![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm not sure where this is going but it's been rattling around my head in a while:
Two Foxes, Looking in the Window
There were pictures, in the wood of the cupboards. There were swaying up-and-down lines and shapes like eyes tilted sideways. Knots in the wood, Dad had explained. Home was an old house, and there were a lot of wooden things, but the foxes-looking-in-the-window were the realest-looking picture. You weren't supposed to climb on the counters in the kitchen, but sometimes you would stand on a chair to took back at the twin foxes on the wood grain, their seated bodies facing each other and their heads facing you.
The hole in the floor
Actually, there was a heat vent in the floor of each room, a small one with a new grating; but in the hallway there was a big vent with a grating made of iron. If people were in the basement you could hear them talking through it, but you couldn't see them because of the air-duct in the way. You could smell the basement's dirt floor, though, behind the smell of the dust in the air-duct.
Drafts
The floors were wide wooden planks and they had knots too sometimes, but none that looked like pictures. The wood of the floor was shiny and smooth, but sometimes drafts came between the boards. If you lay on your stomach on a part of the floor, the wood was very cold against your cheek.
Being sick
You were sick again, and leaning over the toilet bowl in case you threw up, but hanging your head for so long was making you dizzy as well, and you were staring at the pattern on your pajamas, which was turning into a countryside with people running through the fields, running and running.
Walls and floors
Sometimes there were faces in the wallpaper and the flooring, to, but they were not the same as the foxes because it was a pattern and not wood. If you watched patterns long enough, the designs jumped forward at you, but if you tried to touch them they were just air and the wall was hard behind them. Sometimes there were faces in pictures of things the artist hadn't meant as faces. In the living room, where you didn't go usually because it was too cold and the good furniture was there, there was a print of a ship that looked like a face with a mean smile.
The string
It always looked like there was a string tied from the top of the door into the dining room, but it wasn't really there - when you tied to touch it, it disappeared like the wallpaper patterns that looked further forward than they were. The string was tight like on a guitar. You think if it were to twang, you would die from hearing it.
The cat
You didn't have a cat, but that was ok because the neighbour's cat slept in your yard. They called him Porridge but you called him Smoke because he was grey and his fur got hot from the sun. Sometimes when the dirt in the garden was dry he liked to roll in it and then he was dusty with hot dry dirt on his fur but he wasn't dirty, just dusty. He had scruffy patches at the base of his ears, and he liked to rub against your legs.
The nightmare
He crouched like a shelf fungus at the end of your bed. You heard yourself ask him his name.
Node Man Green.
The voice was still echoing inside your head while you woke Mom & Dad up with your screams. Ever since then you've been afraid to go to bed.
Sitting up
It's the middle of the night. The lamp is on but Mom & Dad are asleep and you want to wake them up but you're too scared of what your voice will sound like in the silence. You watch the little cracks in the glaze of the lamp, and you wait and wait and never move. You don't know if silence or sound is worse.
Creeping
You put on your socks so you didn't have to see your toes. Human feet are very ugly and you sometimes wish you had cat paws. You tiptoe downstairs on your fake cat paws to see the foxes. Even speaking in unison their voices are so low you can only hear them in your head:
Node Man Green is going to twang the string.
"He doesn't have fingers."
That's why he wants yours.
Two Foxes, Looking in the Window
There were pictures, in the wood of the cupboards. There were swaying up-and-down lines and shapes like eyes tilted sideways. Knots in the wood, Dad had explained. Home was an old house, and there were a lot of wooden things, but the foxes-looking-in-the-window were the realest-looking picture. You weren't supposed to climb on the counters in the kitchen, but sometimes you would stand on a chair to took back at the twin foxes on the wood grain, their seated bodies facing each other and their heads facing you.
The hole in the floor
Actually, there was a heat vent in the floor of each room, a small one with a new grating; but in the hallway there was a big vent with a grating made of iron. If people were in the basement you could hear them talking through it, but you couldn't see them because of the air-duct in the way. You could smell the basement's dirt floor, though, behind the smell of the dust in the air-duct.
Drafts
The floors were wide wooden planks and they had knots too sometimes, but none that looked like pictures. The wood of the floor was shiny and smooth, but sometimes drafts came between the boards. If you lay on your stomach on a part of the floor, the wood was very cold against your cheek.
Being sick
You were sick again, and leaning over the toilet bowl in case you threw up, but hanging your head for so long was making you dizzy as well, and you were staring at the pattern on your pajamas, which was turning into a countryside with people running through the fields, running and running.
Walls and floors
Sometimes there were faces in the wallpaper and the flooring, to, but they were not the same as the foxes because it was a pattern and not wood. If you watched patterns long enough, the designs jumped forward at you, but if you tried to touch them they were just air and the wall was hard behind them. Sometimes there were faces in pictures of things the artist hadn't meant as faces. In the living room, where you didn't go usually because it was too cold and the good furniture was there, there was a print of a ship that looked like a face with a mean smile.
The string
It always looked like there was a string tied from the top of the door into the dining room, but it wasn't really there - when you tied to touch it, it disappeared like the wallpaper patterns that looked further forward than they were. The string was tight like on a guitar. You think if it were to twang, you would die from hearing it.
The cat
You didn't have a cat, but that was ok because the neighbour's cat slept in your yard. They called him Porridge but you called him Smoke because he was grey and his fur got hot from the sun. Sometimes when the dirt in the garden was dry he liked to roll in it and then he was dusty with hot dry dirt on his fur but he wasn't dirty, just dusty. He had scruffy patches at the base of his ears, and he liked to rub against your legs.
The nightmare
He crouched like a shelf fungus at the end of your bed. You heard yourself ask him his name.
Node Man Green.
The voice was still echoing inside your head while you woke Mom & Dad up with your screams. Ever since then you've been afraid to go to bed.
Sitting up
It's the middle of the night. The lamp is on but Mom & Dad are asleep and you want to wake them up but you're too scared of what your voice will sound like in the silence. You watch the little cracks in the glaze of the lamp, and you wait and wait and never move. You don't know if silence or sound is worse.
Creeping
You put on your socks so you didn't have to see your toes. Human feet are very ugly and you sometimes wish you had cat paws. You tiptoe downstairs on your fake cat paws to see the foxes. Even speaking in unison their voices are so low you can only hear them in your head:
Node Man Green is going to twang the string.
"He doesn't have fingers."
That's why he wants yours.
