down there, but not in me. I am split from her. Floating the way they say you do when you die, while he stands in the doorway. I watch me pretending until he comes in, he comes in, comes in the girl below me, me. He comes to me, the girl asleep, pretending. Then he stays with me. He stays in me.

*originally published in Over Exposed (JB Stillwater, 2013)

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