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Far later than I could have ever imagined. My world would have been dark if not for the porch lights. I couldn’t believe Hannibal would have kept them on for me. The front door opened silently, but the sound of it locking was like a thunder crack. I could barely balance myself well enough to take off my shoes. Darkness overtook me as I turned off the lights. My feet ached as I walked to the staircase, but the pulsing and pounding didn’t start until I slid down the wall and sat at the first step. I was so tired, so cold. I didn’t think I could make it up the stairs. Normally so easy, but today it was going to be like climbing a mountain. Couldn’t bring myself to do it.
People don’t realize how comfortable the floor is until you’re really tired. It was cool against my warm skin.
My disgustingly warm skin. My body was so humid, drenched in the rain that had fallen from the sky during my walk. The walk I took to clear my head of a fog that not even the howling wind could blow away. As much as my eyes wanted to close and let true darkness take me, my body was ripe and ready to burst. A disgruntled tired.
So I peeled my skin from the floor and stripped myself of the offending clothing. A small mound that could be taken as a far greater obstacle in the dark. Or, maybe not. As my eyes adjusted to the small world around me. Light seeping into the room, such a subtle assistance because true sight was impeded by the clouds that covered the moon and stars and the rain that dashed away the street lamps outside. Enough to see the hand at the end of the step lightly gripping one of the poles of the banister. Enough to make out where everything was with the help of memory and not just guessing in the colors that appeared before my eyes like when they were shut. There was no desperately trying to create light where there wasn’t. Just trying to desperately create shapes in the light that was there.
Cool skin on colder floors but the heat of the humidity outside still greased my skin. To shift my legs were to peel them from the floor. What a sticker must feel like, really. A sticker long since put onto a pain of glass and, with careful and patient precision, removed. A whiff of cold on that underside of the sticker, breathing for the first time in ages. Or what felt like ages.
Time means nothing when you can’t see a clock. And that’s how it should be. Seconds could mean minutes and hours could mean seconds. Nothing matters in the dark of the night when the rain patters against the windows in such a way that is consistently inconsistent. A song of discordant cords that provides a melody of white noise.
Only interrupted by the creaks of the stairs. A descending crescendo to meet my humidly dry body. That sickly sweet sound of a potato being peeled as I am drawn up from the stairs and ground. A feeling no longer welcomed in that moment, with dry clothes against the second skin that covered me.
But a kiss upon my temple to rouse that last bit of strength within me.
Step by step.
A brush to relieve the halo that was suffocating my head.
A cold rag to breath into as my face finally felt relaxed.
A bed as dry as I hoped to be. With a man whose hands guided me to a place of safety and warmth. The muffled sounds of rain on the glass behind the drawn curtains. The wind that could only barely unsettle the home.
“The scent of the outside world clings to you,” Hannibal says to me. “A sickly scent of a fevered rush home. And a sweet scent of nature that embraced you. Sleep now, so that you may smell of me.”