Orange Karen: Tribute to a Warrior by Multiple Authors

7:30 AM | Labels: Excerpt

In Collusion With Trees

by Jesse James Freeman

"You can knock until your knuckles bleed." She couldn't get far enough away from the door to make her feel safe. Thankfully, there was a bolt she was able to latch. She crouched under a window. The panes had been patch-worked over with newsprint. "I'm never opening that door." She was sure of this and she repeated the sentiment, as much for her own benefit as for what was on the other side of it. "Never."

A farm house. Why was she in a farm house? She'd never even seen a farm. She'd barely ever left the city. How was there a farm? Grandma wallpaper pattern and paint peeling wood chipped trim. This place was abandoned, forgotten, off the map.

Well, not entirely abandoned.

"You're not the first to lock themselves in that room." The knocking had stopped and was replaced by the voice on the other side of the door.

"How many times have you done this before?"

"Many times."

Her elbow was pressed into an ancient toilet, the kind she'd only seen in books. The tank was mounted high on the wall and had a pull-chain. The smashed porcelain pieces at her feet had once been a sink. Water hadn't flowed into this place in a long time. There was barely light. There were no smells. There was no...

"Why can't I see colors?"

Light traveling to her eyes registered all wrong. Most things were a dull grey. Light was too white. Shadow was too deep.

"Why would you need to?" That's what the voice asked her.

Why would she need to?

She rubbed her eyes until they formed tears. Maybe she rubbed them until they bled. She had no way of knowing the difference between blood and tears. She watched the droplets that clung to her hands and slowly ran across the lines of her palm.

Sad, fortune-telling rivers.

"How long are you going to stand on the other side of that door?" She pushed her back more firmly into the cracked wallpaper under the window. She stared up, trying to find the yellow in the sunshine that broke through the cracks in the paper covering the glass panes. "What do you want with me?"

She had nothing. There was no rectangle of glass and plastic pressing its shape into the denim pocket of her grey jeans as she pulled her knees into her chest. The glowing screen had kept her entire life stored within it, and was the spider-web that held close to her all that she had loved. She smiled just a little when she was able to remember her own name — it seemed odd that was possible.

It struck her as funny, all those pieces of plastic that made us who we were in the world.

"I'm not going anywhere," said the voice. "I have to stay until you unlatch the door."

"The floor'll rot out from under your feet before that happens."

"I have to lead you down the hallway.”

Her hand reached for a triangular shard of porcelain. Even white didn't look right to her eyes. She let her hair fall into her face, the strands were colorless.

There was no yellow in the linear pattern of light cast from the window to the wall before her. Her hand tightened on the shard from the broken sink.

"Why do you want to lead me down the hall? What's down the hall?"

"Something."

"There are already somethings where I am now." She looked away from the door. "I have an old-timey poop-throne."

"There is nothing in that room."

She closed her eyes — because maybe when she opened them again...?

"I'm in this room."

"That's what I said. There is nothing in that room."

She hadn't made the decision to jump from the floor and make a run at the door. It just happened. She slammed her shoulder hard into the wood and the door shook but the latch held. Then she was banging her palm into wood.

"Go away, asshole. Before I break this door down myself."

The door shook and the echo was heavy in the room, but the hinges were strong. She only stopped when it didn't make sense to keep going any longer.

"You can simply unlatch the door and turn the knob."

"Yeah! I know that." She put her back to the door and crossed her arms. Her hand stung, but only for an instant. "I just want you to go away."

"Why?"

"Because..."

"Because why?"

"There are a lot of becauses! One-because is that I don't know who you are or why I'm locked in here. Two-because is that I don't even know where this is..."

"So, two becauses?"

"Fuck you, asshole. There's a three-because."

"What is three-because?"

"I'm not telling you three-because."

"W..."