Kat Powers

Today it seems all the clouds have been captured in anticipation of spring. A gorgeous day!

This painting has been stored in a closet for how many years? I just found it at my grandmother’s house. I’ve missed you, Eddie.

Today’s progress. 2’5”x3’4”.

Every night at ten, the wailing could be heard throughout the neighborhood. Janice stood at the back door listening through the cracked windowpane. The backyards of her neighbors were dark and in them nothing moved except the coordinated creaking of swing sets and weather vanes. Janice never knew if anyone else was staring out from the darkened windows or unlit awnings to investigate the sounds, because there weren’t neighborhood gatherings as there had been in the old days, gossip aflutter. Really, it was rare she spoke to anyone at any time, at all.

The wailing. Over a period of several months (seven?), the noises took on accumulating variations of pig grunts, very large trucks choking on the ignition, wisps of sirens calling, horses neighing at their slaughter, though the only logical origin of these sounds could be the wind wrapping through the limbs of trees. At stressful moments, Janice heard what could have been vehicles sliding into each other like bumper cars, or fingernails scratching chalkboards pasted into the sky. On nights when sadness overcame her, the howling of coyotes from the hills and mermaids from the creek masked her tears. A muffled baby’s moan, which sounded sadder than anything she found to mourn in her own life, came warbling over the rooftops to find solace with her. These nightly murmurs always caught Janice off guard, and as they left on a flat note minutes or hours after they came, she would be left crouching at her kitchen sink or at the base of a door frame to wonder at the source and intention of the sound.

In the daytime, Janice moved around the neighborhood suspiciously, giving cars she’d never seen before a long, hard stare, and mothers pushing brand new carriages a thorough examination through her thick glasses. Wobbling ducks were poked or pushed off the sidewalk with her cane.

Her house was across from a dry, weed-infested lot bulldozers had cleared. Builders had laid the foundation for a mini-mansion and then forgotten about it. Years had passed, or maybe they were just long, solitary months of snow and winter, and now waist-high growth had knotted their roots around pillars of rust and rot. Looking out in the other direction, a gentle slope led down to a creek bordering her backyard. Mismatched fences were propped up by misshapen nails and deadwood. There was no one to share the night with, or the day.

Janice would have liked to have started a journal of the progressions of phenomena she witnessed daily, though now it had gone on so long, and so much of it was already forgotten, gone, and each seemed a natural continuation from what had gone on before, she thought it worthless to start now. She couldn’t remember when the conspiracies and coincidences had begun, they’d always been there weaving a tightly woven net around her, diminishing her ability to distinguish between what had happened, what she witnessed, and what existed solely in her mind.

The break-in occurred between the hours of twelve and six a.m., as Janice was sleeping. Normally the screen door was left propped open with a brick, since the hinges had been bent and the screw stripped. That night, though, the winds had been particularly rough and the brick was broken, sending the screen door screeching shut. The impact cracked the glass set into the wooden door (antique, mid-to late 19^th century) and sent shards to shatter into pieces inside, as the inner door opened of its own accord.

The storm gathered momentum and lightning crashed just outside Janice’s bedroom, blowing the window panes open wide. Thunder shook the floorboards, and knocked her water glass to the floor along with her one prized possession, the only fine heirloom she had, a diamond-encrusted wedding band handed down from her mother’s mother’s mother, circa 1825, which slid from its nightly spot on the edge of the nightstand to its hard to reach, never seen again resting place two feet under her bed. She heard it clink into place between a crack in the floorboards, her disbelieving ears in subdued awe. The swirling winds consoled her back to sleep.