The Girl in the Chair

The accident happened about a year ago. The girl didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to eat the peanut butter that was in the bowl on the counter. The family had been experiencing rodent problems and the mother heard that putting peanut butter on the mouse traps was a good way to catch those little bastards. Just to be sure, she decided that she would mix rat poison in with the peanut butter. Little did she know her eldest daughter would walk into the kitchen while she was out in the garage gathering the mousetraps.

            Peanut butter was the girl’s favorite snack. Two, three, sometimes even four times a day she would eat a few spoonful’s. Unfortunately, this time she ate one too many and by the time her mother got back to the kitchen, about an hour later because she couldn’t find the traps, the girl was on the floor convulsing violently. Within seconds of her mother walking in, she was still.

            Her mother ran down to the basement where her father was at work. He was a mortician and ran a mortuary out of their house. It was a family business. The girl had always been terrified of going down to what she liked to call the “dungeon”. This time she didn’t have a choice. Her father ran up the stairs as soon as her mother explained what happened, picked the girl up, and brought her down the stairs. He put her on the cold steel table and began to go to work immediately. The girl’s mother went back upstairs to set the mousetraps.

            Mere hours later, the girl was sitting in the old, withered rocking chair that fit perfectly into the back left corner of the living room. Her brother and sister came home from school and didn’t even notice she wasn’t practicing her violin like every other day when they arrived home from school. She watched them walk in. She watched them go about their daily routine and finally she watched them go to bed. Her brother and sister didn’t even realize she wasn’t around.

            For the last year, she sat in the old, slightly withered rocking chair. Watching them all, always watching. The constant movement. She hated them. All of them. She was stuck in the creaky rocking chair while they all lived their lives. Her brother and sister asked their mother one day soon after the accident why the girl didn’t leave the rocking chair.

            “Why is she always sitting there staring?” her brother asked.

            The girl’s mother very calmly replied, “She just needs a break. Life can do that sometimes. Make you just stop and take a break.”

The girl was in the same position she was in when her brother and sister had gotten home from school a few days later.

“Mother?” Asked the youngest daughter. “Why isn’t she moving? Why has she been there for days just staring? Is there something wrong with her?

“Why of course not dear. She is just taking a break. Someday she will return to us. Until then we have to keep talking to her. Keep letting her know we love her.” The mother retorted.

The son piped in, “But she doesn’t talk back Mother. It’s weird!”

“You’ll get used to it.” The father replied, with a twinge of sadness in his voice.

            Accepting their mother’s answer, because why would their mother lie, the girl’s brother and sister continued to live their everyday lives. School and sports and dances. The girl watched their lives unfold around her. Sometimes they would even come and sit with her and tell her about their lives. Everyone in the house would come and sit with her at different intervals. Her mom would usually come around breakfast time. “Dear, we are having scrambled eggs with cheese and onions for breakfast.” Her mother would tell her. She always told her what the family was eating that morning.

            Her brother would come and sit with her during his favorite television show after he got home from school and before he had to head off to whatever club he was in at the time. “Tonight I am going to blah, blah, blah.” He was always going on and on about his endeavors. She listened, has if she had a choice.

Next her sister would come and join her before dinnertime. She would tell her about all the things that had happened during her day at school. “Jude asked me if I wanted to join him at the movies this weekend! Can you believe it?” Her sister would ask, as if she were expecting an answer. The girl would stare blankly, straight ahead of her, like she always did.

            After the family ate dinner, the girl’s father would come and sit with her. He didn’t say anything. He just sat there and stared. He watched her like she watched everyone else. She hated that the most. He had a choice and he chose to watch her when all she wanted was for him to let her go. He had the power to do it the whole time, but her mother would never allow that to happen. He made her into a perfect doll and nobody seemed to notice. They all just talked to her and acted as if it were normal that she didn’t speak back. But he knew.

Now, a year later, the family has no idea what they have done. The girl is trapped inside of the body that was once hers. It now belongs to them. They do not understand what has happened to the girl. She will never be able to tell them and for that she hates them too. Why can she hear them and see them? Why can’t she just leave the hell that is her family home? There has got to be something better than what her family has condemned her life, or afterlife rather, to be. The girl often tried to scream, shout, cry for someone to help her, but nothing ever came out. Until the day that Jude, her sister’s new boyfriend, came to visit.

The family didn’t often have visitors for obvious reasons. No one would understand, but the younger sister thought that Jude would be ok. He was perfect in every way and he would most certainly be able to accept that her sister wasn’t able to walk, to talk, or to even blink. She would just explain to him that her sister was unable to handle life like a normal person. She would tell him exactly what her mother told her and her brother.

Jude and the girl’s sister walked into the house. The girl always knew when someone was getting home. She had a perfect view of the front door from her corner in the living room by the window. Her father had done a fresh touch up today, so Jude didn’t notice anything abnormal. He just thought the girl was sitting next to the window. His girlfriend had already told him that her sister was really quite and didn’t move around much. She didn’t mention that her sister hadn’t moved at all in a whole year.

“My sister is having a teen life crisis or something,” she had told him. “My mother says that she is taking a break from life.”

Jude had a sister around the girl’s age, so he just assumed she was moody like his sister. They walked right past her and went into the kitchen where the mother was taking from the oven a cake that she had just baked.

“Hi mom, this is Jude.” The girl’s sister introduced her boyfriend.

The mother looked slightly odd to Jude. She appeared to be frightened by his being at her home. “Well, hello Jude.” The mother replied. “In a bit I will frost this cake and you kids can have some for an after school snack.” She put the cake down to cool and opened the basement door. “I’m going to go talk to your father and see what he wants for dinner tonight.”

“My dad works from the basement, or what my sister and I call the dungeon. He fixes up dead people so they don’t look dead for their funerals,” the girl’s sister said matter-of-factly.

Jude knew what the father did for a living. It had always fascinated him. He was hoping that he’d be able to see the “dungeon”. He didn’t want to ask to see it, but if the opportunity would present itself, he wouldn’t turn it down. They sat in the kitchen talking until the mother came back up the stairs.

“Time to frost the cake,” she said, a bit too cheerfully. When she went down to speak with the father she wasn’t cheery, but had a worried look about her. It had been so long since someone other than the family had been inside the house, but the father told her everything was fine.

The girl just sat in the chair staring. Jude asked if the girl would be joining them for some cake.

“She doesn’t eat with us,” the sister said. “Actually, I don’t think she ever eats.”

The mother jumped in, “Do you play any sports Jude?” The girl’s brother plays soccer, tennis, and he swims. The sister plays basketball and is in many different clubs, including student government in which she is the President. The girl never did any of these things. She only played the violin, but even that she did in the confines of the family home. Now, she just sits in the chair. Dead, but very much aware. She wanted out. She wanted out. SHE WANTED OUT!

Jude turned toward the doorway, where he could barely see the girl. “I think your sister just said something,” he told the sister.

The mother jerked her head around to look at Jude. She appeared horrified. “What did you say?”

Jude repeated what he said. The mother just stared at him and ran to the basement door, opened it, slammed it shut and ran down the stairs. The front door slammed at the same time. The girl saw her brother walk in and throw his cleats down by the door. He walked toward the kitchen.

“I’m starved. Hey Jude, how’s it going?” The brother asked as he walked in.

“Mom’s being weird again,” said the sister. “Jude said he heard something and she flipped out!” The sister didn’t want to tell her brother that Jude had heard the girl. She knew it couldn’t be true anyway. Jude was mistaken. The girl hadn’t spoken in months. The sister and the brother knew the girl wasn’t their sister any longer, but they didn’t talk about it. Besides, anytime their mother was unhappy it had to do with the girl.

I WANT OUT! The girl had been thinking this to herself since the day she was put in that old, withered rocking chair. Jude had heard her. She continued to repeat the thought, over and over.

“You guys don’t hear that?” Jude asked.

Laughing the brother said, “Hear what? Geez, you’d think mom put something wacky in that cake. Jude’s hearing things. Is that mom’s famous chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting?”

“Sure is.” The sister answered. “Isn’t it delicious Jude?”

“Yes, it’s very good.” Jude got up and walked toward the girl in the chair. The closer he got, the more beautiful she became. And then he got closer. She didn’t blink. She wasn’t breathing. There was absolutely no movement. “Get in here!” He screamed. “I don’t think your sister is breathing!” He picked up her arm. Ice cold. It just plopped down when he let it go.

The girl heard the basement door open and slam shut. Her mother was running toward Jude. “Don’t touch her. She isn’t well.” The mother was sobbing now. She fell to the ground. Jude wasn’t able to move. He just stood there; staring at the girl, looking confused and scared.

“She isn’t breathing.” Jude whispered. “Why isn’t she breathing?”

The father slowly walked into the living room. He looked emotionless. He said nothing. He went to the wooden chair, scooped up the girl, turned back around and walked toward the kitchen again. The brother and sister were still at the table. Was their sister ok? Was she really not breathing? They had never even checked. Why hadn’t they checked? The girl in the chair wondered why no one bothered to check the entire time she stared at the front door from the living room corner.

The father put the girl back on the icy, steel table. He sat down on the stool next to the table and just watched. He watched the girl’s stillness. The stillness he never could get used to. The kids got used to it. In fact, they didn’t even seem to notice much. The wife pretended she didn’t notice, but he knew she did. He watched the girl until he was interrupted by the sound of the door being opened.

Jude came running down the stairs. I WANT OUT. He heard the girl again. He saw the girl on the table. He saw the father staring at the girl. He heard footsteps behind him, but all he could do was stare at the girl and her father. And then Jude fell to the ground and began convulsing. A mouse scampered by him and the convulsions stopped.

Upstairs, the brother and the sister were both on the kitchen floor. The mother stood halfway down the stairs leading to the basement. As she looked up she saw two of her children and when she looked down she saw her other daughter being watched by the father and Jude on the ground, just in front of the steel table. Everyone was quite. Everyone was still.

“Well, this wasn’t the plan.” The girl heard her mother say as she walked toward the father.

He just sat on his stool, not saying a word. The mother stood behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. “I didn’t know that we would be having a guest today,” the father was emotionless.

“I didn’t know that either, but we can’t let Jude get in the way of the plan.” The mother was determined. She had this day planned for quite some time. She wasn’t going to let some kid ruin it. “Everyone will be together now.”

The mother walked back up stairs to the kitchen. The father followed, carrying the girl in his arms. He took her back to the chair. The girl watched as he picked up her siblings, one at a time, and took them down to the “dungeon”. The mother was cutting two slices of the chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. She put them on plates and then went to rearrange the living room, waiting for her husband to return from work.

The living room needed to be perfect. The girl watched as her mother moved the couch against the wall by her rocking chair. The sunlight that was peeking in made a line between the couch and the chair. Now, anyone who sat on the couch had a view of the front door. The girl heard the basement door open. It was her father; he was carrying her sister. He placed her sister on the couch and left only to return with her brother. The brother was put on the opposite side of the couch.

“They look beautiful darling!” The mother said excitedly. “I am going to eat my cake now. Will you join me?”

“I will.” The father replied somberly.

The couple walked into the kitchen where the two pieces of cake sat on the table. “What did you do with Jude?” The mother asked the father.

“He will be fine.” The father had quickly fixed up Jude and placed an “I’m Sorry” note in the pocket of Jude’s t-shirt. The wife finished her cake but the father had not taken a bite of his. He had to wait. She had to be just as lovely as the children. She always told him that.

***

When Jude hadn’t come home that evening, his mother called the police. They asked her where he was the last she knew and she told them that he had went to his girlfriends house after school.

“Could he still be there?” The police asked her.

“I tried to call and no one answered.” She was panicked.

The police said that they could make a trip by the house of her son’s girlfriend’s family. She told them where the house was and they said they would get back to her.

When the police arrived at the house it appeared as if everyone were sleeping or no one was home. There wasn’t a light on in the house. One of the officers knocked. No answer. He looked through the peek window on the front door and clearly saw people sitting on the furniture thanks to the street lamp’s light. He knocked again and no one moved. The officers broke down the door and walked into the house. It smelled like dessert. One of them turned on a light.

In front of them they saw what looked to be a perfect mother and her three children. But no one was moving. They each walked up to one of the girls and checked for signs of life. There were none. They were still. In the kitchen they saw a man with his head on the table and a gun on the floor under his dangling hand. A note said, “The basement.”

The officers walked down into the basement where the man at the table had done his life’s work. They saw Jude, on the steel table, with a piece of paper peeking out of his pocket. The note was two words. I’m Sorry. That is all it said. A mouse ran over one of the officer’s foot and startled him. The other officer walked up the stairs to call the coroner and then Jude’s mother.

***

The girl was taken from her rocking chair. The man carried her outside and put her in the back of a vehicle. She was leaving at last. She had gotten out.