Illusionary Decalcomania

I first saw him when I was twelve. I tried for class president that day, and failed miserably. Kids laughed at my determination that I would ‘make a democratic class.’ My rival, who promised hamburgers for everyone, won by 35 votes. There were 37 kids in that class.

“There’s a child living on the roof of the house.”

I was humiliated by my father later when I told him that I had failed. My attempt to thwart the attention resulted in more taunting. I was an ‘idiot,’ a ‘dumb nothing who didn’t know a thing,’ and a ‘living failure who couldn’t succeed in anything.’ The words followed me to bed, creating a monster in the closet. I did not say a word, lest I was taunted again. Instead, I went up to the roof by walking along the pipe that ran under the windowsill. I would prove that I was right, that he should apologize by finding that boy.

The first thing my eyes detected was a pair of unfamiliar eyes. The stranger informed me that she had found me bleeding under the window with no one in the house so had brought me to the hospital. She also said my father had already come by and signed the papers, so I could go back now that I was conscious. Walking back alone, I saw the boy on the roof. He was running after a pigeon, with a laugh I had only seen in old pictures of mother and father.

After that day, I frequently saw the boy chasing butterflies, dancing, twirling around- laughing all the time. I saw him when I failed math, when I was held back a year in school, when the teacher taunted me in front of the whole class, and whenever father was drunk.

“Only if you had not been in that car with your mother! Oh Elina, Elina… I’ll kill that boy for you, I swear, I’ll kill that boy! YOU! YOU killed your mother!”

Father was drunk again. He always talked about the car crash that had killed my mother saying that I should never have been in that car with her. She had died trying to save my twin- a brave action in vain. My twin died two days after her.

“YOU! YOU!”

The golf club was in his hands. I quickly slipped up the stairs to my room and out the window to the roof. It was the only place where he couldn’t find me. I would scurry up here whenever the hitting was about to start and stay until he fell aslee p, all the while watching the boy go about blissfully with whatever meaningless action he was doing.

“That boy!”

Father was at the window, looking up. He was pointing his finger at me, swearing that he would kill me. I merely glanced at him once in a while. When he was suddenly muted, I looked down again, to see him gaping at something behind me with horror in his eyes. I looked behind to see the boy standing over me, grinning at my father. The grin was so much like that of my twin just before he died, that I bolted right up from where I was sitting and strangled him. All the while, he was grinning. When I had no energy left that my sight switched off, the last thing I saw was my dead twin’s grin, and his hands groping at my neck.

#fiction #stellakim