The Return
“Where your fear is, there is your task,” Carl Jung.
THE RETURN: March 2018
Rusty door hinges squawked as Chloe Masters tiptoed into her childhood home. Through the dimness, she saw black mold crawling the walls and flies swarming appliances made decades before the digital revolution.
Back in third grade, she scampered in this room to find her mother sitting on the couch, waxy and slack jawed. A bug buzzed in her shimmering eye.
She shuddered.
Now she looked upward into a gaping maw with twinkling teeth. She realized she was peering through the ceiling, looking at the stars in an ebony sky.
She jolted, pivoting toward the sick sweet smell of that old honeysuckle perfume.
“MOM??!!”
***
Mom stood framed in the doorway. At a ten-foot distance, that floral house dress was still vibrant with cartoon bees perched on yellow daisies. As a baby, Chloe touched the bug wings with her chubby finger as she counted them, “One, two, free.”
Her old toes gripped Dr. Scholl’s sandals. Uncomfortable and clunky, those wood blocks with blue plastic straps marched themselves into obsolescence long ago. Dad had joked, “Your feet are hanging on for dear life, Hannah.” Little Chloe clapped when he…
