It has been over a week since the largest of the portraits covered the door. An evil-looking colonial from the 1500’s stares into me when I walk too close and his saber is always in hand. I thought I could move against the wall, then reach to the door handle and swing it in enough to slip by. I never saw the sword move but it severed my little finger. There is dried blood all over the floor.
For a day I had hoped the scream would bring a neighbor, but no one came. My father always told me it was in my interest to meet the neighbors. Learn their names and have them know mine, but I never did. The thought of standing, face-to-face, with some person, is ridiculous. Who are they?
I used the iron to cauterize the nub at the knuckle and screamed some more. That was when I could still get up the stairs. Maybe I never made a sound. The screams didn’t sound like mine. Maybe, if I walked out the door I would find the sun shining, and Anna would just be at work. Maybe.
I don’t move. The eyes watching seem to be blank, but they will not leave me, they blink when they think I can’t see. The faces think I don’t know, but I’m not stupid.
“I see you.”
The mirror shows how much weight I have lost, but I can’t trust the mirrors. Like the portraits I loved so much, it has turned against me. The image is full of lies. Sometimes I see it talk. It wants me to turn my back so it can have me, all of me. It can’t. I’m not stupid.
Anna saw more in me. She knew I was real. I had a sister once. She used to tell me I was sick. Used to tell me I had a problem. Used to tell me I need to stop obsessing over portraits, over people I didn’t know. I explained that the histories were thorough and the paperwork could be traced to prove each piece was authentic. Each person was real.
“They are real. I know them and their stories.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She would say. The mirror speaks her lines.
“Their stories are part of them.”
“Yes, but their stories aren’t yours.” I thought she meant I didn’t own them and of course, I did. Once a story ends it can be owned. A story that was really real. As real as anything could be. As real as Anna. I don’t have a sister now. I have a portrait of a young girl from the 1940’s. She was someone’s sister before the war.
Just me and walls of faces that watch me. Some with weapons that lash out. A World War One General slashed a hole in my favorite sweatshirt. Somehow, I got three scratches on my cheek.
An Elizabethan poet threw her wine at me and stained the carpet on the stairs. Red at first, and not a crimson brown. Now she holds nothing and her hands are like claws. No, I cannot go that way again.
Ironic, she was the reason I met Anna. I needed gold paint to touch up that frame and Jo-Ann’s is so quiet on weekdays. Anna scanned the items and asked if I painted. Asked if I loved art. Asked if I’d been to the museum. Asked and asked and asked. She got off work at 8, closed the store and waited for the bus.
After the incident at the door, I have stayed in the kitchen, dining room, and downstairs bathroom. The rest of the house belongs to them now and I can hear them gloating when I try to sleep. They don’t know that I can hear them. They don’t know that I know.
Now even the mirror is against me. Maybe that isn’t me at all. Just another face waiting for a chance to reach me. Grab me. Hurt me. No, they can’t hurt me if I am ready. They can’t tell me what to do again. They can’t leave.
I put my hand through the glass and the pain is worth it as the face screams before crashing into the sink. I breathe through my teeth and marvel at how the broken face bleeds. It is time for the offensive. Maybe I can get to Anna. Maybe I can save her.
I walk out of the bathroom and the dining room is a safe place. No one ever gets to watch me eat. It makes a perfect staging area and I go for the knives. The butcher knife is gone.
Where. Which one could have taken it? How could they get into the kitchen? I try to think of which piece has legs. Damn, the polo player of course. He and that damn horse could get anywhere. The paring knife will have to do.
I run from the kitchen and attack the polo player. I take the legs out from under the horse. I cut its throat just to be sure. Blood hits the canvas and the wall. He flutters to the floor. Dead or released? It doesn’t matter.
I run and slash and stab. At some point the knife sticks and snaps but I don’t need it. I can take them with my nails, my teeth. I spill their blood one by one.
I make it upstairs and into the bedroom before the mirror there stalls me. It reflects the bed behind me and the bare mattress is wet, red, and I don’t want to see. Anna has the butcher knife, but I don’t want it anymore.
No, it is just the mirror, Anna left, but now I can own her story.
They cut me, blood drips from my hands and can’t stop staring into the mirror. Maybe I'm the reflection. Black bubbles at the edges of my vision and grows.
I’ll scream. Someone will hear. That's what Anna said.
