Anna Rolinatis is a writer born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. She enjoys writing fiction and tries her hand at writing spooky things when she feels brave enough. She’s had several satirical short plays produced, as well as a vignette published, and hopes to publish more work in the future. When she isn’t writing, she’s either walking her two dogs, painting, or dreaming of adventures. As soon as she overcomes her deep-seated fear of others reading her work, she’ll create a website for you to visit.
BEGIN ANEW
by
Anna Rolinatis
It took a while for me to notice that anything was different. This is a fact that haunts me in a fashion which is unparalleled by any of my prior sins.
I loved my daughter more than I ever knew it was possible to experience love for something. At her mere seven years of age, she was curious and kind. She was funny and had a boisterous laugh. She let bugs climb across her fingertips, carried bandaids for when she got scrapes on her adventures, and always shared bites of her ice-cream with me.
Her favorite holiday was New Years Eve. She adored it with an intensity that rivaled even her birthday, which I always found unusual for a child her age. I think it was in part due to the universal excitement she could feel on those hours counting down to midnight. Suddenly she found herself surrounded by people who could match her vigor for life. It was also likely her propensity for staying up late, and drinking grape juice out of plastic flutes, and feeling grown up. But I never believed that her love for New Years came from her anticipation of “beginning anew.” Ultimately, as fond as she was of pretending to be an adult, she was only a kid.
That’s why this year was so strange. She had the same excitement leading up to midnight, but almost immediately after the clock struck twelve, it was like something had shifted in her. She went to bed quickly, leaving her flute of juice untouched on the coffee table. I told myself that she was likely tired. Sure, fatigue had never affected her before on New Years, but her body was vulnerable to the whims of adolescence.
After that, it was little things at first. I began to wonder if she had made resolutions without mentioning them to me, which I considered odd. But again, perhaps her proclivity for sharing things with me was disappearing with age. She stopped going outside as much, and spent most of her time alone in her room. On the rare occasion that my presence was tolerated within her little sanctuary, she would only doodle in a sketchbook I’d gifted her a few years prior that had, until recently, been untouched. Its pages were now brimming with drawings that were forbidden to me.
Predominantly, it was her eyes that changed. Her facial expressions. It almost seemed as though she was seeing past me to my skeleton within. The warmth that I had previously associated with her had dimmed to a coldness that unsettled me deeply. When I inquired about her emotional state, she would paste on a toothy grin that felt shark-like and assure me that she was fine.
One evening I persuaded her to accompany me on a stroll. During, I glanced over at her, and she was studying a grasshopper as it traversed the length of her index finger. I smiled, as this was the daughter I knew. However my smile quickly dropped off my face as I watched her flick the creature to the ground and mash its body under her light-up sneakers. I couldn’t help the gasp of horror that fled my lips. The action was so shocking, so merciless coming from the little girl I knew. I tried chastising her shakily, but she only blinked up at me as if bored.
That night, I determined I must change tactics. I had a foreboding sense that I must be clever in my scheming in order to avoid her outmaneuvering me. All through dinner her eyes darted towards the hall, as if planning her escape to her bedroom. It was necessary for my plans to avoid that, so I suggested she stay up late to watch a movie. Conceivably I was only being paranoid, but I could’ve sworn she eyed me with a measure of suspicion. Thankfully, she agreed. I set her up in front of the television to watch a movie and waited a bit as I did dishes in the kitchen.
When I was confident she was rooted in place for at least the next ten minutes, I crept off to her room. I had to see her drawings. Surely there was a reason behind her reluctance to share them with me. I located her sketchbook easily, as it was the only thing in her bedroom that looked remotely touched. I eased the book open to see that the first image was nothing out of the ordinary. It was a drawing of herself, with her lips turned up and stretched out a bit uncannily. I flipped the page to see a drawing of myself. The next few pages were all of similar content. They were almost exceedingly normal, to the point where I wondered why she considered such mundane things to be worthy subjects. There were drawings of our kitchen table, of our living room. One depicted the view from outside her bedroom window.
Frustrated, I was about to close the book with a snap when something caught my eye. A figure. It was standing on the sidewalk that you could see from outside her window. It was cast to the side and smeared onto the page in a gray so light that it had almost slipped detection. It was ominously tall, with a familiar wide grin that made my heart speed uncomfortably. Flipping to the previous pages, nausea writhed its way through me. Now that I was looking for them, they were everywhere. Ghostly gray blobs with eerie smiles, poking out from under our dining table, and standing behind the drawing of me, and sitting in the shadows of our living room. Shakily, I turned back to the first drawing of my daughter. At first glance, there were no figures to be seen. I looked again and again, holding the book from different angles as if other lighting would catch them.
Finally, I noticed. Her eyes. They were only smudges of light gray.