14. IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
The house has an itch. A phantom scab. The air is heavy.
Something is holding its breath. The last time the house felt this unsettling sentiment, it was haunted momentarily by the ghost of a wandering girl.
Even though she was a ghost, she snuck in through the roof, climbing up the side of the house, crawling above, causing bumps in the night.
From the ceiling, she launched herself into the hallway, landing on all fours like a tiny kitten.
The ghost girl was temporary. She was a visitor.
The house witnessed her departure up a shining spiral staircase.
A gigantic gray and glowing humanoid with thousands of blinking eyes lined up its spine led her toward a light and she was gone in mere seconds.
The itch was back. An ache. As though the house caught an illness.
It was a sunny morning when the house convulsed into a three-bedroom home.
Pain fluctuated through the walls of the house like contractions.
Wallpaper peeled. Linoleum tiles came undone and curled at the corners in the bathrooms. The house wanted to moan in dismay but had no way to do so.
It shivered and shook the garden and the oaks swayed from side to side.
Creatures scurried away. Dust clouds blossomed and the sun shone down on the particles, making a halo.
The roof tingled with a prickling pain. This new eruption, this new room, was writhing with immense roots of ancient trees and patches of electric green moss.
Thick emerald vines and multiple varieties of flowers bloomed and decayed within minutes.
Dancing lady orchids. Yellow trumpet lilies.
Gold flame honeysuckle. Mountain hydrangeas.
The new room filled with flora as though all the room needed to do was think about what it wanted inside and then, poof, there it was.
The house sensed as the room reached further and deeper with its own roots, entangling with the roots in the surrounding area.
The house was an umbilical connection to this entity.
The house wanted to understand such an invasion, but the pain spoke as violence.
As barbarity. The house dreamed of fire.
It dreamed of meteors hitting the earth and landing on this new room, destroying everything growing and dying inside.
It took three months of sleepless nights for the house to accept the fate of Mother.
A fever dream mother. A holy mother. A house capable of unending sorrow.
A house capable of immaculate conception. She named her child, The Inflorescence.