I’m stuck in a place that isn’t my home anymore. It used to feel like mine. Used to feel like a place that welcomed me into itself. It’s a young place, and it was built cheap to make a profit for someone I never met. I’ve put a lot of myself into fixing the little things I could, but it didn’t matter. This place chose to stop welcoming me, and I am as alienated from it as I can be while still being stuck inside.
The news reports about people like me keep building up. Names of missing girls, dead girls, online leaflets gathering at my doorstep. Every time I check the paper there’s more reports of it. The stories are rarely followed up on. Cold cases of girls like me, presumed dead, and not worth looking for. The people who aren’t going missing tell me they canceled their subscriptions, the paper is too depressing, and life’s too short to be depressed. Their lives will be longer then the girls in the paper.
The mayor says there’s something wrong with our town. He’s right. I want to scream from the rooftops that there’s something wrong with our town. But he tells me the problem is me. He says the girls that go missing are hurting the girls that don’t. He tells me that if all the girls like me disappeared, it would solve the problem of the missing girls. He’s not wrong, but I’d rather not die to ensure I don’t go missing. My neighbors say the mayor’s a fool, but the sherif still goes where he points.
The pharmacy says they can’t get my medicine. They say there’s not enough to go around. When I ask how there can be fewer girls like me each day yet there’s less medicine to go around, they just shrug. It’s someone else’s problem. Someone else’s job. They stand in front of me and tell me that they feel no responsibility in making sure I get my medicine. Why become a pharmacist if you don’t care about getting people their medicine?
The town square calls the girls like me to the gallows each day. They say they don’t hang us anymore, that they haven’t done that in a long time. I watch as another girl like me puts the noose around her neck and pulls the lever while the crowd scream vitriol at her. She’ll be reported missing tomorrow. The town will shake their heads and say it’s sad. Some nod and say good riddance. The mayor will tell the people that they’ve saved countless other girls by this ones disappearance. In a week, the town will believe him.
There is land out on the edge of town. If this place is not my home now, I’ll move there, I think. But the land is poisoned, and still it costs countless years of wages. The only ones who could buy this land are the people that poisoned it. They don’t use it. They won’t clean it. They’ll never let me live there, nor anyone else like me. The mayor tells us we should flee to the outskirts of town for the safety of others. He pretends like we can. He wants us right where we are.
This place is not my home anymore, and I am trapped here. It used to feel like a place where I could build something. Carve out some sliver for myself and those I love. It used to feel like a box with a young foundation, built on the cheap to profit someone I would never meet. But it kept the rain off and the wind at bay, and there were small parts of it that I could fix.
This is an empty house. It’s cramped and cavernous space will try to devour me whole. The people in the town want more girls like me in the paper. The mayor blames me for the way he takes the taxes for himself, and solves the problem at the gallows. I am not welcome here, and yet this place has ensured I have no where else to go.
So join me for a meal cooked on coals made of the floorboards, in a hearth of the foundation brick. If this place will not be a home to us, then we will build one of it anyway. What other choice do we have, but to huddle together against the winter?
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