The House on Monty Hill

CW: Extreme domestic abuse, abuse against a minor, suicide

It was three o’clock; midnight, the pearlescent moon beaming through the sky: the night's revel, its milk-white reflection mirrored in the ocean's undulating ripples. Freed by the binding chains of the shadows of couches and sofas and desks and all kinds of vanquished, monotonous furniture in the kitchen, shadows stretch, alive, in harmony with the Earth.

One such shadow is that of a young boy leaving the confines of his house, who begins his trek up a hill, gathering his wits to venture into the single uncharted territory of the town, on a journey of his own; a devil’s dare, a rite of passage. His parents have annoyed him long enough. Tying his shoe and tossing aside a match just used to light a lantern, the summer itself urged him forward, with wafts of tepid July air pushing forward and upwards, even brazenly journeying through the windowsills of the house on Monty Hill, unlike most children of the town, who steer clear, even on their summer conquests. The boy looks backwards, and a sudden harsh gust produced shivers that spread throughout his body. Whether it was the sudden change in the wind’s mood or his nerves, he did not know, but steeled himself and trudged onwards.

The house on Monty Hills was dilapidated. It stood silent, just beyond the boy’s view, swallowed by an inexplicable nighttime fog that only sheathed the house on the hill. Inside the house, a little girl creaks open an eggshell-white door, creeping about, in search of something. She stumbled around but quickly gathered herself, eyes, under glasses, slowly adjusting to the darkness of the night. Despite her troubled vision, she walked as if even laying an extra centimeter of her toes on the stricken floorboards would awaken a slumbering beast, careful not to make so much as even a peep or knock one of the many lumps of junk lying around.

Tip-toeing through the kitchen, the little girl gently dragged a frayed chair next to the refrigerator. She pauses, pressing her ears to the paper-thin walls of the house. Hearing nothing, she climbs upon the chair and opens a tiny, washed-out wooden jar with a muffled thock. She glances around the room and pauses again, seeing and listening for people awake. The coast is clear, and she nabs a cookie, one of her rare delights (rationed off, consumed only on the days she presumes is her birthday). A gift from her older sister, who has since moved out. She quickly scurried away, past the strewn mess of the house, and back into the mellow solace of her room.

The cookie was stale. Yet it didn’t matter in the slightest to her; each nibble reminded her more and more of her older sister, who had been so much of a wishing star like those outside her window. Seeing her sister was her only chance at tasting the freedom of the air outside beyond the confines of her room; despite the consolation her room offered her, it was only a room, and nothing more. A bed, brown; a window, almost completely shuttered; and a light, crooked, was all that furnished it. She would much rather enjoy the soft grass just outside. Or maybe not. She thought she might have had aller-gies, as her sister told her, which would make the rolling hills and fog and bugs much scarier and harder to bear. But no matter. She had decided she had had enough, and the taste of the outdoors was too compelling. She saw the moon (though did not know what it was called), shining, yellow, and was again enraptured; her window was boarded, with barely a few inches of visible Earth open to her. And today was one of those days when the moon stood right at the cracks of her window, just barely visible. She polished off the remains of her cookie and crept back out into the wasted, barren landscape of the house.

She didn’t plan this. It was by chance she awoke and saw the moon and ate the cookie and decided to go outside, unaccompanied, for the first time. But it just so happened to be the same day a young boy decided to voyage towards the house on Monty Hill, beguiled by its mystery. Again, tip-toeing, she slunk out of her door and towards the back door. After a few years of sleuthing, she knew the key (the door was locked from the inside) was left in the top-right drawer in the bathroom. Taking it, she unlocked the back door and was free. Closing the door as quietly as she could, with only a barely audible creak, she set off. All this time, it had been only her mind that was her captor.

She tasted the fresh air, breathed in the cityscape off in the distance, and smelled the aroma of the coo of the owls and the chirps of the crickets. And there it was. The moon. Big, she thought. Her eyes itch, and so she takes off her glasses and rubs them, then lies down in the grass. But off in her periphery, she saw a glowing yellow object making its way towards her. She squinted her eyes and slowly made her way towards it.

“Hello?” a voice called out to her.

She squinted even harder.

A boy, wheezing, came into view, along with the shining golden object. She jumped, and so did he.

“Jeezus, you didn’t have to scare me like that. What are you doing out this late?” he asked her.

“I’ve never seen you around town.” A few tense seconds pass.

“Are you from here?” No response.

He approached her and offered a handshake. “My name’s Dennis, but my friends call me Den-Den.”

“Is this your house?”

The girl snarled at him.

“Whoa!” the guy responded.

“What’s your problem?”

A few more moments pass, and the little girl settles, sitting back down in the grass.

He sets down his lantern and plops himself down a few feet away, facing her, and unwraps a grilled cheese, one he made just two hours before his hike, and takes a bite. He scooted a bit closer to her and offered the rest to her.

Her eyes widen, and the melted cheese shoots straight through her nose, and she instantly grabs at it and takes a bite, savoring every second of it. It rivaled even her sister’s cookies.

“What the…” the boy says, “I’ve never seen someone who liked grilled cheese that much.”

“C’mon, I’ll show you a cool place. It’s just a ways out. Follow me!”

He offers her a hand, and she takes it apprehensively, her other hand holding onto a new delicacy.

Then suddenly, the front door slams open.

A massive, brawny figure steps out and races towards the two, yelling, screaming, hurling curses and slurs.

The boy shouts in shock and sprints off, leaving everything behind. He takes a split second to glance at the girl, frozen in surprise. He can’t tell that her heart is racing beyond what a normal human, much less a child, could normally experience. He decides to continue running, off into the dark.

The burly man gives chase, but turns around, remembering his forgotten chore. He picks the girl off the ground, by the scruff of her neck, and drags her back into the house.

Her father. Biological, but not intentional. He smashes the door shut behind them and hunts towards the refrigerator, which hides the little girl’s precious treasure just above. Out of the refrigerator, he takes an alcohol bottle, about to lay wreck upon the little girl. But his wife grabs his arm, and pleads with him to stop.

Furious by the betrayal of his woman and the disobedience of his daughter, he shatters the bottle on the woman’s head, splintering the liquor and glass, and strikes and blows at both bodies, leaving streams of burgundy blood in its wake.

The alcohol bottle, once brimming with a luscious viscosity, now lay strewn in pieces, scattered across the floor, not unlike the little girl’s used glasses that were once received as a birthday gift from her sister, cherished like a duchess’s bejeweled crown.

The woman, long marred with scars, stole glances at the slivers of iridescent glass; each of her eyes molded a single tear, wherein reflections of what life could have been are refracted, as the saffron egg-yolk light of sunrise spilled in from the window, extending futuristic rays of hope from light-years away, unabated.

In a final, desperate act of maternal devotion, which seemed to directly contradict her actions of the past, the woman lunged for a piece of glass, then tore through the skin of the man, plunging the blade of glass directly into his cervix, and then did the same upon herself, and only after, remembered to softly attempt to caress the little girl’s bloodied face with her own bloodied fingers. Her fingers graze the girl’s face, then almost instantaneously droop, falling short of conveying the deepest of her emotions, which now are sealed within her fleeting soul. The little girl wails, alone.

Outside, the thundering waves of the ocean, hosting the nautical sealife that previously remained perturbed for eons, remained blissfully unaware of all but the polluted seawater. Plastic bags and paper cups, and even socks and tires, floated about, intertwining with the shafts of light; the moon was gone, leaving only the embrace of the sun, nestling the world in its bosom.

And finally, as the sun rises, the shadows are blown away, and the events of what transpired that night are too; the little boy peers in from outside, atop a garbage can, through the fissured panes of the dust-caked window. He goes around the house, through the now broken back door, now unlocked, and tries to pull the girl with him, but for minutes, she won’t budge. He races off, back into the town, to tell his dad, the sheriff.