A few days have passed since the door to the mother's room locked itself shut, and I have to remind myself now that the mother isn't just a memory. Her existence wasn't some fever dream, and she didn't disappear when I woke from it.

I have yet to see the mother try to escape its prison—not even for food or water, not even for me—but I can still feel its ubiquitous, heavy presence.

Something within the mother is different now; something within it died the moment my sister fled to the sky. Before, the mother had some sort of grasp on reality, however slim it might have been. It was at least enough to take care of its children, even if it only was to the lowest standard of parenting. Now, the burning black tendrils of the mother's agony slither out from the crack under its door, choking the mother and forcing heart-piercing cries with every slight movement. Those monstrosities are the only remaining proof of the mother's life—or, rather, the last pathetic resemblance of it.

The day my sister died, I thought that the mother could feel nothing. Now, I realize that I was wrong: agony has consumed it and destroyed every other emotion within it. The mother has become the human resemblance of mourning.

The mother has lost everything, even itself. I struggle to call the mother a shell of its former self; it's not even that much of a person anymore. There is no one within its emaciated body. The mother is dead, even if its body refuses to follow it to the grave.

And so I am left completely alone—physically, at least. I have no one left to love in this realm and there's no one left to love me. I am completely alone, an abandoned child forced to fend for herself, a child whose only company is the night sky.

I am lucky enough to never be without the memory of my stars. They're my hope, my promise of a better future.

They're my only company now—they're all I have. But, that's okay. They're all I need.

I'm too young to go anywhere by myself—not to school, not to the park, not to any place that could possibly distract me from the cruel abandon of the mother—so I spend my time wasting away in my room. At least there, I feel safe, and I don't mind if that safety rests in nonexistence.

The fuzziness in my room still refuses to go away; if anything, it's probably gotten stronger. I can't really tell. Either way, I am growing convinced that my room has come to rest on the corner of reality and unreality, a safe corner in limbo.

With each passing day, my room feels more like a dream room and less like a bedroom.

The moment I enter my dream room, my body seems to adopt a gaseous state and I become conscious but not alive. That's my only remaining comfort: having a place where I can stop existing and my sister can exist. That's my only comfort now, being able to deceive myself into thinking that maybe I am not at all connected to the mother.

The house is still dark.

I can't tell if my house is infested with darkness or if light refuses to shine in such a demented place. I don't think the light will ever completely come back, but I have noticed that the house isn't as hopelessly voided as it was the night my sister died. Either it's starting to go away, or I'm starting to adapt to it.

The darkness is still everywhere—everything—everyone. The darkness has engrossed my life, but it has grown bearable. In just a couple of days, I've already forgotten the feeling of light, and I've shed any longing for betterment in this world. I know that this darkness will haunt to my grave. Only when I die will it finally realize that it spent its life haunting someone that didn't care, and it will finally go away.

And that's okay.

I cannot escape the house's clinging sense of hopelessness, so I've caved in and learned to accept it. I absorb it, sitting motionlessly for hours in the living room, letting myself sink further into the dusty grey couch.

I'm pulled out of my foggy thoughts by the pathetic squawks of the mother piercing the dusty silence, its sobs a broken melody of memories I have never seen before and will never feel again. The tendrils slither further out of the room.

The door opens.

My dull eyes leave the ground and look up to see what could possibly be happening. The door creaks open slowly, it's searing hiss piercing my ears and giving me a headache. The door finally comes to a halt and it's silent for a moment. And stand up and take a few steps away from the couch to see what's going on. Then, to my shock, it happens.

The mother emerges.

Starting with its left foot, the bony remains of the mother emerge from its prison cell. Then, the right foot comes out, and the mother stands still for a moment. Its eyes are sunken and dead, and its lips are cracked as if it hasn't seen a drop of water in days. Its face is devoid of any human emotion and stained an ill, blotchy red. Its clothes are smelly and tattered—the same clothes it wore to the funeral.

The mother takes slow, uncoordinated steps, stumbling right through me as if I'm nothing more than a ghost. I say nothing and it returns the favor, dragging its disgusting, decaying body towards the abandoned bathroom. The wooden floorboards creak hauntingly underneath it, terrified and suffocated by the black hold of tendrils trailing deviously behind the mother. The door creaks shut. There's a long moment of silence, then the shower blasts on.

Cleaning itself? How pointless.

I turn around slowly, scared and disappointed, willing my mind to forget the grotesque image of the zombie that just infested my living room. I try hard not to vomit from the smell alone.

And so, after a few agonizing moments, I forget the mother and reclaim my spot on the disheveled couch and wait. My head turns itself to the living room's singular window, completely blocked off except for a miniscule crack in the shield of thick curtains. From that small opening shines a faint, fiery orange light—the feeble remnants of daytime. Without that small crack in the mother's barriers, I would be completely severed from reality down here, and the house would be dark, and I would be lost.

I almost crack a childish smile, silently thanking the sun before letting my head face forwards once more. I sit and I wait. I wait; I wait.

The shower turns off.

My body doesn't move an inch, but my heart lurches. Anxiety shoots through my chest and my mind screams at me, begging me to flee upstairs. The mother coming out of its room was one thing, but cleaning itself? What is it planning?

The mother must want to function again. I am no longer safe. I hold my breath, lay my hands delicately on my lap, and pray. I wait; I wait.

The door open.

The mother steps out.

Its hair is wet and ugly and pressed against its neck, darkened by the water in it. Its still emaciated body is set ablaze by the sunset orange towel wrapped around it, momentarily scaring away the demons that once trailed behind it as it drags itself back into its bedroom. The door shuts, and soon after, reopens. The mother is back, now in work attire with its wet hair wrapped in a tight bun. Something isn't right.

The mother is planning something.

Its lips part, but make no further movements as a series of raspy sounds hap-hazardously tumble out. The words are hardly intelligible and I have to strain to hear it. Its eyes are still dull and glazed, and it hardly remembers my existence enough to speak.

"I'll be back soon."

Not caring for a reply, it pivots quickly and limps towards the front door. It has adopted a more confident posture now, but nothing can hide the thunderous storm of agony raging just beneath its skin. It wants to cry out, but knows that no one is here for it anymore. I am not its family. I am a stranger that it legally has to keep alive.

The door slams shut and the lock clicks after it. I can hear the faint sound of a car engine revving. The rumbling fades into the distance. The mother has left me alone.

So alone.

It's clear to me that the mother is heading towards its job. I'm surprised that it still has a job to head to after missing so much time. The mother never works in the evening, however, so I sense immediately that something is very, very wrong. The mother is not going to its job to work: it's going for something else. I don't know exactly what that something else is, and that lack of knowledge is beyond terrifying.

The mother is a scientist. I don't understand a lot of what it does, but I know that scientists are important. Apparently, that must mean the mother is important, too. I know, at least, that the mother researches and studies space and things in space that probably don't exist, or something like that. It doesn't matter to me. All that matters is that I know that my sister is at least part of the reason that the mother is going to its job.

There's nothing I can do but sit, dissociate, drown in anxiety, and wait. And so I do just that: I sit once more on my couch and wait, sitting perfectly still, willing the time to pass faster and for the sun to fade soon. I have nothing to distract me now. I am truly alone.

Once the sun's down, I can forget the mother's existence and enter my reality—my dream room My real life with my real family and my real childhood.

This reality is just a dream, and I've learned the painful way that my dreams are reality.

So, I sit and think about my sister. I hold my fleeting memories of her close to my chest, my clammy palms tethered to an unrelenting memory. I keep her in my mind, letting her distract me as I wait patiently for the stars and the mother. Only one matters to me, but only one can keep me alive. I hope it brings me food—I'm running out of things that I can cook myself.

The sky has lost its traces of orange, and now the living room is barely illuminated by a soft pink light. My mind wanders to the mother, and I wonder if I even want it to come back. If I could only starve, I could be in the sky with my family in just a few weeks. If only that could happen.

Soon, I'm shaken out of my trance by the lack of light in the living room. I blink and adjust my eyes to the darkness before slowly lifting myself up from my couch. Night has arrived, and I feel a childish excitement bubble inside me.

I turn towards the stairs and happily walk upstairs into another world.