The Room

THE ROOM

         That bedroom is the source of all my nightmares, Josie thought. She stood stone still in the clouded half-light of the deserted street. The steel gray sky as cold as Josie’s thoughts. The girl’s arms folded tightly across her skinny little body held her wrinkled dress still in the gathering gloom. Her statue-like face was frozen, stark, and vacant as the opened door house behind her. All the color and warmth cruelly drained of both.
         Her black hair, tangled and mussed, hiding her dark brown eyes. Eyes red rimmed from recent tears of terror, showing none of the thoughts in her reeling mind. Glistening streaks ran down her pale cheeks to a firmly set jaw. Staring off under wrinkled brows into nothingness, Josie’s eyes mirrored the second floor windows staring down on her, dark and foreboding.
         Opening her bedroom door, she’d been assaulted immediately. She could still feel those cold malignant fingers, reaching out trying to grab hold and pull her in. She instinctively recoiled, twisting free, bolting down the stairs and out of the house. The hideousness that lay beyond that threshold enveloped her mind in a cold blanket of panicked dread. She moved not a muscle since she entered the road.
         How could she ever enter her room again knowing the ugliness which lay there waiting eagerly for her return? This had to be the worst day of her young life. How could she ever face it, or worse, try to explain it? She had always been obedient to her mother, and until now, her new stepfather. But this? This was just unacceptable, this was just wrong! He had no right to ask her to do this!
         How could she possibly do what her stepfather asked, then passionately demanded of her? Josie knew her mother would never accept or understand. Mom would not hear it, she would find a way to choose to see it differently. She was being a witch.
         How could she possibly explain what happened to her this afternoon? Who would blame her if she just ran away and disappeared?
         These thoughts spun as a spider’s web through Josie’s young mind. Within moments, something deep inside her crystallized, hard, raw, and pure. Instantly, she knew exactly what to do.
         Suddenly the sun broke free, shinning upon the darkened doorway. Josie spun on a determined heel and raced inside. Seeing the only thing she could possibly use, she grabbed the thick broomstick from the vestibule's corner. Josie swung it over her shoulder and with a clenched jaw, tightened muscles, charged up the wooden stairs, armed to face that despicable ‘it’ which now sat there waiting in her bedroom. She would not let this 'thing' overcome her, no matter how hard she must fight. She was of one mind, completely committed to facing 'it’, ending ‘it’, no matter what!
         After all, her step-dad, said to clean her room and have ‘it’ done before dinner or no pumpkin carving tonight.