The Door to Dawn

The world has thrown me into a blackness undefined by natural law. I grip the edges of my spinning bed. At any moment, I will be tossed off and disappear into a void until I’m spit out at the other end. Then I will no longer be me.

I touch my bedroom wall to feel the subtle vibrations of my father’s muffled laughter. 10:30pm. Johnny Carson.

Mom taps softly at my door. “Eric—Eric, can I come in?”

“No.”

“Eric.”

“I’m all right.”

The doorknob turns and, for a second, I see in the glimmer of its brass my reflection turning on its head.

I lay in bed on my stomach, nude. She enters. I try to cover myself with a sheet, but I can’t hide the blood.

“Why, why did you let this happen?” I know what she means. I failed. All the training. All our training. I had stepped on a landmine and kept right on walking. She is scared. Her turn is next.

“Don’t touch me! Leave it. I’ll be okay.”

She answers with a twinge of anger. “Well, you make sure you get yourself to school tomorrow.”

Fighting back a dragon trying to escape my stomach, I bury my head in the pillow. If it escapes, it will burn down the world.

“I wish he would disappear,” I say, but she chooses not to hear.

“Good or bad Eric, he’s your father.”

I struggle to face her. I don’t know now that this will be the last time these eyes will look at her. She wipes a tear from my face, but it feels like she is streaking a smudge of dirt across my cheek.

“I don’t know what good or bad is anymore.”

She kisses me on the forehead.

Tonight I will be left to lick my wounds. I want to escape. To return to the house. To her. But I have to go to school. A bigger, rawer wound awaits.