Ulalume was inside of a long abandoned mental institution first founded in the sixties, pursuing her hobby of urban exploring, a rather unfitting one for a germophobe.
The inside of the building was gloomy, dark and empty. The green eyed young woman with buzzed down black hair involuntarily cringed at the idea of being treated in a place like this for any sort of reason.
Even though it was obviously long past its prime, she doubted that back then the institution was particularly better. Despite there being countless beds crammed close to each other the room which the explorer was walking through felt so empty. Just beds, filthy walls with the dark-brown paint going off and metal pipes on the moss-infested roof.
Ulalume slowly opened the white wooden door to the next room and as she went through a weird rush of fatigue went over her body making her train of thought less coherent. The casually clothed woman wanted to do something. She took out a disinfectant, remembering that she had just touched a dusty doorknob, and cleaned her hands.
The room ahead of her was crammed with plastic chairs, for the not so well treated patients, she would have assumed if not for that odd sense of fatigue slowly growing, almost weighing her down on her shoulders. In that state she heard a voice, which at that moment she knew belonged to someone else but later she convinced herself of it just being her thoughts.
“What is it that you fear the most?”
“...Hair”
After hesitating for a second Ulalume answered that calm, deep and almost hypnotic voice.
Who… Who was tha- no it was just my mind. Probably just the lack of sleep today kicking in.
As she convinced herself of that, she looked down at her clean, soft hands. Her short and somewhat thick fingers ended in not painted nails. On the pinkie of her left hand was a worn-off ring, mostly silver with patches of black. It was hers since she was nine and since then she practically always wore it, though it used to fit on her ring finger back then.
She disinfected the hands she was so intently staring at again despite the fact she had just done that.
The woman then stopped standing there as if rooted to the ground and took multiple powerful steps forward before turning left. She was standing approximately in the middle of the rectangular room. The metal door she was gazing at was closer to her than the wooden door through which she had entered.
Ulalume felt like a mouse powerlessly following the scent of cheese as she neared this entryway, walking past the crowd of white plastic chairs unintentionally pushing one down to the ground. The metal door seemed rather sturdy and had a keyhole in it, like a place one should stay away from. Her slim arm pushed it and the gateway flew right open.
A rusty metal stairway leading down greeted her. A wonderful sight for the adventurous side of the woman but a not so enjoyable for the side of her which despised anything even the smallest bit unhygienic.
However her conscious decision-making did not matter in the end since that strong sense of being tired came over her again. This time instead of just making her stand around she, without even thinking about it, walked down, subconsciously avoiding touching the dirty railings attached to the wall. She felt like a child following its father’s soothing voice.
Down there Ulalume started thinking straight. She once again took out her disinfectant from her right… It was not in her right pocket. She felt her heart sink before frantically feeling her left pocket up. It was there and the woman could calm down.
She cleaned her already clean hands as she gazed upon the location she had just entered. The walls were made out of dark red bricks which were slowly but surely deteriorating and the roof was a disgusting greenish black shade brought onto it by moss. Occasionally there would be one or two white spots where the moss hadn’t grown but Ulalume just tried keeping her eyes on the dusty ground and not thinking about the filth above herself.
Unlike in the rest of the institution the short-haired woman could not find a single piece of graffiti-art down there. As she traversed her way across the empty brick room she entered another, looking almost identical and then another, making this place feel like a labyrinth.
In each next room there were pipes going down through the floor up into the ceiling and also light green, almost white pillars made of cement. Another entryway appeared in front of the woman and as it did she had to lean on the pillar with her left shoulder, her eyes involuntarily trying to close. After a moment she made a sudden disgusted movement away from the pillar before disinfecting her hand which had not even touched it.
The room that gateway lead into, as Ulalume had found out a moment later was
(a crematorium)
peculiar. It was the first and perhaps only room in the basement to have a bed in it, even if it was metal and looked extremely uncomfortable. Furthermore it had countless rectangular, metal hatches on the wall opposite of the entry point.
They were overgrown making them mostly green and partially rusted brown. A few were left open showing the black inner side of the hatch on the wall which had a similar tone to it as the bottom of an old frying pan.
The tired woman heard a voice which did not sound like one which was the reason why she did not realize she heard anything. Despite that the messages was clear: “Open it” The command was hypnotic and somehow Ulalume understood exactly what it meant right away.
A moment passed as Ulalume now stood right in front of the hatches, one in the top left corner to be precise. Normally she would have narrowed her hazel green eyes at the sight of the brown almost black rust on the metal ahead of her however at that moment her head was practically absent of any sort of logical thoughts.
As she stood there, staring, the only movement coming from her being the repeated up and down of her chest caused by slow, concentrated breathing, Ulalume could not feel her legs. It felt as if she was off the ground, levitating.
She clung her arm around the rusty handle. As she felt it Ulalume could not help but imagine ripping it off of the handle. She pictured it like the wrapping of a sweet candy. Her nails pressed into the metal. A delicious chocolate sweet which Ulalume could practically taste.
As she attempted to pull the hatch towards her, and failed due to not enough force usage, the woman noticed that in her state of ecstasy the foul odor which often accompanied her to her hobby of urban exploring was gone and replaced by the smell of a freshly mowed grass, a smell she absolutely adored.
She leaned back while holding the handle. The hatch opened and her level of ecstasy spiked. Ulalume felt like she was now flying through the air. This turned out to be the partial truth as she almost fell on her back. The collapse was avoided with her two hands landing onto the ground before the rest of her body could.
The urban explorer pushed herself up quickly and slowly yet intently took a step towards the hatch, craving the knowledge of what was inside.
She opened it and from about half a meter away looked at the dark inside. First the woman noticed that the walls were gray and so was the roof of the roughly seven feet forward extending chamber. The bottom was black or it seemed to be.
She moved her face a tiny bit closer to the entrance. In a few places some sort of black strands were visible, perhaps broken-off pieces of metal. She touched it softly with her right hand. The “ground” of that chamber was somewhat soft yet the touch of it immediately disgusted Ulalume since she could tell what it was.
She no longer felt weary and any ecstasy which might have felt before was gone. Hair, simply hair. What Ulalume had thought to be the bottom of that chamber seemed to be a mountain of uncleaned black hair. At its highest the hair was located about 10 inches above the bottom.
Ulalume stared in disbelief at her hand submerged in filthy hair, the worst-case scenario for her. Her mouth wide open and her pupils shrinking. The first proper movement she managed to fulfill was suddenly trying to pull her arm away. Hair wrapped around it and kept it in place. Ulalume pushed herself away by applying force to the wall with her right foot. This allowed her to move her hand away but the hair followed it and was still solidly wrapped around it.
In an attempt of putting up more distance between the hand being attacked and the hair in the chamber she put it behind her back. Meanwhile with her left hand Ulalume tried reaching underneath the hair tightly wrapped around her wrist in an attempt of removal. It resisted.
At that moment the woman looked at the hair-filled hole. It had grown out. Her biggest fear was now hanging down out of (the oven) the opening. Suddenly there was pressure around her left wrist too. The hair was now wrapped around both of her arms creating a sort of hair-handcuff.
Her hands were stuck behind her back so she took two steps back. What she had not considered was that the hair on her wrists originated from the pile. It pulled her closer. She could feel the hair hanging out grazing against her chest. Her face was right on level with the hair. In shock she could not look away.
The hair was black, the exact same shade as her fathers. It was messy, the singular strands intertwined with each other and it was full of smut which was almost unnoticeable through having a similar tone to the pile. The sheer thought of brushing through it with her hand made Ulalume involuntarily try moving her arm towards the pocket in which she had left her disinfectant.
As she did that she was pulled closer now her body intensively pressing against the wall and the unopened hatch located about two feet beneath the one with hair in it. The woman widened her eyes and pulled her head away together with her upper-body.
She was pulled back now face to face with her biggest fear. Hair had wrapped around her head right underneath the nose. The smell was dreadful and that moment everything caught up to Ulalume.
All of this was so utterly unusual that only now did Ulalume’s mind sort it into a real issue. Before that point she could not see any of this as real yet now her legs were trembling and tears were pooling in her eyes.
How is this real?
The woman began hyperventilating and violently moving both of her arms back and forth in attempt to free herself from what was holding them together.
There was a noise, almost a voice but truthfully so far away from one, too quiet, too guttural, too unreal. It had a pattern but not one Ulalume could possibly understand. She just screamed with a voice one could imagine would shatter glasses.
The hair silenced Ulalume or at least quieted her in its own twisted way. From the countless messy strands wrapped around her head some left the bunch at the spot right below her nose and right above her mouth, slowly beginning to make its way towards it. At first the terrified woman did not even notice.
But as she did her screams became louder and her crying intenser however the speed of that hair remained the same. Slowly gliding right above her tongue.
It soon reached her throat making her incapable of screaming anymore, just gargling and feeling like she was slowly suffocating. The hair was scattered all over her tongue in her mouth and it felt so rough and somehow made Ulalume want to scratch all over her mouth to make all the hair go away yet she was incapable of that.
More hair entered her mouth as if it knew that it would trigger her fear. At that point the woman’s whole body was trembling and she would have rather died than experienced this worst possible fate which almost felt specifically prepared for herself.
Then she heard that incomprehensible noise again which made her ears hurt almost equally as it did her mind. Perhaps inside she did comprehend what she heard but wished to keep it buried deep within.
All the hair in her mouth quickened and began moving all over the place, getting tangled up, scraping the back of her throat. Ulalume just had to give freeing her hands from that “handcuff” one more shot
This time she had less energy left, she had used it all on gargling up the hair and bawling her eyes out. Weirdly enough her weak attempt was successful.
She immediately grabbed all the hair on her face and in her mouth, began to pull. Slowly it was being brought out of her mouth and face.
“Why do you fear this?”
It was a hypnotizing voice with a harsh undertone, no not an undertone a second voice, a brutal one sounding like the noise Ulalume had just a moment ago heard.
The woman kept pulling yet her attempts grew more futile as if the hair was now stronger.
“Why do you fear hair?”
Ulalume began trembling again, this time more intensively. She was not going to answer neither to the voice or to herself. Death itself was a better pick for the woman than what the hair was doing to her yet she would rather have the hair keep going deeper down her throat than think about that question.
“Tell me”
She heard the voice worse now as if it had moved away from her or as if another one had spoken over it.
Now her attempts of pulling her fear out of her mouth only lead to it staying in place. She felt tears down her cheek flowing on that hair, one could imagine the first bit of liquid on them in years.
They began moving forward slowly again as if the woman had never resisted. She still held onto the hair despite how terrible and greasy it felt, her hands desperately wanting to let go and her teary eyes slowly closing. That hair kept at a constant pace, it had never quickened or had a stronger pull. The reason it went straight back into the woman’s now extremely sore and agitated throat was that she herself had used up the last bits of energy remaining in her body.
Her pain-filled voice became quieter and the last thing she looked at before all went to black was the pinky of her left hand and that old ring on it.
“Why do you fear hair?”
I just do
“Why?”
Shut up
Ulalume knew the reason and she also knew that she knew yet lying to herself simply seemed like the easy way out. Just forgetting about it made her feel happier yet the memory lingered, never processed properly, simply left behind.
Black hair that is what triggered it the most. Just the same shade as her father’s and her own back when she had it… and that hair inside of that opening, that hair which got into her mouth.
Her mind floated through a darkness of a similar shade of the hair which caused it and then in between of all that nothing Ulalume saw it yet she also denied its existence despite that being impossible.
She moved closer towards that memory or perhaps it just caught up with her constantly moving-forward mind. The woman turned away incapable of looking at the eye of the truth.
To make the memory go away she bit her lip to the point of bleeding yet despite her efforts her mind seemed to forcibly turn her around face to face with that memory.
She closed her eyes which looked almost the same as the dark, empty vacuum in her mind but that image was gone, that image engraved into her mind… now slowly engraving onto the insides of her eyelids.
She was not supposed to see but that image kept fading into her vision. She began rubbing her teary eyes with both of her hands, hoping it would help but that image stayed and became more clear, more intense.
“Why do you fear hair”, a rough, guttural voice
Shut up!
“Why do you fear hair”, which became rougher
Get out of my head!
“Why do you fear hair?”, just to turn hypnotically soft.
Why are you doing this to me!
That same incomprehensible noise again. She now heard a pattern of something one could call words but on the other hand one could barely call whatever spoke a voice. It was more like a gurgle, just like how it sounded last time.
She rubbed her eyes harder but that image became clearer and now there was no escaping it. No escaping the past.
Ulalume awoke on that uncomfortable metal bed in the same room she was in right before going on that trip through her mind, difference being she was more terrified than when that hair went into her now extremely sore throat. She had to use all her willpower remaining to even partially run from what she saw in that vacuum. An image of her life so long passed that it was shocking one could have it so well memorized, all the details were coming back and being pushed away by the mind of the woman with buzzed hair.
Her father’s body laying on his right side, similarly to how Ulalume was at the moment both of their eyes also wide open and looked to be thoughtless, though the daughter definitely had more life in hers. The part of that which Ulalume had engraved into her head the most was her dad’s armpit-long, straight, black hair masking his face, only parting at the point where his eyes were located, leaving the two lifeless orbs very noticeable, the green fading out of the pupils. She almost felt like his body was in that room with her but truthfully she was all alone.
Ulalume reached for her right pant-pocket and did not feel a thing inside. Her disinfectant was not there. Hyperventilating she checked her left one, maybe she put it in there again. It was also empty. The woman got up and frantically began looking around the filthy room. Not even underneath the metal bed she had woken up on was her disinfectant.
The germophobe had no way of cleaning any part of her, inside of an old, run-down, filled with excrement building. Truthfully the worst imaginable scenario for her so bad she even forgot about her sore throat and repressed that image out of her head.
Up to that moment she hadn’t even noticed that the floor of the exit of the room she was in had suddenly become black. It was right ahead of her, hair. Hair as dark as the night sky and as filthy as a sewer rat was all over the floor. Not just next to the exit, as the woman found out a moment later but everywhere.
She tried not to look at the ground and focus on the ceiling while trying to find a way out and this was the moment in which Ulalume appreciated the fact she had shoes on more than she ever had or would. Though at the rare occasion that a singular strand of hair would brush over her ankle a chill would run down her spine.
There was no light source in any of the rooms and the woman had already forgotten where she had come from, meaning she could only pointlessly wander, hoping that she would find the stairs as her panic slowly raised so did her chest each time she took a deep breath.
As the adrenaline rush, which Ulalume had gotten from what she had seen before having woken up, wore off the pain in the woman’s throat grew more noticeable so did countless others in her exhausted muscles. Still taking deep breaths she stopped for the first time since she left the room with the metal bed in it.
She grabbed her neck reflexively in response to the pain and as she did that, suddenly a gust of wind breezed past her back despite being in a basement. The woman would have questioned this if not for the fact that she felt very tired for some reason.
It felt like she was about to fall asleep. She took another few steps and it felt like the level of hair on the ground had just raised. Each one reaching up to her exposed ankle and brushing against it. Though the woman’s lower legs felt numb and therefore she barely felt that.
Ahead of her something stood tall, a figure about the height of a tall man but it looked to have no arms or perhaps they were covered by something. The silhouette of it was human-like as if someone who had their arms touching their body and their legs together was drawn over with pitch black.
It turned and Ulalume saw two things one could call eyes. On the figure there were two upward white ovals contrasting with all the black on it. Those reminded her of
(her father’s body)
something.
It stood there as the tired woman’s vision got blurry. Perhaps it was watching her. Then it walked away from Ulalume.
Her vision turned clear and her legs felt again. The feet needed warmth, even though her brown boots were meant for colder weather, her feet were freezing yet the worse part was all the hair touching the woman’s calves. When did it get so high up?
The germophobe reached to her left pant pocket reflexively before mid-movement remembering her disinfectant was gone. The exploration of this basement, the woman so wished to leave, continued and quickly her tempo grew almost to the point of running. She need to leave and leave this all behind, maybe stop urban exploring all together.
Left and then right, then left again. Ulalume’s sense of direction was completely gone and as she worried for finding the way that feeling reminded her of something.
The figure she had seen somehow it had slipped her mind which was occupied with getting out of that place. It… What was it? As she fell into an abyss of thought her head moved down until she was only looking at the hair, which had now gotten almost up to her knees through some twisted wonder. She quickly looked up at the ceiling but even if her eyes ignore it her irritated legs could not and furthermore just a moment later not even her eyes could look away anymore. Her head was pulled up by some force to see that figure in a doorway right ahead of her.
What made it so dark was hair as the woman saw through her now blurry vision. Filthy hair which had overgrown its entire form besides in two spots. Those two white orbs which looked like eyes of sort were there. They reminded the woman of… A scream. Her own scream. What had moved her hand was the figure’s hand overgrown with rough, black, horrid hair.
The woman ran through the hair on the floor now reaching up slightly above her knees, significantly slowing her movement. The hair kept irritating her legs, even more now, yet she prevailed while breathing quickly. Her run was comparable to a child who had only a week prior learned to walk, stumbling around every second step she took. Despite all the random turns she took, her energy sinking radically and her less than ideal running technique. She saw hope, the stairs upward. She no longer needed to run.
Ulalume wanted to fall on the ground until she remembered what was on it. She took a few deep breaths. The stairs leading out were three steps away. Two steps. And one. The woman turned around to see if what had followed her, had caught up and she needed to run. As she feared, it stood at the entrance to this filthy room only filled with hair, almost as high up as the woman’s hips. She took two small steps backward. Another one. Her left ankle hit a metal step. The woman gasped in surprise, moved her foot up in pain, and through a general lack of energy fell face-first into the pile of hair ahead of her.
She quickly pushed herself up from the floor and was out of the hair though to her unpleasant surprise somehow the level of hair had risen and half of her body when standing straight up was now covered in hair. The figure stood in the same spot not even seeming to attempt catching her. She reached her thumb, index- and middle finger into her mouth pulling out a group of hair strands. Her hands were shaking, her eyes wide open, looking around out for any possible threat and she was ready to turn around and run.
Yet that figure was standing so still. It gave the woman a weird sense of security. She kept staring. Then there was a voice but the figure was still completely still.
“Why run?”, the voice was hypnotizing yet quietly with it was another one which sounded like the noise she had heard before.
Because I hate this place, everything about it!
Only after she had thought that had she realized that there was no proper source to the voice and then she remembered she had already heard it… countless times. How could she have forgotten?
“Just like your hate what happened in the past?”
It spoke again and despite coming from seemingly no direction Ulalume knew the exact source and she looked at it.
“Shut up!”, this time words came out of her mouth.
Those two white orbs in between all the hair going down from that things head were staring back at her. She took a step back.
“You think running away will ever heal you?”
“I don’t wanna think about it!”, the woman’s voice was harsh and sounded like a teen talking back to their parent.
“You think something like this goes away? You can run but you’ll always remember me and you’ll think of me and you’ll turn to look behind yourself on dimly lit evenings, scared that I had come back.”
The short-haired woman cringed and took another step back. The voice was correct whatever Ulalume might have wanted to believe.
“And you better know that once you repress it you’ll still fear. Randomly your breathing will quicken as will your heartbeat and you won’t know why but your subconscious will know the exact reason.”
Her breathing quickened as an image slowly faded in in front of her inner eye, a thought, a memory.
“You should know that… very well but I suppose that people do like to lie to themselves if it so happens to be the easier choice”
The woman began to scream and then turned around to run up the stairs. In a rush she fell forward. On all fours she climbed up the stairs and as she kept getting higher she turned around in fear of it…
…and you’ll turn to look behind yourself…
The thing had not moved a bit. She turned her head back forward not able of getting the image of the figure out of her head.
…you’ll think of me…
She glanced back forward, got up a few steps on all fours. The woman got up on her legs as she reached the door and reached out for it.
…you’ll remember me…
She grabbed the dusty metal handle.
…You should know that…
It’s right.
Remember
Just like I still remember him.
She opened the door, hyperventilating. For some reason she could not move as she sat on the highest step of the staircase, staring at the wall but not seeing it. She only saw that image, back in her mind. Just getting up was all it would take to leave, she could just forget all of it or try at least. That door was luring her in but something was not letting her out. Nothing external it was her mind.
The woman had always known the right choice. She always tried to look away, to forget but the truth remained, a truth the germophobe had believed to be easier to avoid until her death but was that true? Was that ever the right choice?
Her breathing got even quicker, a tear flowing down one of her hazel green eyes as she closed both of them and took a deep breath. For the first time in her life she didn’t run from that memory. Deep in her mind she remembered every singular detail of it and that knowledge was brought back to her conscious self as in front of her eyes she saw her dead father once again.
The same image she had time and time again forced herself to forget but in the end it was impossible after all how could one not remember the murder of ones own parent… the other, angered parent being at fault.
Her eyes opened wide and her slow breaths kept breaking as the woman cried. She wanted to go, even run but what she realized is that she could not run from something inside her. It’s as pointless as trying to get away from ones own shadow. That’s why all the prior attempts to run from that figure were pointless too.
The hair-filled basement did not seem so bad to her anymore as she entered it though the hair had gotten up to her chest. Holding back tears she looked at the figure scared and yet eager to walk up to it.
“M-my father…”
For the first time since Ulalume had gotten to the stairs the hairy figure moved, only its head. It looked at the woman with its white orbs and they seemed far more welcoming than before.
“My father… he…”
She heard that incomprehensible noise, again the same one. Though she might have comprehended it this time if she put in enough effort.
“H-he…”
“He died. I know. Your father died.”
Her eyes opened wide scared yet also comforted at the fact that she did not need to say it herself. She slowly but surely moved forward towards the creature and it almost seemed like the room had less hair than just a moment prior when it had reached up to her chest.
“I… couldn’t… I was”
“You were hiding. Just as any scared child would.”
“But he died and I got to live. Why couldn’t I go with him? Mom was taken away that day too and I… I had no one”
Her father, his black hair over his face and his eyes in between the strands of hair losing color. He had been brutally murdered as she hid in the closet.
“If you would have been with him he still would have died.”
Ulalume realized she never even got a look at his wounds despite how well she remembered everything. The young her had only stared at his face, sitting still for about ten minutes before being taken away from the crime scene.
“Your fear is irrational”
“Me seeing you is irrational!”
She took a quick step back, grabbing for her… disinfectant. It was not there, she remembered in the middle of the movement and came to a total stop, her eyes twitching as she stared at the still immobile figure.
“Are you even real? What is any of this?”
Her breathing quickened as the weirdness of this situation caught up to her. How could the woman accept any of this?
“I can assure you you’re not going insane.”
“Not my question!”
The woman stared at the figure. Not moving or was it? No, it was completely still Ulalume was sure.
Then it still did not move and also did not respond. A sense of urgency appeared in the woman. The vessel to let all her internal struggles onto had gone quiet and left her alone with just its terrifying form and the woman’s biggest fear.
All the hair was getting more and more uncomfortable as she kept staring at that thing. Her heart racing and her disinfectant still gone. She so badly wished to use it at that moment.
She could go at that very moment. Leave forevermore. Just standing around was pointless. So she went, she went in the direction of the creature.
If I run now… there is no way I ever forget.
“You think running away will ever heal you?”
Not anymore… no, it hadn’t healed me ever… just muted the pain.
At every step the woman expected something to go terribly wrong however each step brought with it another deep breath to calm herself and made the hair filling the entire basement go down by about ten centimeters… somehow.
“You think anything that is not actually there would give you the push necessary to make you… face your past head on?”
Another step forward.
“Yes.”
Something did push her, save her.
“Then you’re correct but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Your courage is very real, just as was your fear a moment ago. Now it is almost completely gone”, it said – thought? -
The figure moved and the woman’s heart skipped a beat despite how small its movement was. Just the head looking around the room with now at most 8 centimeters of hair in it.
Courage?
“I’m not courageous, not in any way”
The woman stood still looking down at the floor now almost completely clear of any hair just one and a half steps away from the figure of which she could now easily see each singular strand of hair, only at the bottom of its form though since her sight of the thing was limited due to her looking at the floor.
The woman felt at comfort despite the location she was in. The hair on the ground went up by a mere 3 centimeters making the hair of the figure blend in more. That hair slowly began moving closer to her yet the woman was not scared.
“The amount of courage you have to stand right here is immeasurable.”
“But-”
“You were a child and not only that it was also life or death.”
Ulalume looked up from the floor seeing the figure stand right in front of her. She could see each messy hair leaving the main flow. That hair which no longer made the woman get a shiver down her spine. The same hair as her dad’s.
The hair on the figure looked to be silkier and overall better taken care of than when she looked at the figure just ten minutes ago. Maybe it always looked like this. For the first time in eleven years she could call someone’s hair pretty. She let her hand go through the smooth, black hair which seemed to go on forever.
Before that day eleven years ago the, back then, girl felt the exact same thing, as the, now, woman did, very often. Sitting on her father’s lap, she would give him a big smile as she played around with his long, black hair. It would be such a comfortable activity and one day it all got ruined, not just the future but also the past for when Ulalume did her best to forget it all she not only forgot what she hated but also what she loved.
Now both were back though the bitterness coming from just a memory was far smaller than the overwhelming sweetness coming from the here and now and the hope for a future equally as sweet.
As Ulalume kept moving her hand through the smooth hair she felt like she was levitating. That feeling of being tired came back but it no longer was a tool to make her oblivious to what was going on but her feeling comfortable.
Then she heard the sound again. The sound she could not comprehend before. It was so clear, so beautiful and most importantly the truth. The truth which she for so long could not comprehend.
“To live on is to move on”
The woman smiled for the first time since she had entered this long abandoned mental institution and almost involuntarily spoke.
“But you don’t follow that yourself, do you?”
It was sheer instinct which made her believe that yet she was correct. The confident woman moved her hands up to the place where the figure’s face should be hiding behind that hair, staring at those white orbs, which somehow looked… tired but welcoming. Or perhaps that was just the aura which they were radiating.
Ulalume moved the hair out of its – his – face. Behind it was a horrible truth, a hurt spirit. The undeniably dead face of a boy at most twelve. Black as coal, not rotten anywhere but a red foam seemed to be gushing out of his nose. His face was expressionless but the woman felt surprise coming out of him. Those white orbs she had seen before were indeed his eyes so dead yet also emitting so much will to live in them.
She could not get her eyes off of them. Her train of thought would be illogical to anyone but her. As everything around the two seemed to disappear, turn to a void, she reached out both of her hand to his filthy, dusty face, grabbing it. Slowly moving her thumbs around it until they reached the side of his black nose. Then with a sudden movement her thumbs went upward into his eyes. They were a gooey substance like how one imagines going through jelly to feel like, not how one would think a human eye feels.
The white void became realer as Ulalume lost her ground and felt like she was forever falling, just her and that hurt individual. She felt him his insides, his emotions. As everything around them was outside of any of their senses those emotions were the only things they could feel.
The silent boy was scared yet delighted just as was the woman. Everything around them white unlike last time when Ulalume was here. All the darkness of their minds gone. Even if it only may be this snow-white for this one moment of their life or death they could be sure that this place would never fall back down to the old darkness, comparable to a black hole.
The woman who could now care less about the bacteria inside of an eye pressed harder and saw it all, or at least the all of the very hurt child, what he had gone through.
The more she understood the person ahead of her the shorter his hair grew and it also slowly lost the black pigment.
Now Ulalume understood her hunch to say what she had said few moments prior. This used to be a mental institution a “Place to help the mentally challenged” or whatever they said, however looking at the interior it did not seem to truly try to achieve that goal:
That depressing brown paint on the walls, those rooms filled with uncomfortable chairs and most importantly that room down in the basement.
This child, Aeson Godfrey, had suffered through what no one especially not a child should ever have to go through. The memory which she saw most clearly was overdosing, quite a lot. Pills being forced into his mouth and then digestive system. Ulalume almost felt it including the pain of death. Aeson must have had his eyes closed because the memory was pitch black yet the cause of death was still obvious.
His hair was light-brown, could be confused with blonde. It was messy, parted down the middle and short.
“What do you mean?”
His mouth moved in accordance to all the sounds the woman heard yet the voice was still coming from her mind.
You try to make everyone else move on from their struggles but you yourself don’t do the same.
She closed her eyes remembering that horrid, filthy place the mental institution is and was.
That’s why you stay here… helping others in the way that no one had ever helped you.
“I can’t go. Too many people need help.”
All the boy robbed of his youth could think about were others and how he could make them live life to their fullest. His soul needed rest but his mind did not let it.
The woman knew what she was going to do after all this boy had saved her life. She thought of her father, he died and she got to live on. She wanted the boy to move on since he could not live on.
You’ve done enough.
She felt a weight on her head a feeling she remembered but forgot from where. Her hair was growing out, black just like her fathers. It grew until it reached her back. The woman’s face was covered with straight, black hair only her hazel green eyes visible.
You get to move on now and…
Without really knowing what she did Ulalume pushed her forehead onto Aeson’s. It went in as if they were morphing and then in her sight was only darkness.
Never ever feel bad for me or believe I suffered because of you. You saved me.
“Thank you”
Ulalume felt tears coming out of the back of her head, out of his eyes.
Before she knew it she woke up in the same spot of the basement, all alone. As she opened her eyes all the events of the day – no, her life – flashed before her eyes. Almost like how people describe their thoughts during a near death experience.
She felt some sort of presence above her in the mental institution, a scared one. The floor of the basement was scattered with glass, mostly transparent though some shards seemed to be from colored bottles.
The woman felt full of energy somehow and the aches she often got in her knees and feet were completely gone. She looked down at her weirdly numb and cold body still sitting on the floor filled with glass shards, leaning against a dirty wall with some mold growing on it.
To Ulalume’s shock her body was hurt all over the place. Her arms had glass shards coming out of them and were letting lots of blood flow out of her. Her heart did not quicken as a matter of fact she felt no heartbeat in her chest. She felt nothing outside of her body but inside she felt warm, satisfied.
She took what felt like a deep breath but no air came out of her mouth. She put her right hand underneath her on the floor with countless glass shards and pushed herself up. That presence was closer. She felt its heartbeat, its mildly worried breaths.
Without thinking about it Ulalume thought:
What do you fear most?
She looked down at her hands stabbed with sharp glass in countless spots. Aeson could move on, she was simply sure of it. So could she too, no longer letting fear of the past rule over her. Those thoughts were interrupted by a response from the origin point of that fearful aura.
“...Glass”