Door

“Don’t open the door. Never open the door.”

That’s what mommy always says when ever she leaves.

She never tells me where she goes to, or what she does, or why, but she always leaves as soon as the sun goes up.

“Why can’t I leave when the sun is out?” I kept asking her, but she would merely shake her head and look sadly at me.

“Just listen to mommy, and never leave the burrow when I’m not at home.”

But one morning, she didn’t return.

I looked cautiously outside the wet forest floor and watched the red ball rise across the horizon.

There is still no sign of mother.

Cautiously, I crawled on the floor, reach out to the door knob, and slowly turn it.

A painful creak came forth as I pushed the door open and gingerly stepped across the threshold.

I took a deep breath, thankful to be out of the stuffy room and took in the fresh air. The wind blew the boughs of the tall oak trees surrounding out little hut, and I could hear the chitter of small rodents playing on its branches. I walked down the couple of steps towards the small path in front of our house and tried to locate them, but they seem to be playing higher up in the branches.

I walked even farther from our hut, standing on the tip of my toes to look beyond our house’s tall roof, amazed at all the life and color I see in the world brightened by this sun, when golden beams of light peeped through the top of the trees and touched my skin – burning me.

“Ahhh!”

I scream in pain.

I try to duck, to run away, but the flames engulf me, covering the whole of my naked body, `till there was nothing left, not even bone.

- end -

Clean.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, that is, if there is a god, but for my father who abhors any stain, it is, at least, a way for me to get through another day.

“Don’t touch the glass!”

“Don’t drip water on the bathroom floor.”

“Keep the food from your plate to your mouth, or you don’t eat at all.”

I have lived my life alone with my father in our immaculate white house, with the task of making sure that not a speck of dust would be seen on any surface.

“We need to show that we are as pure as our fate,” he always says.

“Pristine, perfect, not a fold out of place.”

Yet the color red fascinates me.

I scrub the white garment underneath the running faucet.

The lye burns my fingers, yet I add more to get rid of the red stain he left when he visited me last night.

Mother used to tell me that the red symbolizes Eve’s sin. That it was god’s punishment for seducing Adam and turning him to evil.

That I would also be punished when I grow older.

Well, mother’s long gone now. She took a long bath and filled the tub with red petals from her thorn wrists, leaving me with only a thin blade for protection.

I guess that’s why father decided that I needed to be punished in her stead, after the red visited me.

I sigh and placed the now immaculate garment to one side, taking another one from the floor. There’s just my bed covers left to go.

Later, I will cover his body with the white robes he is so proud of.

Another sigh, as I finished the bed covers and peek inside my room.

‘Red really does look good against pure white.’

I thought as I stared at him, bleeding on the floor.

“Don’t worry father, after I rid of you, our house will be immaculate once again,” I smiled. “Pristine, perfect, not a fold out of place.”

- end -