I never used to be a faithful person. Days, I'd often spend whining my woes as an asumption that I was God's worn out toy never to be cherished again. I remember sitting on that old couch, staring blindly at the T.V. as if it had given me an answer or a le-way to my saving. My sister would often ask my mother hurried and concerned questions about my lazing, "Doesn't she have any friends?" "Surely she'd rather play a game?" "I'm just worried for your safety," she'd tell me, but lo I knew I was safe. It wasn't me she was worried about at all and I knew that. She lived in the attic of our house; away from the fuss and sin of our parents, yet not far at all from the one she called Ace. And Ace himself was odd, alike the uneaven floor, alike my missing bedroom door, alike the broken window in the stairwell. My, I'd catch myself watching the stairs as if the paint on it's wall would peel off any further. Mother was always angry. Father was always sad. And the house was it's cradle.
Sometimes I'd catch myself picking at the wall on the stairwell. It was already peeled, so why not help it further along. Sister would scold me, "don't pick at that! You don't know what's behind there!" But lo I knew it was nothing but paint. It seemed to me she could see something I couldn't; that maybe her friend Ace had quized her on things. I had asked her, "does Ace know what's behind the wall?"
"Of course," she huffed, "now quit your picking!"
The more I inquired, the stranger my sister seemed to me. Frankly, I didn't know Ace knew as much as he did about the house given how rarely I saw him. Why, I had simply figured he snuck at night in a waft of smoke to play tricks rather than tell tales of a home he never knew. But I quit pestering and directed myself to my room.
My room felt seperate from the house; as if the room a cloud above and the house a waterfall. It was a dream on its own and was filled with anything I needed; a television and a bed. The chatter from the television would drown out anynoise that would leak through my open doorframe and expell bad visions that passed by. Yet it did nothing to stop the nightmares.
One night, I recall dreaming peacefully about