She never knew what was at the top of the stairs, her mother never let her. Years of throbbing curiosity couldn’t overpower the trembling agony of getting caught. She passed the spectral staircase with growing unease, the shadow of the narrow walls never wavered. Whatever rested at the top of those stairs was never in view. Any question of what, or why, or when were shut down by “It’s my house, I’m nice enough to share it with you, but that part is mine alone.”
Her mother’s smothering critiques and comments echoed in her head, bounced off the walls and through her brain at such a speed her head was always twitching. She wouldn’t forget to straighten her posture, or triple check every piece of her school work, to coordinate her laundry by size, season, and color, and to iron every piece, because disorder was imperfect and no one likes a person so flawed. At least that’s what mother always said. Placid submission to order and ideals was all she ever knew, never attempting to let her curiosity to venture elsewhere.
She would walk past the ominous staircase everyday, with a general discomfort, but she had abandoned the possibility of knowing what was above. Though one day, when she was overcome by teenage angst, she was feeling especially audacious. Her naive ego was peaking, and she regained the hope of discovery. She walked up to the ominous staircase with a newfound sense of entitlement, a secured confidence of authority over that step onto the first stair. She was collected and walked up the staircase with a slight spring in each step upward, calmly dragging her fingertips along the fine grained wallpaper. Within a split moment that calamity shattered, a shiver darted down her spine and she froze upon hearing the front door squeak open. Just down the stairs and to the left her mother arrived home, maybe she was home early, but she wouldn’t have known since her brazen ambition overshadowed any reason to check the time. Knowing her mother would walk past any moment, she sprinted up the stairs hoping she could hide at the top. She threw herself up each step, deeper into the creeping darkness when she hit a door, barely being able to see, she reached around for the doorknob. She grasped it tight, frantically jiggling it, the door was locked. Again she twisted it, when she heard the staircase beneath her creek, she turned and saw mother walking up at her. Eyes of wrath and disgust pierced through her skull, destroying any trace of daring hope.
Her mother wanted her to know she was a bad daughter and person for that matter and after her regular scolding, she would remind her in every abrasive conversation. With time their relationship eventually reassumed its previous state, they were never very close, so brief check-ins of sorts was all she had to lose. It wasn’t always that way, her mother used to exist more freely. She remembered a time where her mother would run barefoot through the backyard, her long, dark hair flowing through the breeze, glistening in the sun. When she asked what mother was doing, her mother would say, “I’m chasing fairies. If I follow them far enough, maybe I’ll find a magical kingdom.” Waving her arm she’d turned and she’d shout, “Come along darling,'' prompting her daughter to run together. It changed after mother came home to a note left on the kitchen counter, written on the back of a Chinese restaurant menu. Since then it had just been the two of them, and her mother never ran again.
She grew up and built thick skin, but the trouble never left her. Knowing the sting of disappointing her mother’s trust, having that glare stained on her memory, she never attempted to go up the stairs again.
Not until years after mother died. She lived in the same home for five years without her, she finally walked up the stairs just a few months ago. She always felt guilt for their lackluster relationship and somewhat assumed the door was left locked, but when she reached the top, the doorknob turned with ease. Inside was an explosion of yellowing papers large and small covered in scenes of otherworldly places, overwhelming drawings of bright colored flower fields, or sketches of dark dismal dungeons. Portraits of people, painted on newspapers, some abstract, or perhaps mother messed up, or didn’t finish. The room was covered in pencils, tape, tinsel and string, dried up paint cans and paint brushes, it was a mess, she could barely stand to be in there for longer than a minute. She started cleaning.
She packed up the world her mother created in their attic, and sold mother’s house.
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