Turn Back The Clock - Part I

Welcome to the first bit of official writing on "Musings!" 

The house was brown, with a shingled roof and a clean, painted door. A single potted plant stood guard on either side. It was small - nothing impressive, not remotely - but tidy. And to Emma Morris, it was home. 

She limped to the door, shoulders hunched beneath the weight of the world. A strand of gray zipped through her dark hair. She inhaled sharply each time she stepped forward with her left leg.

It was a scar she had tried incessantly to get rid of, but never seemed to be able to. One that, at long last, she had accepted. The limp was her only connection to a past she had left in a tall, wooden - ironically flammable - firehouse fifteen years ago. 

Emma Morris reached into the deep pocket of her well-worn coat. After a moment of fumbling, she slipped out a small steel key, and inserted it into the lock of the doorknob. Within the clean silver knob was the rusted metalwork of a lock that had given up many years ago, and would not budge easily. It was shiny, polished with care and attention, but the woman had to wriggle the key in it's slot for a minute before the latch gave.

Emma Morris twisted the knob, pushing the door open with far more strength than was expected of a woman of her stature. The door banged backward as though to stagger away from her. Away from the darkness this woman held within her. 

She edged into the house, setting her keys on the sill of a window obscured by heavy navy drapes. The air within the house was chilly, tingling down her spine, warning her that autumn was coming to an end. 

Emma kept her coat on, tightly buttoned, and sank into the small couch in the sitting room. The cushioned fabric swallowed her, and she closed her eyes, falling into the silence of her home. She reached over herself, flicking on a lamp that stood beside the couch.

Her fingers relaxed, weary from a long day of manning machines at the Humboldt Corporation's packaging facility. Her knuckles were knobbly and pale from clutching handles, her throat swollen from yelling commands over the rumble of gears turning and plastic wrap twisting. 

Though her body was world-weary, her face was anything but. It betrayed her tender age of thirty-one, long eyelashes framing smooth eyelids that shuttered her bright green eyes. They had once sparkled, but now dulled, exhausted from years of searching the world - it's people, it's words - for hope. Her face was round and soft, though the purpling shadows beneath her eyes splotched them with the frustration of an old woman. Her forehead remained smooth and unlined against all odds. 

Emma Morris had once been, and still was, a beautiful woman. But life had cracked it's whip fifteen years ago, the snap echoing through her life. She had picked herself up, shielded her cuts from the world out of fear that they be stung further by the pains, by the mockery. 

Emma Morris buried the girl she had one been deep within her skin. The skin of a tired, weak soul ready to fade into her life. But every night, after a long twelve-hour workday at the packaging facility, the face of another girl would flicker in her mind's eye. One that she could not bury, no matter how hard she tried. One with her vivid green eyes, her soft round face. 

She used to imagine an infant. But that had soon evolved to picture a young woman. The girl was not as slender as she, but as graceful as she had once been. There was only a single striking difference. When Emma Morris had been young, her eyes had sparkled with youthful innocence. The girl's flashed with apprehension. With anger. 

For Emma Morris.

***

Fifteen years ago, she had been promised that the pain would haunt her. That she would be giving up a part of herself. But what other choice had she had? It was best for the child. It was best for her. After all, she had been a child herself. 

She had been alone in the world. She used to murmur to the child that she would find it a better future. That it was the best fate for it, for them both. But she knew that she had given up the child because, selfishly, it would be nothing more than a hindrance to her already broken life. 

She awoke every morning, relieved that it was safe. That she had given it a future; given it the hope she could not give herself. She fell asleep every night to the bleeding wound of loss, the emptiness. And as she slept, her mind drifted. It wondered whether she was truly safe, or if it was simply tricking itself. 

But by the time the sun rose, the questions had wandered out of Emma Morris' mind. They knew they had no place there. 

They continued to slip in each night.