Mouse writes to stay awake deep into this vulnerable night.
1. Door. QUIET LIKE SOME TOMB when I press my ear into it. Why? Soundproofed?
2. Walls. THICK AND COLD. Okay. Like they’re collecting all the chill of all the nights into them and holding it in tight like the cold in some COFFIN down deep in the ground.
3. Bathroom. Hmm. FRESHLY PAINTED. Who was here before us? What went on?
Thinking too much. Because the room they’re in is a basement and basements are where things happen. They’re not used to half-below-ground level. They live up close to a huge clean sky, a big dramatic one, under the thumb of the weather. The sun in their bones. Your daughter’s had a dream, for years now, of being trapped under the earth; of hearing close above her a child’s thudding running and a distant bird and squeaky needles of grass being pulled up and the deep breathing of someone who’s flopped belly down and is soaking up the warm lovely sunshine, completely oblivious to her underneath, scrambling and panicking and unable to get out. It never fails to whoosh her into waking with a pounding heart.
4. Window. Glass that’s NEVER going to break.
They tried. The three of them tested it with a chair after the rattling doorknob came but it wouldn’t smash, bend, give one bit.
The kind of glass you can see out of but not into. CREEPY.
Two layers of it with dead flies in between. Their feet twined like ballerinas.
Who was here before us? Did they get out? HOW?
Your lair of lost children under the earth. And all you can do is watch.
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.