“Or…” I kneel before her. “Heads, you make my death quick. Tails, you make sure Jennifer never leaves that room and you make my death quick.”
A hard swallow forcibly works its way along her throat. She nudges the stack of files with her boot. “Heads, we find them all and make them a part of this cellar. Tails, we seal it closed and never talk about it again.”
Makenna flips the coin. She catches it out of the air and slaps the coin to the back of her hand holding the knife.
I cover her hand, preventing her from revealing the answer. Her eyes meet mine searchingly, and I drown in the depth of her dark irises before I remove the coin and drop it to the floor of the cellar.
Epilogue
Storm Chaser
Makenna
I can’t remember who said it, but the claim was made that cellar-door is likely the most beautiful phrase in the English language. Heard out of context, the two words paired together evoke a melancholy that settles deep in my bones. An echo of beauty that feels forbidden.
I probably heard this in school, from some pretentious English teacher. There were a few of those. People who moved in and out of my world with no purpose.
Pieces of my life filter in past the dark, shallow glimpses, the light finding the cracks. I place my hand to the cold floor and capture a splinter of the rays.
Cellar door.
Cellar door.
Cellar door.
I repeat the phrase over and over, trying to force my mind not to recognize the meaning of the words. I want to hear them with a foreign ear; I want to know what they might mean to another woman.
His shadow moves across the light, blotting out the only warmth in the room.
My lungs cease to breathe.
I can’t inhale until the light returns.
I used to hold my breath during storms, counting the seconds after the strike, waiting for the roll of thunder. But the storms vanished the moment he stole me. A beautiful monster full of anguish and wrath tore me from my life.
Now, I’m his captive.
A way out always exists.
Only my mind rebels, insisting it’s the way in that must be found. A window to the soul. Through the eyes. I must’ve heard that in school once before, too.
He watches through ice-blue stained glass.
How does he see me?
How do I appear out of context?
Like the cellar door that conceals our secrets, if I repeat the truth enough, reciting it over and over, it loses meaning—becoming an obscure and distant version of our reality.
There is more than one door. There is an infinity of doors. All leading to where the bones of our darkest secrets haunt. We all have a cellar door of our own design.
My door is made of bone and ash.
It lies below me, an inanimate object that has become as much a part of me as a part of this room. Easily ignored, numbed. Luke calls this the desensitizing process. I look at the door to the cellar every day, and I no longer fear what’s below the hatch.
The sun peeks through the literal stained-glass window in front of me, and I pull in a lungful of air. I hear the drop of the hammer. The residual bang travels through the floor, the vibration sending a ripple effect across my skin. The feeling reminiscent of crunching bone as its beaten into dust.
I force the thought back into the vault.