1 *It’s going to happen again, but tonight will be different.*
2 It began a week ago. I was in the den seated on my wooden chair, a sheet of white linen draped over my body, concealing the translucent strings fastened to my limbs – the fate I cannot escape. They are my genie’s lamp, pulling on them enslaves me, and gives me life. And it’s been so long since master tugged on them, very long.
3 I’ve lost count of the times light turned to shade, leaving that effervescent afterglow – vivid images turning sepia brown, waiting for their turn to be hung on stagnant walls. An obscured and still world, and the only hint of life were grandfather’s incessant ticking, and the scratches and creaks created by shadows – shades continually moving across the dust covered floor.
4 That night, the scurrying stillness stirred the hanging dust.
5 I felt the linen sliding off my body, and the shadows began to take form; a Grecian pot, a silver urn, a dark wooden mahogany table, a Persian rug, an antiquated dresser, a doll house, sinews of graying drapes intertwined in a mating ball, my strings entangling the chair’s legs.