As a child I never realised that there were only four people in our house. I saw so many more each night, they gathered about the stairs and talked amongst themselves - talked to me - as if this was normal. It might have been normal four hundred or so years ago, back when there used to be an old manor house where my childhood home was.
I never told my family about this, the people on the stairs assured me they already knew and that this was just another evening party for them. The way they dressed looked like everything I'd ever dreamed that royalty wore - huge elaborate gowns and ribbons everywhere. I believed every word they said, never mentioning to my parents the long evenings I'd spent chatting to these people while they watched loud TV downstairs.
It seemed so normal until I hit puberty and they changed with me, finally showing their deaths just as I was researching them. They'd all told me their long titles and family history so it wasn't exactly a task to find that their manor had been burned down in a peasant revolution while they were celebrating the birthday of a young Countess.
The more I knew the more they let me see them as they had died, not as they wanted to be remembered.
I haven't been back to my childhood home since I hit seventeen. Seeing their burning corpses still having animated conversations on the stairs eventually became too much. I never even said goodbye to them, I still wonder if I should have.
I never told my family about this, the people on the stairs assured me they already knew and that this was just another evening party for them. The way they dressed looked like everything I'd ever dreamed that royalty wore - huge elaborate gowns and ribbons everywhere. I believed every word they said, never mentioning to my parents the long evenings I'd spent chatting to these people while they watched loud TV downstairs.
It seemed so normal until I hit puberty and they changed with me, finally showing their deaths just as I was researching them. They'd all told me their long titles and family history so it wasn't exactly a task to find that their manor had been burned down in a peasant revolution while they were celebrating the birthday of a young Countess.
The more I knew the more they let me see them as they had died, not as they wanted to be remembered.
I haven't been back to my childhood home since I hit seventeen. Seeing their burning corpses still having animated conversations on the stairs eventually became too much. I never even said goodbye to them, I still wonder if I should have.
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