Escape route.

Escape route.
By. Ryan M. Harris.

My father once told me that we would never leave this house.

I remember that day very clearly. Me and my and Sister Lois woke one morning to the sound of him yelling, and a loud crash. We found Father sitting in his chair staring at the shattered remains of our television. He’d thrown a lamp at it. His jaw was locked, his eyes wide with shock. We’ll never leave this house he explained to us with tears in his eyes.”

It was probably the last sane thing he ever said. We learned later that sometime during the night mom had tried to escape by hiding in the refrigerator. The new food had to come from somewhere and she was determined to find it. Those things are airtight. Dad found her when he went to add milk to his cereal. We buried her under the floor in one of the closets.

You see there are no doors that lead outside in our house, no windows of any kind. If you destroy a wall, you find another wall behind it, and another, and another. We’ve tried it. If you dig down you’ll find yourself chipping through a never-ending slab of concrete. We’ve tried that too.

Now I’m the one sitting the chair staring at the TV. I’ve broken my fair share of them over the years but there’s always a new one in the morning. A cartoon is playing. A crudely drawn cat in overalls is trying to build a house. But cat’s don’t know how to build houses even if they can wear clothes so he does everything wrong. He tries to build a roof before he builds walls. It falls. He builds doors that won’t open, windows that see out into nothing. He hits his thumb with the hammer and it swells up enormous. He gets hurt a lot.

All my life I’ve been watching the cat try to build a house. It plays on repeat on every channel day or night.

One day about a year after mother died father decided he would find a way out or die trying. He figured there must be a clue in this cartoon, some reason it never stops. There are dozens of journals stuffed into the end table beside me each one filled with notes. He studied the buttons on the cat’s overalls, the music that plays in the background, the nails he uses. One day father called me and Lois into the room. Giddy with joy he explained that in one scene a board can be seen that has two nails in it but in the next scene it has three and no explanation is given. The cat hasn’t picked up the hammer yet! He cheered. And, then he made us watch till she show repeated and played that scene again just to prove his point. We humored him. He had lost his mind. We had seen it coming for a while.

I wonder what kind of crazy I’ll be. How long will it take?

I’m alone now. I know watching this stupid cartoon that I can’t do this alone.

I drain my glass of wine and walk across the room. Rather than just turning it off, I tip the television over. It shatters and there’s an electrical pop.

I think it would be better to get it over with. I could think about for days or years. I could dig some more, chip a few more feet off our foundation. Or I could mine through the wall in the laundry room until I begin to think each new pattern of wallpaper I discover on each new wall is trying to tell me some secret code. But I think not. That is what the cat would do.
Heading upstairs, I whistle the cat’s theme song.

There are two people who have escaped this house. Mom doesn’t count, she’s in the closet. Lois is one of them. I enter her room. Crayon drawings color the walls. There were castles and forests. She’d spent years making up stories for her drawings, creating a whole world on her walls. Then yesterday she was simply gone. A drawing of a princess who looks a lot like her now rules from her fuchsia castle. That was how she escaped. If a house is too small a universe - build a better one!

But that would never work for me. I could draw myself on that castle and wherever she is she’d probably just laugh at me. I’d still be here. I lack wonder or faith one. I had to help get mom out of the refrigerator. There’s no flying off Neverland after that.

So, it’s my father’s way then.

I walk over to his room, but hesitate before I open the door. We closed it after he escaped. I haven’t been there in years. Taking a deep breath I finally enter. It’s very dusty in here.

The machine is just where we left it.

It took father months to make it, from a variety of tools in our kitchen. He claimed the cartoon had taught him how. The machine is a metal cylinder with a crank attached. I walk up to it and look down inside. Its gears and blades stolen from blenders, can-openers, cheese-graters and who knows what else.

He went down there.

I am not the cartoon cat and I know unlike his mishaps this will hurt. It will be gruesome and besides pieces of my father who knows what’s on the other side.

Carefully I put my arm into it. I reach down as far as I can until my hand hits metal. Somethings kicked me and I’m already bleeding. I would rather do it while I’m still sane. I push down on the blades as hard as I can.

Then, I turn the crank.