Christian had become used to playing all by herself inside the house. Her mother had told her that playing outside was not allowed, she knew that there were many ways for a little girl to get hurt in the big open world and she couldn’t have that. Luckily for Christian, her mother’s house was decently large and there were many options for places to play. The living room, the hallways, the library, and of course her bedroom were all ample places to dress up her dolls or play make-believe. But there were two places in the house she knew she was not supposed to go to, the kitchen and the balcony.

The kitchen was made off-limits to Christian when she had accidently knocked a jar of flour off the counter nearly smashing her foot. Maria had looked around the room and saw the many knives and sharp objects that could cause potential harm to someone not paying attention and locked the place up with a key she kept in her pocket. This didn’t bother Christian very much; the kitchen wasn’t a very interesting place to be, and she thought the checkered black and yellow flooring was ugly anyway. But the balcony was another matter.

She had never even seen the balcony before, she probably would’ve never known it existed if it weren’t jutting out from the front of the house. To her, it seemed like a lovely place to play, but her mother wouldn’t have any of it.

“The fall would break your neck.” Said Maria to a wide-eyed and questioning daughter. “You are not allowed to ever go up there, do you understand?” Little Christian nodded her head, but behind her back, she crossed her fingers.

It was late at night when she decided that she would sneak out of her room to see this forbidden balcony. She walked slowly down the hallway; her mother slept in the room right next to hers so she would have to be extra careful here. With each step, she prayed that the floorboards wouldn’t creak and give her away and she held her breath until she was blue. But eventually, she made it to the stairs and ascended them quickly. Christian was lucky that the lock to the balcony door had broken years ago or otherwise Maria would have had it sealed.

With a deep breath Christian grabbed the doorknob, she was ready to go through with her plan, but she stopped just for a moment. Her mother had told her not to do this, and she knew that perfectly well, surely it would be a sin if she disobeyed her mother. Suddenly she noticed the stream of cold blue light streaming through the bottom of the door, it looked so pretty against the side of her slippers. Childhood curiosity gave in as she convinced herself to open the door.

The moon was full that night as it hung high in the sky above the balcony. Blue light shined down on the little girl as she felt the cool night breeze against her skin. It felt mystical to her being out there like she had found some hidden treasure. She looked around at her surroundings and noticed just how old the platform was. The wood was old and greying and the railings were missing a few bars, likely caused by some fierce storm. It was as if no one had been up here for years, and that was exciting.

Christian smiled at the moon, never realizing just how big it actually was. She became so enamored with it that she didn’t notice she was walking closer to the edge, that is of course until she tripped. In the brief second, before she landed, she got that feeling again, that stinging feeling of guilt inside her chest. How could she have behaved so badly, so sinfully? Her mother would never forgive her, no, God wouldn’t forgive her.

These thoughts were all knocked out of her head as she landed on one of the balcony’s railings. She had gotten lucky; the railing had stopped the fate her mother had told her would happen. But it did not stop the giant bruise that was appearing on her head even now, and little Christian dreaded what she knew would come.

...

The bus ride home was longer than it usually was, time seems to slow down when you have a lot to think about and Chris surely had a mountain of things to unpack. She sat in the window seat with her face pushed against the glass, she wasn’t in the mood to care about her composure. It took all her willpower not to light up a cigarette inside the bus, I may shoplift but I’m not that much of a prick.

The city went by in a blur as every house seemed to blend into the next one. Chris sighed to herself and wished she could just go to sleep in her seat and forget all about her mother tracking her down, but unfortunately, that was not her reality, and the seats were not that comfortable. Her mother’s words kept ringing in her ears like a song that won’t unstick itself from your brain. I’m going to hell, huh? Wonder how she got that in her head, I wonder how she got a lot of things in her head. Chris looked down at her phone and saw the date. And on my birthday, how thematic. Well, at least I’ve got tonight and two days to live, that’s not bad. Chris chuckled to herself, the man in the seat behind her worried about her sanity.

When the bus ride was finally over Chris found herself on the front steps of her apartment building. Plain red walls went straight up into the sky, the brick monotony only being broken up by the occasional window or two. It wasn’t a crummy place by any means, but no one would ever dare to call it fancy. It lingered in that strange space between really good and really bad that couldn’t be perfected if you had a team of the world’s greatest minds. Right now, to Chris, the only thing notable about the building was how it was guarding the entrance to her bed.

Chris walked over to the door and reached into her pocket only to find lent and disappointment. “Damn!” She said out loud as she realized she misplaced her key card.

Defeated she walked over to the intercom and pressed her room number. “Babe? Babe? I need assistance.”

There was a good minute of silence before she got a reply. “Not again, Chris!” Said the staticky and distant voice of Jess over the speaker. “It’s the third time this week!”

“Now that isn’t true!” Chris retorted. “It’s only like… the second?”

The speaker went full of static as Jess heaved a giant sigh. “I should leave you down there, teach you a lesson!”

“But you know you wouldn’t be able to sleep with the knowledge that you’ve left me out here- all on my own, in the dark, with no one to keep me safe?”

“You’re right, compassion is my greatest weakness.” The speaker cut off and soon Jess was down the stairs opening the door.

“My hero!” Said Chris, dramatically throwing herself onto Jess like she had been kept locked in a cage for years.

“Never fear, my lady!” Jess took an even more dramatic bow. “This door shall never bother you again! That is if you can remember your damn key card!”

Chris entered her apartment and breathed a huge sigh of relief, there was no better feeling than getting back home after a tough day. It was like a checkpoint in the game of life, she got the feeling that if she were to fail or mess up, she could always come back here to feel safe. The room was plain but had been decorated with an abundance of hanging colorful lights to compensate for this flaw. The carpet flooring was old and tattered but still felt soft on the feet, except for a few specific spots where an unfortunate accident occurred concerning an unlucky trip and some homemade vanilla pudding. There was a separate room that was only big enough to fit a single bed and a nightstand, Jess had wondered if it was actually just a closet and if her landlady was ripping her off. Also, there happened to be a kitchen or something that could qualify as a kitchen if you counted a broken stove and a sink to be one.

“I made dinner,” Jess said, gesturing over to a chipped plate with a single strawberry poptart in the middle. “How was your day?”

Chris didn’t reply right away choosing to wander over to her plate of food and take a giant bite out of her pastry dinner. Chris wanted to tell her about the hellscape of a day she experienced, she wanted to blurt out that her crazy mother had tracked her down just to tell her she was going to hell, but she was hesitant. “It... wasn’t great.”

Jess plopped down on a raggedy couch they had found next to a dumpster and sighed. “That Dale guy not show up again? Why hasn't your boss just fired him already?”

Chris chuckled, “Yeah, he was a no-show again. But…” Her words lingered off as she tried to distract herself by taking another bite of her poptart.

“Uh-oh.” Jess sat up in her seat. “I don’t like it when there’s a but. When there’s a but followed by silence, I know that means one of two things. Either something really bad happened and you don’t want to tell me or you’re trying to come up with a joke, something tells me you’re not trying to practice your standup routine.”

Chris secretly wished that her girlfriend was a little worse at reading her, but then again it was a great trait in an inspiring psychologist. She tried to change the subject, “It doesn’t matter… How was your day? Get that paper done?”

“Barely! You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to write a paper and get calls from people asking why their laptop won’t open, I accidentally told a guy to restart his computer by using Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning.”

“At least you didn’t mention something Freud-related.” Chris joked.

Jess raised an eyebrow and gave Chris a suspicious stare. “You’re not telling me something, are you?”

Damn, she’s good. Chris thought as she finished the final crumbs of her dinner. “If you don’t get your psychology degree, I don’t know who can.” Chris walked over and sat down beside Jess, resting her head on her shoulder. “So… My mom showed up at work.”

Jess was shocked, “What? How?”

Chris shrugged. “Don’t know, probably used some private investigator or something.”

“What did she say?” Jess’s voice sounded worried; Chris hated hearing her upset. “What did you do?”

In each other’s arms, Chris relayed what had happened with Jess occasionally chiming in with either another question or a confused gasp. “You’ve told me about your mother before, but I never realized she was that much of a religious fanatic, like Jesus that’s insane. You lived with that woman for fourteen years?”

“Fifteen, actually, but she was never this extreme before. It’s like she’s stepped up another level, become a full-on doomsayer or something!”

“Yeah, no kidding!” Jess hugged Chris tighter in her arms. “You doing okay? That’s a fucked-up thing to go through, you know I’m always here if you need anything.”

Chris gave a big appreciative smile. “Thank you, but I think I’ll be fine if she doesn’t keep showing up. But… When it was happening, I couldn’t help but feel like I was a kid again being scolded by my mother. It was like I was being put back into that little room again. For a moment I felt afraid of her, now isn’t that just stupid? I can outrun her, outsmart her, and probably beat the crap out of her if I wanted to but yet I was scared. For a second, I actually felt… I actually felt guilty.”

“Guilty?” Jess echoed. “Guilty for what? Running away from your terrible mom? For being yourself? For learning that you don’t need to constantly hate yourself to live? Babe, you have absolutely nothing to be sorry about!”

“I know, I know.” Chris gave Jess a tender kiss. “Babe, have I ever told you how lucky I am to have you in my life?”

Jess grinned wider than the Chesiree Cat, “Why, only every single day of your life.” She laughed and got up from the couch and headed towards the bedroom. “Which means that I only get to hear it two more times, right?”

“Huh?”

“You know, what your mom said? Apparently, you’ve only got two days until…” Here Jess did her best to put on her scariest and booming voice. “Two days to live! Whahahaha!”

“You keep that up and it could be considered a mercy.” Chris retorted. “No, I think I’ll have a lifetime of telling you how amazing you are.”

“One can only hope.”

Jess and Chris went about the night getting ready for bed. Jess squeezed into the bedroom with a cup of warm tea and placed two giant headphones around her ears, she prayed that the sleeping properties that tea proclaimed on its box would prove to be true and her dreaded bouts of insomnia would be halted, but the headphones where just a backup plan if this didn’t turn out to be the case. Chris slipped into her pajamas before heading to the bedroom but stopped herself when she remembered that she needed to brush her teeth. I can’t afford to go to the dentist now, and I intend to keep it that way for the rest of my life.

She began cleaning her teeth with a brush that was way passed its time to be replaced. Finished she returned the brush to its place and turned to leave but stopped when she noticed something off. In the mirror, just for one second, she could have sworn she saw something. There wasn’t anything new in the mirror, quite the opposite. In the fleeting moment that her mind had caught on to something wrong, she could’ve sworn she couldn’t see herself in the mirror.