A warm amber glow encompassed me, and all I wanted to do was stay in the golden light. All around me was the color black. I ignored my quickly escalating thoughts and closed my eyes. That’s what Mother always said to do. Close your eyes and the world and everything scary inside of it will disappear. But the blackness was even in my mind. I curled deeper inside of the blanket Mother knitted for me, not letting my eyes tear away from the fireplace. I depended on it for a while.
“Don’t be scared.” A deep, voice trembled in the shadows.
My eyes shifted around to every miniscule spot in the room. Outside of my safe, amber glow nothing moved or stirred. I stared back at the fire’s light against the floor. Tiny, 2-Dimensional dancers appeared; their toes and fingers pointed with expertise. The man smiled and his teeth had a tawny sparkle. It was entrancing.
“I’ve always wanted to be a dancer.” I knew he was there. My eyes didn’t move from the dancers on my floor. His silhouette, the cookie-cutter shape of a man removed itself from the blackness. I wasn’t afraid.
“Me too,” I could see his smile in my peripheral. “I could never grow out of my two left feet, though.” He chuckled.
I couldn’t help but laugh, too. The dancers became 3-Dimensional. I could see their beautiful, sequential costumes and perfected hair. The woman twirled and her feet never stuttered as she gracefully pranced around the man. His arms were constantly extended, framing her beauty with his hands. The shadow man sat down next to me.
“I don’t want to leave.” A fear grew somewhere deep inside me.
“You always have to come back, eventually.” The shadow man put an empathetic hand on my shoulder.
After his touch, the contact of the dancer’s feet with the floor caught on fire. Mother’s carpet started to brown and wrinkle like burning paper. The dancers went on twirling as if nothing was wrong, the burning floor didn’t faze them once. Beneath the burning carpet was the color white. What an ugly, terrifyingly plain color. I hated it more than black, more than anything.
The white consumed the burning scene, and soon the dancers, the fireplace, and the blackness were all gone. The shadow man remained next to me. I turned to look at him, and I stared into the blackest pupils to ever exist: My father’s eyes.
There was a horror inside of them when he looked at me. I looked into his eyes and saw myself, a warped piece of flesh wrapped in a blanket of white skin. I saw a girl trapped in a black bubble.
I thought to myself, if only there was a pin so I could pop that bubble in his eyes. Maybe then I would be free.