Out of Breath
by Victoria Cho
When he opened the door, he held his breath. He had been opening the door every day for the last two years, but he continues to hold his breath in case of any aberration in what his eyes see. During that split second of breath holding, fear and anxiety suffocate Elly and seep into his throat, spread through his body, and take hold of him. He wishes someone would be inside or something would change and reveal a person's recent presence, but when Elly peeked, he knew that only he entered the room and that only he ever would.
Click. The light turns on and the overpowering bulb highlights paths of dust that point towards Elly's slim figure dressed in an oversized t-shirt and khaki shorts. There are smears of today's lunch of peanut butter and jelly on his shorts. Peanut Goo attracts some of the particles swimming among the monsoon of dust inside the room. Elly coughs. His eyes perform the usual examination of the room's items, still hoping to notice a difference but all of the furniture and possessions (the antique desk, the sloppy bed, the fuzzy flannel shirt with the tobacco stain) remain perfectly frozen in time. Elly rubs his eyes once more as the dust began to irritate their corners. He uses his shirt as a filter for the disgsusting swarm that surrounds him and continues looking only to be disappointed and relieved when he acknowledges the room's unchanged appearance.
Past the dresser he walks and then sneezes. The room holds a few antique items; a queen sized low rise bed with a sagging mattress and the sheet worn thin in the middle; a broken coat stand propped up by a neighboring potted plant whose edge supported one of the coat rack arms; and this heavy oak dresser whose top was victim of serious abuse. Next to the dresser, Elly examines the hole in the dry wall. He looks inside as he has looked every day for the past two years and saw the particles fly out of the hole's blackness. This deep hole became a path for dry wall particles to use and flood into his father's room. Now the particles swarm happily in their home because clearly they had dominated and became victorious over human presence inside the bedroom.
His father created that hole two years ago with a punch. On that day, Elly remembered his father asking Elly to enter the room. He held both of Elly's shoulders with the firm grips of his broad hands and although the grip was intended to be a caress, Elly felt threatened. His father said:
"Elly. Goodbye."
His father turned Elly around and with his firm hand placed on Elly's back, directed Elly toward the door and back out of the room. Elly stood outside, while his father closed the door and began pounding. The sound hurt Elly's ears. His dad pounded the door, punching and banging, until the door vibrated, and vibrations rumbled through the floor under Elly's feet and through his body until he believed his father was pounding him and that Elly would fall and collapse like a delicate statue made of twigs. Elly dropped to the floor and huddled next to the door, still experiencing the vibrations and wondered when his father would stop pounding him. Finally, the pounding ended with a huge thump against the wall and a great deal of howling that hurt Elly's ears.
In the middle of the room lay the bed with a shoddy blanket and two flattened pillows that leaked feather fluff; also all covered in a fine gray layer of dust. The center sags from use by a human body, originally his father's but lately his own. The pillow also collects dust in its depression where the head had been, and this collection is thicker than on the rest of the pillow, which creates the appearance of a head made of dust resting on the pillow. Particles once contributing to cloth and dresses and dolls and of other particles now congeal to resemble a new life or the image of a former life Elly once knew to inhabit the room...
Elly buries his cheek in that wonderful collection of particles and crawls into the saggy bed, coughing and sneezing from the dust now stirring under his presence. Perhaps his father is shivering in some forest in Russia. Or maybe his father had become a banker and was in the companionship of a fine young lady. Maybe his father had changed his identity and lives under a new name in a perfect blue house with two red cars in the driveway. Could there be another Elly? A brother or a sister? A new person that would crawl into his father's bed except that the father would be there?
As he turned his face toward the pillow, he sniffed and clamped his mouth shut, but the dust that teased and irritated his nose drove him mad. Elly refuses to submit to his inclination to sneeze. He clenches his jaw tighter. His hands make fists, which he squeezes under his chin as he lies as still as possible so that the dust would find him part of the room and float around him like they floated around the desk and coat stand and everything else unchanged in his father's former living area. He squeezes. Hie eyes, teeth, facial muscles, all of this he squeezes to prevent light, dust, and anything else from entering his body. Elly intended to freeze the moment and quickly began recaling thoughts of his father. Nothing would invade or separate him from this slight connection to his parents. Thoughts and images of his father rushed through his head as well as that pounding sound. His body slightly shakes as he recalls the sound, but he manages to suppress the shudders. Elly concentrates and struggles to keep his body still as the pounding grew louder and scared him. Was there anything else? Excavating corners of his mind, Elly searchedÉhis father yellingÉhis father grasping his shouldersÉhis father's heavy hand on Elly's head massaging Elly's nap of brown hairÉ. Elly tried to recall every single memory, feeling, or any sensation associated with his father's presence and only grasped at vague emotions that floated away in the air.
Dust invades his nostrils and grows thicker in the crevices of his nose. His eyes form tears in their corners from the gathering of particles, and Elly squeezes his eyes with fury. His face is puffy, and desperate. With his knees pressed against his chest, Elly tries to crystallize himself and some remnant of sadness he knows is inside of him. The lungs beg to cough and his body suffers, but he refuses to comply with his physical needs. Any submission would break his frail connection to this father. Some reservoir would come and flood his feeling of emptimess with relief and end his pointless trips into his father room.
The face is turning pale. He needed relief. Whimpering and sweating, Elly's body vibrates and fights to live. Tears continue to form but not only from the dust. Choking, and biting, his mouth draws, and Elly tastes the fluid and some of the dust lining his lips. But he never takes in air. He would concentrate. Elly would freeze that taste and those memories and everything else he felt about his father for another chance to say goodbye.