short story: Are You Still Hurting (6/7)

6


When she could not find her brother the musician sat on the steps of the basement and rested her face in her hands. She began to weep into the protective shield when voices disturbed her. Her family and Mina’s stomped down the stairs, moving her forcefully out of the way. She pasted herself against the wall, tears still in her eyes.
At last she saw her brother, eyes low. He threw open a closet as the basement was crowded and a large bucket was pulled from the darkness. He dragged it across the floor so that a scraping made the musician cover her ears. Chills crawled up her spine.
The bucket was placed to the left of a chair. The uncle had a sack tossed over his back. It flattened on the floor when he dropped it and the family pulled out apples, oranges and potatoes.
"Why is she crying?" the musician's little cousin asked.
"Ignore her," Mina replied.
The singer sank against the wall, plopped on the floor, her heart sinking to her feet. Where it had been there was an aching feeling of abandonment. They all looked at her but none of them saw her tears.

The fruits and vegetables were thrown into the bucket that stood beside a chair. She did not remember them filling it with water and wondered if it was the metallic liquid spewed by the shower where privacy was not allowed.

The families began to climb the chair and bob for fruits, faces in the water and teeth working to bite those floating plants. The musician collected herself from her heap on the ground. She took the steps out of the basement one by one but at the corner of her eye she saw what she wished she had not.
The apple her aunt bit into swarmed with white worms that tunneled their way in and out of the rotted red fruit. They devoured the meat of the plant as the aunt's teeth connected with their meal. This time the singer said nothing but watched. It took a moment for her to clear her throat and find the voice that had been shamed silent.

"Don't!"

The aunt was successful and the apple pulled from the water. When it was handed to the uncle the maggots were nowhere to be seen.

The musician could only stare for a few minutes, not understanding where the maggots had gone but supposing it had been a different fruit.

"Fuck you all," she spoke up.

Up the stairs and down the hallway she sought out the room Mina had shown her. The one with no fan and no lock on the door.

But every room led into another and every hall twisted into more. Hallways and small chambers. Scurrying and bumping into walls. The singer's irritation mounted into rage. She reached into her pocket for her dose of medicine but could not find it.