Nikki Falls
There used to be a girl named Nikki, who lived in a distant forest. Nikki's father was a carpenter and a metal worker. He built and customized much of his family's home. The house was located in a cold, mountainous region in a dark woodland area removed from the nearest city by an hour long drive. Though the house was quite large, one had to stare to see it- the outside walls were pealing brownish paint and the muddy shades concealed it from observation. The door was unfinished and had begun to rot on the outside. During the day rays of light shone on the outside wall in leaf shaped patterns through the surrounding trees. The same was true at night when the moon was out, only surreal.
Through the entryway was a spacious and unusually tall living area. In previous years Nikki's father had torn down three different walls that divided what became this area. At one point there was a living room on the left, followed by a playroom for the girls, and a library at the end. Following the death of Nikki's mother the need for this manner of organization seemed irrelevant and now much of the house was one uninterrupted section.
Upon entering, guests would always notice the array elongated, sharp objects pointing upward from the floor like inverted icicles. Spun metal reached like miniature, spiral staircases stretching several feet above even the tallest observer. Unfinished tables, chairs and other incomplete projects made the home a hazardous maze.
Through the entryway was a path forward to the kitchen, abruptly interrupting that path was a loft in the center of the unusually high room. It drew attention as guests would be forced to walk around it, tiptoeing in the living area with the thought that any fall could be fatal. Dust from different saws collected on the floor in all types of consistencies. At the end of the day the floor was swept, but the finest dust would always escape and bond to every surface- not least of which was the nose, throat and lungs of anyone inside.
A rope and wood ladder was the only way to reach the top of the loft. The ladder was loose and unfinished, held together by only slightly curved hooks that appeared as though they needed to balance upon one another just to support the weight of one climber. Every section swayed and creaked with even the slightest sideways or bouncing motion. Generally, Nikki was the only climber and even her slight weight, still well below a hundred pounds, seemed to be stretching the limits of the ladder. She was, in fact, the only one light enough to climb the ladder.
Once on top, she would peer out and what she saw was a different house.
She would turn out the lights and the shadows made the room transform. A vent from the ceiling blew down just on top of the loft, and often made her shiver. From her perspective the coldness permeated the sharpened forest below. Wood and metal became shadow and ice. At night it was a single, crystallized action- a suspended theatrical moment. Nikki's sense of wonderment and imagination fueled entire stories to unfold from that one frozen vision.
When given a choice it was the loft she retreated to rather than her room. She often ate, did personal work, and even slept up top. It wasn't safe but it was comforting, which was an appeal only she saw. The danger in some way made it more comforting. Staring at the sharp objects below was like staring at an attacking army. She herself didn't feel like she could stand up to that army, or that she was even an opposing force. She felt like a captured and bound princess being sacrificed before countless witnesses. She imagined her fantastic end. Children would see from a far and remember it for the rest of their lives. Women would see it and cry. There would be a separation of understanding because of sheer, one-sided cruelty. It was good to be a martyr. It was good to be the girl christ- affecting people more in death than in life.
There were materials such as steel rods and wood sliced at a perfect sharp angle carelessly placed near the loft ready to impale the first one to fall. Nikki could have moved them or told her father about it, but she didn't. There was a strange attraction she had to staring at things that could do a great deal of harm. For instance, on the rare occasion that her father mowed the lawn the only thing she could think about were the spinning blades. It was a very short distance to reach under and lose the better part of an arm, and the graphic nature of her imagination put every detail into focus. Tragedy was always such a very short distance that she could never stop thinking about it. She knew in the back of her mind that she didn't want the horribly painful outcome, but that result begged to be acted out. It begged constantly. When a stove burner was left on, her mind reached out for it. While taking a bath she would stare over at the hairdryers or other plug-in devices her sister had left lying around, and the electrocution felt only inches away and so real that there was a tingling sensation in her feet. When the iron was hot she couldn't look away, and fire was almost impossible to deal with. Still, the impulse horror that had begun to call the loudest was the fall- the attacking spears. The sensation was so close to being real that her belly rose from the thought of the freefall like she remembered from roller coasters.
Nikki's 12th birthday had just passed several days ago. Her sister Kelly, who was two years older, and her father were present. Being home schooled she had hardly met anyone her age. The birthday was pleasant as it seemed like a suspended time when she was the center of attention. Though outwardly trying to seem fair and non-partial, her father always gave the most consistent and intimate affection to Nikki's sister.
Today Nikki sat atop the loft staring down as she often did. When her father entered the workshop area he didn't take notice but he knew she was there. By this time Nikki had memorized all of her father's work rituals. There were three different ones that varied with the materials he was going to work with. With lean hands that seemed dirty from work before he even lifted a finger he tied a smock around his waist and put on thick canvas gloves. Nikki immediately knew that he was going to work with metal first.
"Hey, dad are you going to finish the tables today?" Nikki said, trying eagerly to spark conversation. Her normally deep voice was broken up by her girly enthusiasm. She looked with open eyes for a response. Her father kept working. Though he heard a voice it didn't process as being very important as he was setting up. Nikki leaned forward on the loft. "Hey…dad! Are you going to finish the tables today?"
"Oh, umm, well I'm going to try to. That's the plan at least. Why don't you come down and eat some breakfast and do your lessons or something," his partial concern for his daughters weird habits came through as an afterthought. Nikki turned over, lying on her back and looking at the vent on the ceiling. Her father turned the radio on. He was uncomfortable in the quiet when another person was around though it was impossible to hear the radio once he started working. It wasn't so much for listening but rather to fill in the idle seconds actions.
"I finished my lessons for the next month. You can check them if you want," Nikki said with a hint of pride.
Her father's focus was in measuring a perfect line. It seemed simple, but he knew that a perfect, straight line was the highest of absolute refinement. When he began, the rest of the world stopped as he held his breath, motionless except for one hand. When the line was complete he smiled inwardly and his wiry complexion relaxed as he breathed out.
"What was that?"
"I said I finished my lessons for the month. You can check them if you want."
"Later Nikki. Take some time off, run, play with your dolls, help your sister with her lessons."
Her father had mentioned on many occasions that she should help her sister with her studies. Her natural inquisitive intelligence had insured that her lessons were unchallenging and dull. She aimed to finish them as quickly as possible. Kelly had a different view, and she would often procrastinate or not even finish many of her lessons. She was more interested in her appearance and clothes even though she hardly went out.
Kelly was radiantly beautiful for her age, with a glowing smile and precocious body development. Her skin was lightly browned from calculated tanning sessions spent just away from the house in an open field. Her preoccupation with her own beauty was her greatest hobby. There was no where to go, no one to see, but she still persisted, readying herself to go out into nowhere.
Kelly never seemed to be on her fathers bad side, which was a slap in the face to Nikki. Nikki never got away with even the most minor of faults, and was resentful when her sister went unpunished.
"All I have is time off. Kelly doesn't want my help, she hates me. And I haven't played with dolls in four years."
Nikki's father continued to work. Once he focused he believed that was enough reason to be left alone. Over the years, many of his conversations ended this way- not with words but with a pausing break that faked naivety.
Nikki's desire for attention outwardly seemed needy but was far more compulsive and insidious. She thought about the many years that had passed while watching her father work. The greatest attention was always with Kelly and there could have been any number of reasons why. Kelly was pretty, spoiled, and effete. Maybe it was her inability to care for others that made others want to care- wanting what they couldn't have.
Though she wanted it to be something else, Nikki's mind always drifted back to the same thing- it could only be what happened at night. Sometimes at night she saw, but she didn't want to see. She didn't want to be confused and jealous. She waited, but her father never visited her at night. She could hear faint whimpers from her sister's room, and sometimes see in through the cracked door.
Her sister lay naked under her father, fusing in a kind of way but she would cry. It was a rejection of affection that Nikki couldn't understand. It looked warm and painful, painful like touching a spinning blade, or like the hot iron that wanted to be touched, but it was also magnetic.
Her sister and father did so many things together. He was inside her, stabbing her. It was a knife that was horrible, but there was so much attention and affection that came with it. If there was no way to discern between the two, then Nikki wished to be stabbed, to fall upon the knife so that all the eyes in the world would stare as she bled out with glazed eyes staring upward nobly.
Days came and went. Nikki waited in her bed at night, exposing herself to anyone who walked in all while pretending to be asleep. She arched her back like her sister did. Her father came in a several times, but never took the kind of notice she wanted. He would stare, but then left for her sisters room. His resistance was infuriating. She turned the vents off in her room and sweated through nights by herself, stabbing herself over and over. The pain was never deep enough, it was never full enough to capture others, to be loved or admired. She went until there was blood and tears, but she realized that no matter what she did, there was no one else in the room.
Nights came and passed until something had to be done. The solution called out to Nikki in a vision. Her people called out to her as she climbed the loft in the main living area. The room was empty and dark and all that could be seen were the silhouettes of unfinished work, and all the could be heard was the gentile creaking of a sectioned ladder.
She stood over a crowd of screaming onlookers. She was to be executed by her heartless captors. She hugged tightly on a stake, a hundred feet high with many of her loyal subjects crying in the distance, and even they didn't fully understand the scope of what was transpiring. She made eye contact with as many people as she could, and she was loved. Her father stood helplessly below as one of the executioners, being forced to hold a spear upright- the net intended to catch the girl, his girl. She stood for a moment, staring at the sharpened points, but wanted to fall on her fathers, to have his eyes the last she stared into. His tears would be the justification and confirmation of her existence.
Nikki jumped.