Glass Shatters Read Online Free PDF

yellow and decaying. Two large drops of blood have dried along her jaw, one just below each ear. Her hair is knotted with twigs and pine needles, and she’s covered with bruises. She’s five, maybe six years old at the most. A specter of a man stands beside her, a man that does not and could not ever exist, his arm around her shoulder, his hand squeezing tight. Jess squirms, trying to duck out from under him.
    The lights rise to reveal the young man wearing a priest’s robes. He thumbs through a Bible and begins reciting verses in a language that is at once incomprehensible. In fact, it is not a language at all, and what should be words are actually something less than sounds. Jess approaches the young man, pulling on his robes. The young man stops. He looks down at Jess.
    “Daddy, why am I getting married?” Jess asks.
    “Because you’ve grown into a beautiful young woman and that’s what beautiful young women do,” the man replies.
    “But Daddy, I don’t wanna get married now.”
    “Well why not, sweetie pie? If not now, then when?”
    “I wanna run around the kindergarten yard. I wanna pet rollie pollie in a plastic bag. I wanna believe boys have cooties until they get their shots, and I can’t become a famous ballerina if I’m married to him.” She points at the specter, the invisible man. He tries to brush her hair out of her face. Jess flinches away. “Please, Daddy! When I’m older? When I’m grown up?”
    “Oh, but don’t you know? That’s never going to happen, sweet pea. You’re going to be five years old for the rest of your life.”
    “But—”
    “It’s a fact, my sweet darling. It’s a fact, it’s a fact, it’s a fact …”

    I’ M IN J ESS’S BED, MY CLOTHES ICY WITH SWEAT . O NE OF the scabs on the back of my head has bled all over the pillow,smelling brown and tinny. I turn the pillow over even though nobody will notice. A nightmare. Just a nightmare, somebody else’s nightmare , I tell myself, breathing hard. I can’t help dwelling on how small Jess looked, how desperate, existing somewhere in between life and death. Even if she is just a figment, a vestige of something dreamed long ago, I can’t help but feel she deserves better than this, that she deserves family dinners and board games and strolls in the park. I can’t help but be afraid that I’ve done something to cause this.
    I get up from the bed, wiping away any last bits of the memory. I have to become methodical in my actions. Something tells me there’s a logic to this house, a logic that should eventually become decipherable. I take a piece of paper out of my pocket, the one with the list of questions from earlier, and find a sparkly pink gel pen on the dresser. I draw on the back of the paper, a diagram of the rooms that I’ve already visited and the doors that I haven’t opened yet.

    So there are four rooms left to investigate on the first floor, and of course, there’s also a potential for an entire second floor. I say potential because thus far I haven’t found any wayto get up there, no stairs or ladder or anything like that. From the outside of the house, however, it’s clear that there’s at least one more story to explore.
    I decide to start at the furthest end of the hallway and work my way back toward the living room and kitchen. The hardwood floor creaks with each step I take. I notice that the faint yellow walls are lined with empty picture frames. Some of them hang lopsided, as if someone rushed to remove the photographs. Others look like they’ve never been touched in the first place. I half expect the army of marionettes hanging by the front door to untie themselves from the rafters, to begin stalking me around the house. A part of me wonders if the old man is a ghost. I shake the thought out of my head. I’m a scientist. I can’t believe in those sorts of things.
    I turn the peeling lacquered knob to the door at the end of the hall. Nothing. I position my shoulder against the door and