There is something vast, yet tantalizing, about the fresh solitude of a blank sketchbook. Perhaps, it is the idea of an untouched future, or simply the overwhelming potential concealed within, that proves so intensely alluring.   Kay was deprived of this simple joy. Her potential and future had crumbled, when the child took its final breath. Kay’s past was a plague that dripped into the present and future; creeping beneath floorboards, lying crumbled amongst coffee grains. It simmered in her eyes; an intangible weight that encompassed her being, and hovered about her. A halo of despair.

Dull clouded sunlight permeated Kay’s thin curtains and spilled onto the threadbare rug. Her slumped frame was seated, motionless, as she gazed at her slippered feet; unaware that her bitten nail was maliciously digging a small grave into the bedside counter. It was silent, all residents having departed several hours ago, in the dizzying rush of morning, leaving Kay alone in the deserted suburb. Shuffling towards the kitchen, Kay halted, and, after a brief internal struggle, approached the fron. Previously, the steady ant hill of letters and bills that choked her letter box and accumulated onto the doormat, remained unregistered to Kay, as she passed each morning and night. Yet today, it was the splatter of crimson, dripping slowly onto the papers, and the cloying stench of paint, which gave a flicker of attention. The letter slot gaped open; a toothless dribbling grin, with paint running into rivulets past her feet. Kay stooped and overturned a letter. BABY KILLER. Written in blood. She replaced it vacantly and, wiping the stain onto her greying nightdress, continued to the kitchen.

Looking oddly out of place in her own house, Kay sat crunched on the single stripped wooden chair, with an almost childlike quality. Pale skin stretched over cheekbones, like cling film over pebbles. Turquoise veins ribboned across shimmering hands, knuckles white with tension, as her spider like fingers enlaced the cracked coffee mug. Kay’s eyes, two broken bulbs, gazed dark and deadened from sunken sockets, at the white tiled wall. To an outsider, she appeared as an aged woman, well into retirement. Her wisps of strawberry blond hair were thin, and the creases in her sallow skin betrayed her youth. Her body had become a canvas for the destructive paintbrush of her mind. Guilt and despair sketched the outline of her features, glazed over with detachment. Shifting from the tiles, Kay’s eyes crawled about the kitchen. The same kitchen that, months ago, served as a playground for her sanity.

She had run out of light bulbs and there was a cool barren sense, tinted with grey shadows, despite the early evening twilight. Kay had stood leaning against the white plastic countertop, riveted with cracks, her hand resting on a glass of misted water. It was not the bleak starkness of the room that unnerved her, but the sound of stillness that seemed to penetrate her very being. It was as if her heartbeat had been muted, breathing slowed and her bare feet seemed to be pressured into the ground, yet floating, somehow. Kay remained in this simple meditative state, surrounded by softened silence, and blissfully forgot. She forgot how she had cried at the table and stumbled after Richard, as he thrust belongings into bags. How the plaster pattered from the ceiling after he slammed the front door, a final time. The memory of her mother’s face, as it twisted into anger at the news of an illegitimate grandchild, hovered just beyond reach. The rushed signature that concluded the letter of redundancy from Lionsgale Elderly Home; forgotten. Thoughts suspended, stresses dissolved, Kay floated in blissful surrealism.

The ticking of a clock jarred. It was as if her pendulous place of transcendence was a balloon, being tugged from heaven. Each rhythmical tick, a stab. Kay’s brow furrowed as she tried to maintain perfection, like clinging to a dream after stumbling awake. Gradually, she became aware of the spatter of the sink. Flinching with each droplet as they fell lazily from the tap and, as reality settled, her left eye began to twitch.

Tick. Drip. Tick. Tick. Drip. Tick. Drip. Drip.
Kay’s fingers tensed. Knuckles whitened.
A stress stuttered across her mind. Another flitted past.

The balloon burst and they swarmed in. Black, bitter, frenzied notions crowded inside, each one an insistent pressure on the single remaining thread that bound her to sanity. A darkened haze swept over Kay’s vision, and she shook her head in a violent passion to dislodge the demons. A dog began to bark in the distance. A high painful sound, in accordance with her discarded mentality, and slowly escalated to an unceasing, manic hysteria. Kay felt an irresistible urge to throw something, anything. Harsh, hoarse voices screamed, and Kay’s nails dug into her temples, pricks of blood tainting her fingertips. She let loose an anguished moan of sheer pain. The voices rasped... It was your fault Richard left, selfish you...We didn’t do anything wrong...it was all you...he didn’t want the baby! You wanted the baby, selfish you... when did you speak to your mother last Kay? When you told her of your illegitimate child? You shamed her Kay, she can’t even leave the house now, selfish you... Do you know where she is Kay? Is she dead KAY? We know where she is...Kay where’s your job KAY? How can you support a baby without a job? They didn’t want you at the care home. We want you...come join us Kay... Where is your baby? Upstairs you say? Are you sure Kay? Why don’t you take a peak Kay? Take the knife KAY. You might need it Kay...

Panting, Kay staggered backwards, her quavering hand flicked the glass which slammed through the air, scattering glinting shards across the floor. She reeled.  Her vision a blizzard, light flashed over splinters, the room spun. A baby’s thin cry rung amongst the chaos. A glint of steel, she felt her hands close over smooth wood, watched as her feet staggered through broken glass and tripped up the stairs, to the landing; into a bedroom painted in dizzying pinks, with a cot and a baby-
- Kay yelped into the present, and her gaze focused on the scalding coffee that was dripping into her lap. Regaining balance, a single tear of remembrance hesitated beneath the surface of the broken bulbs, but gradually sank. A futile attempt at emotion. She uncurled herself from the stripped wood chair, and shuffled towards the sink. Paused. Then watched, as coffee grains mingled with cool water, a swirling river of hazel, before fading into the depths of the plug hole, wishing she could follow.