The Town With No Name That Once Had One

Eleanor was no stranger to pain.

She considered herself a survivor, based entirely on the fact that while the world itself seemed to constantly bend its will to cause the most pain it could possibly bring to her tiny, insignificant little life, she had always kept going. Through it all, she had always kept fighting, proving to the world and everyone in it that while the blissful release of death might chase her down for the rest of eternity with its promises of rest and sweet, intoxicating nothingness, she would keep running until the end of time itself if that’s what it took to survive.

Now though? Now, as she stood in a pool of her blood and tears as she herself lay face-up in the tub, enjoying that blissful feeling of nothing at all that was surely better than this?

Yet she was frozen. Frozen by her own fear of what may lie beyond for her. Frozen by the fear of her own mortality, brazenly taunting her from the bathtub. She tried to think of something else. How far she’d come. How all of her fighting would mean nothing if she gave up now. But she couldn’t think about that; in fact, when she tried to think, everything just came up in a bubbly, frothing mess, and as one idea came to the surface it was just as quickly lost to the swirling mass from which it came. So instead she did the one thing that seemed natural to her, and she emptied her tears onto the floor in a seemingly endless cascade.

She was allowed this at least, right? Surely the world could allow her this? It didn’t matter what the world thought, the tears became a river, streaming down and pooling around the clogged drain in the center of the room, mixing and diluting the blood on the ground until it was reduced to tiny rivulets on the ground, little streaks of red running through the pool of salty tears growing, growing quickly now on the ground, overflowing the floor and dripping into the hall nearby.

There was no blood now, only tears. The wound on her forehead had coagulated, the blood forming onto a dried crust on her face that she could feel every time she moved. Everywhere, that is, but her cheeks, where the blood never found its chance to take root and simply rolled off of her and was lost within the pool below.

The dripping had grown to a steady stream now, flowing gently like a miniature creek as Eleanor violently sobbed in the center of the room. All strength had left her long ago, somewhere in these endless houses of broken dreams, and now all she could do was cry until everything was better.

She imagined she would be crying for a very, very long time.

She fell over, the salty water spraying her in the face and filling her mouth with a bitter taste she barely even noticed. The tears flowed through the hall and down the stairs, filling the prison she had once foolishly called a home with the results of its labor of destruction of her psyche. The building would fill, fill to the brim with her broken tears, washing away the whole thing in a final act of vengeance against the town and all it stood for.

But then, bit by bit, her wish began to come true. The tears had nowhere to go anymore as they filled the bottom floor. The dusty cupboards were filled, the dust itself washing away and cleansing them, however briefly, in a water that would surely dirty them more than they had begun. The gray, moldy couch was submerged and waterlogged, ruining what had seemed like a nice view when described to her but which had never known a good day in its bleak, depressing life. With nowhere to go, the water began to creep its way into the bathroom, soaking Eleanor’s clothes and seeping into her body.

It wasn’t until she found herself gulping at rancid, bitter saltwater that Eleanor thought to even look up from her task. She tried to gasp in astonishment at what she had done, but she only filled her mouth more, and instead she let out a terrible hacking cough that sprayed tears from her face and scattered them across the room, tiny droplets of water flecking the few remaining shards of glass that still in the frame of the mirror.

The water was rising rapidly now, and soon it would overtake her. It wouldn’t be hard; simply let the waters overtake her and be consumed by her own grief. She would become just another cautionary tale, her body left to warn others of the idiocy of thinking she might ever have had a chance of escaping. It would be easy indeed to become just another lifeless body, drained of all hope and broken to her core.

But she wasn’t broken. She began to swim, moving on instinct as she abdicated control to her body and let it carry her through the bathroom door. She paddled her way into the hallway, then to the door that she’d never seen fit to use until now. Then again, she’d never needed it before. With substantial difficulty, she braced herself and kicked as hard as she could to open the door to the attic. The door resisted her efforts; it was not used to being opened, not by her or any other version of herself. She forced it to open anyway.

The room was blue, a deep, hostile blue, the wretched blue of an ocean that hated her very soul, but it was something. It was the first color she had seen since coming here, and the room wanted to make it clear that it despised her for making it this far. That was fine. She despised everything about this place too. A rusted ladder lay propped against the side of the wall, but as she made her way to move it into place, a hideous creaking sound shook the house to its very foundations, a bellowing war cry of wind and debris that not even the walls could dampen. The house began shaking, rocking on its supports, and Eleanor frantically tried to grab the ladder as it was flung to the side. She gripped a rung tightly, ancient screws jabbing into her hand as she refused to let go.

The whole house lifted itself up, then brought its weight back down again trying to crush Eleanor, powered on by some twisted force of nature born of wind and fury. The house lifted again, and she did her best to brace herself as it was brought back down again in a hideous crunch of wood and water. As the tears continued to rise, she realized there was no need for the ladder, and she let it disappear into the blackened waters, never to be seen again. She simply reached up and pulled herself into the attic instead, now that the rising waters allowed her to do so.

There was nothing here that would have interested her previous self. Nothing but cobwebs and dust, shaken loose and filling the air during the house’s assault. This wouldn’t have interested her before, but now she saw the room for what it was, for what it had. In the middle of the ceiling there sat a small, cracked window, caked with decades of weather damage. She walked over to the window and quietly popped it open, exiting into the outside world.

Violent winds swirled around her, filling her nostrils with sulfur and threatening to tear her from the roof, but she held firm. A dark mass of clouds around her, spinning in angry slashes against the sky, tried to tear her apart, ripping away at her body and scattering it to the winds and feeding into the mass of gray clouds that made up the eternal curtain of this dismal place. She stood there, still.

The clouds grew angry. Thunder clapped around her, setting fire to the house and getting inches from her face and unleashing a tremendous roar brought forth by the earth itself, screaming into her face and daring her to flinch. She brought it no satisfaction as she stared blankly into the sky.

The wind came to a mighty crescendo around her, swirling into a full hurricane, crashing into her sides and whipping at her endlessly again and again. Instead, she responded by simply walking forward to the edge of the roof. The clouds angrily thrashed at her, screaming at her to stop, threatening her to go back inside and accept her fate, but she ignored it.

There were no other houses anymore. There was nothing left of the town she once knew, endless roofs and gray walls reduced to only one, and now there was nothing left but her, the clouds, and the roof. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed, as she stepped off the side and into the water below.

The water was more peaceful than she had expected, she contemplated as she began to sink. What had appeared to be a violent, churning mass on the surface gladly accepted her into its embrace as she began falling, down and down, falling endlessly into the never ending inky blackness. It was a strange thing indeed, she considered, as her vision began to fade slowly from her. Nothing remained but her and the silent waters around her. No clouds. No town. Nothing. She silently faded into nothingness, and as that nothingness consumed her finally, the last thing she felt were two small wings sprouting from her back as she disappeared.