Lurkers of the Swamp

Liora lived in a glass house, and everyone could look in and see what she was doing anytime she was in the kitchen or watching TV on the couch. Her street was quiet, and everyone in the neighborhood had grown used to seeing her shadow moving around so close that they could almost reach out and touch her. If she followed their routines and patterns, staying in at night and waking up early for work, cooking and garden like other people did, she thought she might even belong there.

The windows, framed by the green trees and plants lining her walls, were the gates to a life like other people’s. The walls of the house were bright, the color or cream, and the smell of homemade food or coffee always seemed to float in the air. Everything about it was airy and inviting. 

In Liora’s bedroom, a thick vine fell from the room to her lawn, and when she drew back the blinds, the air was fresh and bright green against her white bedspread. In the summer, when the purple flowers bloomed, she could have sworn she smelled them while she fell asleep at night in the stillness of the dark air. That smell had picked her up and rocked her like a small child when she had first arrived to the house she had dreamed of for so long. The flowers were the first thing that made her feel safe.

It didn’t matter how she had gotten there; the only important thing was that she was there now. It wouldn’t do any good to look back at anything that had come before, and it wouldn’t change anything. She only looked forward into the mist of the early mornings as the first cars started to roll down the pavement while she drank her coffee in her pajamas and robe.

She couldn’t say how long life went on like a blur of coming and going from the luminous silence that filled her home. Sure, some people stared as they had always had, but by then Liora had learned how to glare back until they dropped their gaze. Some mornings, she wished there were darker blinds on the windows so she wouldn’t feel so watched every second of every day.

She watched the city move and breathe around her as she lived what had become her life almost as if by accident, or at least that was the way it felt to her. There was nothing about that night that was different than any other night: she got home from work, made dinner, watched TV, and finally closed the curtains before slipping into her bed. But she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Liora’s body ached and throbbed, and her skin itched all over.

She got up and drank a glass of milk and read on the couch before turning off the lights. She must have fallen asleep, because at some point she woke up, one eye half-closed by some strange pressure. She stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the lights, and stared at her reflection in the mirror with blurry eyes. There was a shadow below her right eye, but she must be imagining it.

She splashed water on her skin and rubbed her lids, but the dark splotch was there, an angry accusation in purple and black and blue. When she closed her eyes to try and shake the image, for a second, she was back in the panic of the cold dark night out on the street, and she could feel the rough grasp of the man who had hit as he shook her with all his might, mouth open as he shouted something she didn’t want to hear. She had never known exactly what he had wanted. She felt sick to her stomach.

Her eyes flew open in terror, and Liora was back in her bathroom with the black eye as she had had that day so long ago. As she watched, it was gone to be replaced by the open cut between her eyes, and blood ran down her face and tickled her lips. The mirror mercilessly showed her the bright red smear like some kind of accusation. 

She tasted the coppery tang on her tongue and felt dizzy. Her heart was racing in her chest. She tried to focus on breathing, ten counts in and ten counts out, but she couldn’t calm it. When she looked back in the mirror, her face was clear of markings, but she could feel the ache in her side from her impact on the ground from the fall that almost killed her. She sunk to her knees, and the bathrooms tiles were cold against her bare skin.

Tears formed in her eyes, and she tore off her shirt to watch the patterns of bruises dance over her tingling and aching skin, left over from childhood accidents and falls and that one car crash and all the other things she didn’t want to remember. Liora had always lived her life on the edge, exposed to whatever came her way.  

Up until the day she found her new home she had managed to escape what had always seemed like fate trying to find a way to take her to the other side. Each close call, she had had the clarity of a split-second decision to duck, to roll, or to run, and she had survived. But deep down, she never knew if she would come out alive the next time.

She had always told herself that it didn’t matter how she had gotten into that house. As long as she could keep her own secrets from herself, it didn’t matter who peeked in her windows. But as she watched a lifetime of hurt and struggle play out over and over before her eyes, and a cry tore out of her throat, she knew that had been a lie. She hadn’t gotten there by chance after all. She had earned every second in that quiet life. As the shadows of the trees danced over the bathroom, she leaned back into the wall and let herself feel for the first time the exhausted ache of the body that gotten her there.