RE Bunch

Agoraphobia: Extreme or irrational fear of entering open spaces, of leaving one’s own home, or of being in places from which escape is difficult.

Faye Clive sat on the edge of the porch watching the sun climb above the tree line. The morning sky burnt with oranges and deep crimsons, as it faded to a pale grey above the willows in the marsh. She watched along the tall prairie grass for signs of movement. She had another dream about Mora again.

Mora was ten years old when Faye last saw her. She was heading towards the Pharmacy on her pink bicycle to buy something. Faye struggled to remember what Mora was going out for so late in the afternoon. Her ginger blonde hair was braided like a crown around her head. She had a spring chorus concert that night. mother had gotten up to start ironing Mora’s white sundress, and Mora was out the door. Faye, sixteen then, was sitting on the porch reading. She had scarcely noticed that Mora had run out of the house. She looked up briefly from her book, a book she could also scarcely remember now and watched Mora’s back pedal down the road toward Merriott. Theo, their brother then twelve, came up the road an hour later from baseball practice. When mother asked if he ran into Mora, Theo shook his head. He asked about dinner and if they had to go to Mora’s singing-thing. That was when father got anxious and got into his car to look for her.

Faye had dreamt that her sister walked back home during the night. Pushing past the tall grasses and gracefully skipping over the stagnant water. She had not aged a day since she left home. As she came closer to the door Faye could see more of her. Her face was twisted and wrapped up in the braids. Her skin sliced open and bruised from how tightly the braids were tied around her face and neck. Her ankles wrenched around to point her feet backward on her body. As she walked forward, her footprints in the mud pointed where she came from. She was pale, withered blue as she looked around the property. Mora’s agile movements around the house frightened Faye as she looked on in horror from her bedroom window. As Mora glided up the porch, she was repelled from the front door. More scratched at it with her thin fingers. She heard the restless hammering of fingernails into the wood. Chipping it away into splinters. Faye could hear the door tremble in its frame as Mora threw her body into it. Mora howled in agony at the door. The sound was unearthly and shook Faye awake in the middle of the night. When she came to she found herself shaking before the front door. Ten years, a time that passed in such a hellish race, was just too long.

Faye sat on the porch until the sun was above the tree line. She needed to see that the sun would not be pulled back into the still water of the marsh and the biting trees on the horizon. She needed to know the day would still come. She turned to listen inside the house. Theo was still in bed, if not still sleeping. She did not hear his shuffling down the hallway or the heavy thuds of his labored steps down the stairs. She wanted to lie back down in bed but knew it was too late for that. Theo needed more help than she had the strength to give, and she needed to save some. She would need to call Uncle Jon later for help with groceries.

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