Sick
Shya Scanlon

I was sick in the sink. I'm sick of this sink, I said, I think.
I said and thought and the sink just sat, and sank. That's all the thanks I get, I thought. But I said naught of said thought.
I went to my bed, and my bed was wet. Who wet my bed, I think I said. I felt myself fill with a kind of dread, though there it lay with a redness which, though wet, would soon be dry, I bet.
What a hand I've been dealt, I may have said. I felt I might cry there at my bed. It smelt, though no one stood there in my room. Downstairs, a door closed with a boom, which stood the soft hairs on my neck, on end. I looked about my empty room. The red bed sat as the sink had sat, I saw, with a feeling kin to doom.
I should probably say my prayers, I said, or better, felt. I think I just said what the heck? The bed seemed to get yet wetter, then the floor, as though the wetness still could spread. I sank downstairs and said my prayers. My father's house, in silence, stank. What would cause this rotten stinking, I thought, while I continued sinking. The house upon the hill just sat, and housed, its rooms just tombs to fill, with awful, creeping chill.
If it's a chill you want it's a chill you'll get, I remember being told. I'd been chased downstairs to the basement which, because my clothes were made of cotton, had made my skin feel cold, and wet, and made my thoughts turn dark, and rotten. In the dark dank basement I was kept, and fed. I'm sick of this basement, I said, and wept.
My rotten thoughts had turned from my wet bed, to the man who felt it as I slept, and used his belt to get that wetness through my head. All this I remembered from the chill I felt as I sank and, sinking, got to thinking.
For what the house no longer housed, I thought, it just grew better. In silence then I doused the room, an act which made the cold room wetter.
This house upon the hill, I thought, and said, ought soon be rid of its dread chill.