Proof

Preface: This is a short story based off of the play "Proof" by David Auburn. We had to do a style project where we mimicked another artist's style. I picked Edgar Allen Poe.

You must believe that it was not me who made myself mad. No, in fact, it was the haunting, invisible presence that kept itself deep within the walls of my dead father’s house. Ah, you do not believe me? Allow me to elaborate…

Deep within my father’s sprawling mansion, there was a walled, windowless sitting room. I dwelled among its dusty shelves full of archaic volumes and the moth-eaten cushions. Cobwebs hung loose from angled corners that were never cleaned. I was too enthralled by my father’s abandoned mathematic notebooks. I drowned in the dim lamplight and wrapped my fingers around the rumpled pages ever hour I could spare. Ah, those numbers brought new life to my being! The voice of my father presented itself before my fevered eyes, between my straining ears. Soft murmurs passed my lips, but I could not remember willing them to move at all. Harsh, discordant whispers sounded as I recalled back what I read until the whispers did not pass through my lips at all. They merely rang about my form, rebounding off the wooden shelves, muted by withered covers, crackling through the chipped, wounded plaster. Ah! Father! You speak! Yet I was terribly frightened. Foreign voices ringing through my head was, I knew, proof of madness.

Ah, you can see now how sane I am! I even had enough conscience to diagnose my own madness! I do know, of course, that you believe I am mentally stable. It is in this confidence that I tell you – my father returned from the dead.

A luminous bulb in the sitting room was covered with a deep purple shade that cast eerie shadows that reached desperately across the room’s barren floor. The wooden clock on the wall chimed the twelfth hour of the night and I swiveled my eyes away from the tattered page to glance upon its ticking face, but it was my father’s wizened face that met me instead. Eyes like black pebbles pushed back into his flesh melted by age. His clothing was worn and hung loosely from his gaunt, emaciated frame. His smile curled the drooping corners of his lips and pulled his pale skin taught over his skull. And then he spoke, “My dear,” his voice echoed strangely as his whispers had done so often before, “You forgot your birthday!” The man proceeded to procure a bottle of aged wine!

There was immense joy in seeing my father alive again, but there was a fever buried among that intense euphoria. Ever night as the clock struck midnight, he would appear. Yet every time the apparition vanished, I was taken be an extreme sickness; a certain need; and unquenchable thirst to complete by being. On the seventh night, as my father disappeared, it took me completely.

The blood that pumped so viciously through my webbing veins boiled furiously and caused my hand to seize up around the closest pen. The sinew in my fingers stood in sharp relief as my hand, moved by some unseen force, grabbed the nearest, empty notebook. I willed myself to stop only in the confines of my fragile mind, yet my father’s spirit was too strong in me. Those discernable whispers grew around me: faster, louder as they echoed inside my heated skull. The pen, held so tightly it hurt, wrote a myriad of letters, numbers, and symbols upon the page in sharp, curt strokes. Like knife-slashes, they produced black blood upon the page. The stretching shadows over the floor flickered like the flames of hell itself to my wild eyes. Demons! Demons writing in pain! Oh glorious masterpiece! Beautiful genius! My father gripped me like crushing iron as my body gesticulated in fits of passion! Oh! Oh!

But then it ended. The pen fell to the desk: a discarded murder weapon. The page dried, finished, but I had never felt so whole. The Proof before me – that beautiful Proof – was now the center of my very soul. My father, his legacy, held me – nay, bound me – by that simple Proof. It was my masterpiece and my reason for existence. Ah! To be whole!

As I lay back in my chair to bask in the feeling of utter completion, there came an ominous knock upon the front door. I, of course, did not rise to answer it, but the latched clicked open anyway. A tall, awkward man came striding into my territory. His face was obscured by the flickering shadows, yet I recognized him (or perhaps my father did) as a former student, Hal.

“What do you want?” I snapped.

“Only to collect a few of your father’s manuscripts. It’s Catherine, yes?”
I nodded. My father’s steady murmurs implored me to relax as he collected a few books lying around; including the one contained my masterpiece. I watched his eyes flicker over the dried ink, looking aghast, “Who wrote this?” He asked.

“I did.” I answered bitterly.

“It’s in your father’s notebook in your father’s own script.” His tone was laced with apprehension as his eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. My own eyes burned – seethed – with indignant rage. I felt another hysteric sickness growing within the depths of my beating heart. This man, this wretched man, could surely not be insinuating doubt upon my precious Proof! I, being so perfectly capable, gave him another chance:

“You do not believe me?” I growled. How dare he doubt my very existence! My very soul!

“No.” That simple answer unleashed the demonic torrent within me. He doubted my very being! The center of my universe! My masterpiece! Once again, I failed to control my movements as I lunged for the pen lying harmlessly upon the table. Snarling, I took the implement to the side of his swollen neck, tensed from the pressure of his incomprehensible screaming. Floods of blood dribbled to the carpet. Ah! The blood! Pooling around the floor! Flowing like ink! Oh!
His labored panting fell silent as he collapsed upon the floorboards with a muted thud. My own masterpiece was spared any splatters from the sanguine attack as I clutched it to my heaving bosom.

The stand lamp in the corner flickered, beating back the shadows to illuminate the grotesque scene. Blood framed the pallid corpse like a ruddy halo. The body would not be disposed of, for its sprawling limbs lay at such beautiful angles, but something must be done! The police would surely want evidence! Proof! Ah…Proof! With tedious care I arranged my father’s abandoned notebooks around the still body. Proof! The watchmen would find plenty of that, now! It is, after all, what Hal had wanted! The proofs! A wry chuckle slipped through my curled lips at my own genius. I, myself, would show that genius to the world.