Anywhere but here

“I wish you’d say something.”

“It’s too hard to believe. Maybe this is all your doing, and you’ve just … forgot?”

“I don’t know why I bothered.”

They did not belong. So out of place, and yet the day they came had no date. It was only marked by normality and a faint familiarity of things now misplaced and dead. The forms of them were that of smoke. Form - an unfit word, for they had none. They were pillars of black, towering. It knew no bounds, and yet was never absurd in its posturing. Surely, they were a spectacle for miles up until the very step of her home, but she was always alone.

If benevolence could be overwhelming, theirs would be too. There was always a gap they never crossed. She didn’t even know if she existed. Every other time, she would wave her hands until her shoulders and short stature wouldn’t let her go any higher. She yelled at their height, as if they had a head to hear her with. It never fazed them in their mission – their task – what purpose did it even have?

“You know, there are many other things this could be, this story.”

“Forget other people, why would I lie?”

Every item in her house was hers. There for as long as she knew. Things that were, because they were chosen. Then they’d come, without predictability. They’d gather objects into themselves, removing them from space, and returning with another, setting it into the old place. Green lampshade to a brown. A broken carpet to a fresh one, its utility lost in the way it was too clean. Just things, she convinced herself they were. And yet – it was never truly okay.

Once she had run out of useless things to replace, she found there was somehow more to lose. The things that couldn’t have belonged to anyone else. The names of which were hers to know. Belonging, just because they were there, and no reason otherwise. They too, were absorbed into them – their void that was themselves. And she still couldn’t be heard. Her comments were begging, her attempts became pleas, and yet she was still nothing.

She did try. She tried hiding the things she loved, out of even her own sight. They always found them without pause. She lived with the pain, the fear, the forgetfulness that came with denial and helplessness. She lived with it so long, but she comforted herself by remembering they hadn’t taken the one thing she couldn’t live without. A stuffed bear, worn to threads, childish in its nature, but inseparable from herself. She thought, for a moment, if she clung it to herself, it would be the one thing still hers in the end.

“They had no eyes” Head in the grasp of her sickly hands, the tremor unyielding.

“It’s alright. Your nightmares are just nightmares.”

She forgot the feeling of her tears, how to make a sound. She could’ve died there, and it wouldn’t have felt less numb. They ran out of things to take, so they took what they never took before. The part of her she clung to herself, as close as it could come. They didn’t even have arms, but they reached out and plucked it from her grasp. As they carried it away, she cried out after them, begging with her knees, all the strength she had left. They had no right. There was nothing wrong with – They turned on a dime, and their stare was the final word.

They never came back. There was nothing left for them. She wandered her house – the house that wasn’t hers, hands tracing whatever was beside her as she moved from one room to the other. There was nothing left to recognize. No texture to make her reassured. No smell to remind herself of her and her life. The floor didn’t even remember her feet. She fell as she tripped over herself. No one heard her, and no one would’ve, even if they laid alongside her. She didn’t know what to do but scream, but her body had given up too, and she was just as mute as before. This, perhaps, was their goal all along.