Grey Bear Culture Magazine

You left home at seventeen with money stolen just because you could, missing the mark for
socially acceptable teenage rebellion by a long way. It was this, you figured, or arson, and
you laughed the entire train journey. You gave enough of an explanation that the police
weren’t called and left any concerned messages left on read. Friendships bleeding out on a
cold tile floor, relationships haemorrhaging behind you. That was it. For a few years, you
were free, the world’s size and potential just so much bigger than the ugly grey village you
left behind.
The city is another planet, nothing but future. Until, dreaming of ways to spend money, you
see your childhood bed artfully staged in a shop window. Expensive vases and lamps either
side, then your bunny duvet and flower pillow still creased from your four-year-old form, brain
cotton-wool fuzzy from dreaming. That’s how it begins – just a bed, enough to make you slow
down and almost vomit. With enough concentration you isolate the bile to the back of your
throat and turn away. No glances back, the same way you can’t bring yourself to look in a
mirror after dark, on the off-chance that all the horror movies are right.
A few paranoia-ridden days pass. At work, the small office and colleagues you keep at
painful arm’s length. The only mud here is tracked in on trouser hems, the only bread from
sad soft sandwiches chewed out of necessity.
“Is someone cooking?” You didn’t speak if you didn’t have to, but the smell of a warm loaf
and damp yellow leaves hit you like a truck. Your dad used to bake sourdough and leave it to
cool on the windowsill, even in the autumn when the rain bordered on torrential.
“You okay?” Asks Colleague A.
No, the inoffensively-scented office was assaulting you with the smell of petrichor and home.
“Yeah. Thought I smelled food.”
“Bakery down the road” nods Colleague B, and the conversation ends. The smell fades but
lingers. You breathe through your mouth.
That evening, you have a panic attack after googling something, anything, related to what
was happening, and finding nothing except medical advice for occipital seizures and
schizophrenia. Every site directs you firmly towards seeking medical attention as soon as
possible.
You don’t leave the house the next day, working up the courage to order food only to hear
your brother’s footsteps approaching before the knock. You daren’t open the door until he
leaves and you sneak one hand around the frame to pull the pizza into your lair. It tastes like
classroom parties. Curtains twitched aside to reveal a birds-eye-view of your best friend’s
favourite secondary school coat and backpack slipping out of sight around a corner. You
wake up with your mum’s phone number written in neatly legible numbers down your
forearm. Sharpie, in case you got lost at the Christmas market when you were six.
You dial the number with shaking hands and listen to it ring.

By Martha Coughlan

– Martha is a medical student living in Wales. She has always loved reading and writing, especially anything strange and unusual. She cycles through hobbies at an astounding rate and has a lot of dreams about haunted houses.