Day 10 of Inktober is “pattern”. The inspiration for this one hit me almost instantly - William Morris wallpaper. I’ve been a fan of this wallpaper ever since grade school, where I randomly found myself borrowing a beautiful book about the wallpaper and learning about its history. Coupled with the fact that one of my favorite stories is “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and how could I not do a small homage to William Morris for this prompt?
Note: This is only the beginning of what could be a longer story, but I want to write a small taste for now and see where it takes me.
I can see the future.
I’ve always been able to see the future. I read it in the patterns on my walls. Most have never believed in my gift over the years, but I’ve never been wrong. Not once.
My grandma chose the wallpaper when she was a little girl, apparently, although why it appealed to a little girl I’ll never really know. Deep, rich blue with a repeated gold pattern of flowery leaves - I suppose it was a different time. My mother refused to let me change the wallpaper when I was young - I’m grateful for that stubbornness now.
I was nine when I read the wallpaper for the first time.
It wasn’t clear at first - at first I thought maybe somebody had drawn on the walls, one of my friends perhaps, or my grandmother when she was young, and I had just never noticed before. The drawing matched the gold leaf design printed across the walls so perfectly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been staring at the walls, watching the lights of the cars go past outside my window one night, unable to sleep.
It was a picture of a little girl in a garden, the flowers blending into the golden leaves seamlessly.
The following morning the little girl was gone, the intricate pattern unbroken as it stretched across the dark blue. I searched for her, ran my small hands over the paper again and again, trying to find any trace of what I had seen the night before.
Two days later I saw the girl again. She was in the local newspaper, a photograph of her shining face beaming at me on the grainy paper. The other night she had only been a silhouette, a golden outline on a blue backdrop, but somehow I knew. It was her.
“What a shame.” My mother said, staring at the picture when she saw me looking. “I can’t believe she hasn’t been found yet.”
My stomach twisted. “Whaddya mean?”
“She went missing after school one day last week. Never made it home from the playground.” My mother sighed, shaking her head. “You’d think somebody would have seen something in the middle of the afternoon.”
My juice turned sour in my mouth, and I put down my glass. “Oh.”
“Her poor mother.” My own sighed once more, before leaving me alone with the newspaper once more.
I ran my fingers over her picture, the blank ink of the photograph smudging against my fingertips. The outline of her face… I had definitely seen her on my wall two nights before.
That day after school I took a detour home - past the old community garden that had long since been abandoned. What had once been carefully tended produce was now overgrown vegetation, wild and unkempt behind a rusted metal fence.
The gate swung open with a simple push - the lock had been broken. I took several deep breaths before taking one step, then another into the garden, my eyes wide and my blood gushing through my ears.
I recognized her from the newspaper instantly, even without her bright eyes in her face. One of her arms was bent to the side, her elbow sticking the wrong way out of her sweater.
I stared for a long time, longer than I initially realized, before thinking I should probably go tell somebody, tell an adult that I had found the missing girl.
“How did you know where she was?” My mother asked me later that evening, the police finally gone.
“I saw her.” I didn’t know how else to answer the question.
My mother frowned. “What were you even doing in the community garden? You know that place is dangerous!”
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. “I just saw her there in the garden.”
My mother was unsatisfied with my answer, but after seeing I had nothing else to tell her she eventually stopped pestering me and made me swear to never step foot in the community garden again. Thinking about the black moldy holes where the missing girl’s eyes had once been, I was only too happy to agree.
I was sent to bed with a hot glass of milk, to settle my nerves about what I had seen that afternoon no doubt. I lay in bed, my mind drifting between the photograph in the newspaper and her dirty, leaf-covered hair, and my eyes wandered to the wall ahead of me, lazily drifting over the swirling golden pattern.
As I felt the warm milk begin to settle in my stomach, my muscles relaxing into the softness of my duvet, my eyes caught on an unfamiliar shape, illuminated by the streetlamp adjacent to my window.
A man with a knife in hand. The golden detail of his tiny hands was intricate, but the weapon was clear. He was standing atop some stairs, climbing up the wall next to my door. I was fairly certain I had seen the stairs before, their steps familiar to me if I unfocused my eyes.
They were our stairs.
My mother screamed.