Free Paper Tigers by Damien Angelica Walters

like the kiss of flames against her skin. She shrieked wordless cries and a child’s merry laughter filled the spaces in-between. A sense of time standing still as she writhed in sepia-colored nothingness, spiraling down into the heat, into the album, into an absolute dark laced with the smell of flowers and tobacco and time.



PART III
    DOORWAYS, SCARS, AND GRANDFATHER CLOCKS
    She convinces the night nurse, an older woman with dark eyes and a serious mouth, to bring her a mirror. The doctors, including the psychologist whose words always come out laced with condescension, don’t think she’s ready for her reflection. It will be too traumatic at this stage, they say.
    The nurse hands her a compact, pats her hand, and leaves her alone. She holds the compact for almost an hour. Dust from the face powder within drifts down onto the bedsheets, the scent mixing with the chemical stink of the hospital room.
    She doesn’t pay attention to the smells. I want to see, I want to see, the words run in her head, around and around in circles. She’s felt the scars, oh yes, she has, but she wants—needs—to see. She’s seen most of the scars on her body, she’s traced her fingers along the shifted planes of her face, and she’s seen enough in her mother’s (and his and his and his, she can’t forget his) eyes to know what to expect.
    When she looks, she doesn’t scream or cry out. She stares and stares, sure it’s a mistake. This isn’t her face. This is a stranger, a Monstergirl with overlapping bands of pink skin, white skin, shiny and raised, and an empty socket where an eye should be.
    She turns her face from side to side, thinks she looks cleaved in two in some grim horror movie fashion. Her left side, the good side, is all pale skin and whole, the right is nightmarish. Monstergirl, she thinks again. She knows she will keep this word to herself—her secret name.
    Finally, she cries, silent tears that burn like acid on her ruined face, but she doesn’t scream. She wants to leave this place of needles and scalpels. There’s too much pain here, and if she screams, they might make her stay longer, or worse—they might never let her go.
    Now she knows why there won’t be any more weekend trips to the beach, no tipping her face to the sun, no walks down the boardwalk, no teaching, no children, no future—only shadows and dark and hiding.

CHAPTER 8
    Alison came to, came awake , curled on her side with her arms arced protectively around her head. Her breath caught in her throat as she stood, holding onto the wall for support. A wall not in her living room, not in her house, not anywhere known, yet a wide, darkened foyer that held a strange familiarity. Beneath her bare feet, the floor was cool.
    Surrounded by heavy silence, she brushed dust from her hands and clothes. Inside the album. She’d fallen inside the album.
    Not possible.
    She covered her eyes and counted to ten, but when she peeked through her fingers, the house remained. The air was heavy and stale but with a slight chill, and a taste of old, forgotten things crept into her mouth. An old chandelier missing half its crystals hung overhead, draped in a veil of cobwebs. Scratched and pitted wood peeked through the dust on the floor. Several arched openings led to other rooms, and a staircase stood off to the right, intricate carvings on the banister and newel post apparent even through the grime. She turned to the main door, a structure nearly as tall as it was wide. The brass doorknob was speckled with spots of dark and gave a loud creak when she turned it, the sound echoing off the walls. She twitched, glanced over both shoulders, and tried it again.
    Locked.
    Locked in a house? Trapped in a photo album? Was it real or merely a phantom? She pinched her left arm and grimaced at the resulting welt. No dream. She took one hesitant step toward anarchway then another. There had to be a way out, a way