Jessie in the Basement

 Jessie found herself in her basement. When she read books, people tended to wake up one sense at a time–hearing something, opening their eyes, feeling cold or bound–and she was overwhelmed when all her senses turned on at once. She was instantly alert and moving, like after hearing a cat start to throw up in the middle of the night. 

Slatted sunlight streamed through small windows and she looked away so her eyes would stay sensitive to the darkness. Same piles of boxes. Same dust piled in corners: every time she did laundry, she intended to bring down the vacuum but never did. There was a mass of broken wood and subflooring materials next to her and her eyes tracked up. She stared at the hole she had fallen through, wondering why no-one had come downstairs for her. Why would her husband just leave her? He had called 911; if they wouldn’t let him come down, why wasn’t a firefighter carrying her upstairs? 

She circled, craning her neck. Voices carried downstairs. Her husband was talking to someone, maybe a contractor or someone from the insurance company, and she heard a third voice chiming. It was strange to her ears and, as it continued, Jessie realized it was because she had never heard it in that way. Unfamiliar and unpleasant to hear herself in open air. 

“Yeah, it was awful. The hospital cleared me, but now I’m just really worried about the house’s stability. When will we be able to come back?”

Jessie slammed away, back hitting cold concrete walls. She didn’t want to see herself so she kept her eyes down. The voices faded as they walked away, footsteps creaking over her head. She began pacing, thoughts racing, if she was going insane. If she was some sort of ghost. If the Hair Horse had yanked her in two pieces and she was the basement piece and that other one was the upstairs piece and she was going to live down here forever and never see her family except through a hole that was going to get repaired and then she’d just sit here forever hyperventilating until she died of starvation or started eating spiders

Her vision tunneled and she fell, unconscious again.

When she woke again, it was still light outside. Maybe light again. She looked up at the hole again, then around the basement. She had dreamed, very briefly, that she was in a hotel holding Aaron. Jessie tried to hold onto the dream as she woke, but it dissipated when something rustled in the corner. She sighed. Last thing she wanted was a mouse. The basement was cold and she thought about checking the dryer for something to wrap herself with, but that would mean moving. She remembered her voice from upstairs. No-one even knew she was missing. Something inside her was a tiny bit empty, like the socket of a missing tooth in the back of her brain. There was another rustle, then a soft thud. Jessie looked up.

The Hair Horse was looking down at her.

It winked.

Then it moved away, revealing a woman behind it. She sat on the boxes like  a throne and her hair was braided into a crown, pearls woven throughout, and flowed over the basement floor around her. Fine blonde strands twined with curly brown twined with textured black and bright purple, a moving wreath in every color and texture Jessie could imagine. The Queen’s skin was flawless silver, inhuman.

“Most people forgot I exist,” she said, smiling. “Not you.”

“Why?” Jessie asked. “Who is that upstairs?”

“Why what? Why use your hair? No-one asks the other why she takes your teeth. You leave them out under your pillows and thank her for the right.”

Jessie stared up, then stood. She was eye-level with the woman, standing on her hair. Yesterday, that would have felt disrespectful. Today, Jessie was too tired and angry to care.

“What? I don’t… Are you the Mad Queen?” 

“Mad? Is that what your mother would say? Just The Queen. And the woman upstairs is you.” 

“I am me! I’m right here. And I want to see my son and then burn every hair off my body!”

The Queen laughed and the horse snickered.

“You’ve not even tried to go,” she said, “and you do not even realize you did.”

Jessie scrunched her eyes and wiggled her toes, willing herself back to normal. Back to one. Trying to block out the horse and the Queen, who sighed.

“That will not send me away,” she said. “Still, I leave.”

Jessie opened her eyes to see the Queen walking away, hair around her like silk, flowing out from under Jessie’s feet without resistance. She walked into the far corner and moved down, lowering. Jessie followed over, moving past the Hair Horse without touching it, and stared down. She had never seen a hole there before. She grabbed a screwdriver from the toolbox and dropped it down. Jessie waited, but there was no impact. 

Three days passed. Every night, she dreamed of her other life for the barest moment. Once, soothing Aaron. Once, shifting into small spoon position with her husband. Once, she was on the toilet. Every morning, she walked past the horse and drank from the utility sink. She ate a bar from the Prepper Pak her husband had made them get, silently thanking him. It felt a little like he was taking care of her. 

Crews came through the living room. Sometimes they talked about coming down to the basement and disappeared for a while before returning into view. She never saw anyone down there.

She fumed about the Mad Queen’s words. Surely she had tried to leave. It was all she wanted. Of course she had tried to leave. But she couldn’t remember actually walking up the stairs or yelling through the ceiling. But of course she had already exhausted all that. Why try again? Besides, the Queen said she had already left. She may have lied, though. Jessie would have remembered walking out.

She avoided the corner with the hole.