ElvenAngel
I forget stuff because I had to make room in my he
I dabble in short stories occasionally, mostly since college, when I analyzed such stories for breakfast D:
This is a story that describes depression but you'll be surprised to find I was rather chipper when I wrote it. ._.
---
She lies in bed for almost another hour after waking up. The bed is cold, the room is chilly and lonely like a stray dog. She hugs the pillow, staring at the gloomy light creeping through the dull curtains. It’s cloudy outside and she’s woken up before the alarm clock, wondering if she even slept at all. She lets go of the pillow and turns over on her back. Now she faces the ceiling, idle white-wash with a tiny crack near the corner—she needs to have that looked at; another worry.
A sigh. Her chest rises and sinks.
Without thinking about it she gets up. Her feet shudder at the sudden contact with the cold floor. She should have worn pajamas. A shirt doesn’t cut it anymore, it’s the middle of the winter, but every day feels the same: Humid, cold and gloomy. She looks at herself in the mirror of the bathroom.
The face of an insomniac—or just someone who hasn’t slept. She looks sedated and quite like a zombie from one of those low-budget films where the zombies wear very heavy make-up and move like robots. She can only look at herself for so long before she ducks over the faucet and washes her face, her body protesting at the repeated assaults from cold things, first the floor, then the air outside her room, now the tap water. The frozen water numbs her fingers. She drinks greedily. Even after this supposedly refreshing start she still functions like a machine, her brain still groggy. When she turns off the faucet she leans over the counter and watches water drip from her nose and chin and vanishing down the drain.
Like her brain every day, she thinks.
She brushes her teeth mechanically, in the same way that she brushes her hair into some obedience and ties them into a clumsy ponytail. She hates the term ‘ponytail’. Horsetail sounds true to her and suits her better too—she’s never been a ‘pony’. She slips on cotton pants but doesn’t change her shirt. It’s warm and has the essence of sleep on it and feels comfortable. People greatly underestimate the value of cotton shirts.
The next moment she realizes she’s in the crammed, dreary little kitchen, taking care of her two biggest needs: Cigarette and coffee, in that order. She lights the first smoke of the day over the coffee-maker pot. She draws in some smoke and feels a bitter, familiar flavor in her mouth. Smoke fills her and wakes her up. Then coffee—coffee gives her a tiny amount of energy, black with minimal sugar. She sits in a kitchen chair in the gray monochrome light, idly smoking and drinking coffee, like a machine.
She’s hungry and gets up to make toast.
Toast is a very peculiar piece of food, completely plain and humble yet veritable and aristocratic in its lack of pretense and lack of particular taste. Toast tastes like toast and that is the end of it.
The phone rings while she stands over the toaster, mulling over thoughts about her affairs. She answers—it’s mother. A rather dry hello, a comment of surprise to find her awake so early (mother doesn’t know that she’s hardly slept) and a typical query about her health. Then she cuts to the chase:
“When are you coming home, dear?”
She knows that what mother means is ‘When are you going to drop that nonsense you’ve been up to and come home to work?’
Mother doesn’t approve. Father doesn’t forgive. Neither of them can accept. Both think she has failed. Both think she is crazy. They want her to go home so they may control her—for her own good, so to say.
She repeats the routine of these calls; idly listening to mother’s preaching about her studies drawing long, about how her useless cousin got married (well, congratulations to her) while she wastes time dreaming. She just concedes in a hollow, soulless way that mother doesn’t like. Mother gets weary. They say goodbye in mutually calm, cordial ways—she tells mother that she loves her. This is true—she can’t help it. They both hang up.
The toast is good. Not too hot, the butter just melting on the crust. It goes well with her cooling coffee. She thinks as she eats; it’s been a while since she left home—ran away almost—for fear, for freedom, to piss them off, to challenge them all.
Her ‘go to hell’ moment, 8 years too late. Her self-exile is a prison and freedom together. She can work freely and rest between her job and her studies. Her work is everything. But her work is also capricious. It comes and goes, there when she can’t attend to it properly, absent when she needs it. Frustrations, frustrations, frustrations…
She lights another cigarette, another wisp of smoke; a few more dead cells. She ponders her work in the kitchen, only the ticking clock on the wall rolling out in the silence of the room. She must resolve a situation formed, but what to do?
What to do…
What to do…
She spends a long time there, just thinking of her next actions. She must plan carefully or it’ll be an embarrassment. She turns on the telly. The news-cast is on and she watches, having nothing better to do. Politics leave her uninterested, economy is the same as yesterday (in the gutters) and there is nothing that she cares about in the gossip. She becomes interested on the report of an accident involving a school-bus. Dead children, that sends a chill down her spine. For all her apathy and jadedness, that idea of little dead bodies on the road, does touch her.
She turns off the television.
She finally puts out her third cigarette in the ashtray, smothering the butt in rather harshly. She’s annoyed.
The phone rings again. It’s almost midday now. She picks up again. It’s sister. She and Big Sis get along alright, she supposes, they’ve kept each other’s secrets enough.
“How are you? We haven’t talked in a while.”
Big Sis is always calm, level-headed (father says) and quietly successful. She’s a lawyer engaged to a dreamy architect. Big Sis works and earns a modest amount and hasn’t got a care in the world except for the usual, middle-class ones. She tells Big Sis that she’s doing fine—what else can she say?
“Dad said mom called you. Everything alright?”
Father wants to know everything—or mother wants to tell him everything. Father wants her to drop the nonsense, finish studying and be like Big Sis: Making money, lots of money, knowing people, important people, hanging of the arm of an heir architect. Sacrifice your dream, darling, dreams don’t feed you, dreams don’t line your pockets. Trample on your dream—dreams just keep you from becoming a machine. Do what daddy wants—for your own good.
“I’ll be in town today. Let’s go out for lunch, I’ll buy.”
Lunch with Big Sis is a nice idea; a highlight in a dull day. Big Sis doesn’t judge--worries, most likely, but doesn’t judge. She agrees. They’ll meet at the restaurant, just two sisters meeting for lunch, two worlds colliding. She hangs up, they part cordially. She has to shower.
The water is hot but it feels good. Water sometimes almost feels erotic. She keeps thinking, forming ideas and plans. She doesn’t like them, always going back to the drawing board, so to say, doing them over, trying to put them in words. Nothing works. She’s annoyed.
On her way to the restaurant she doesn’t listen to the ambiance of the world anymore. She’d like to have her iPod on and listen to something better but perhaps it’s for the best that she doesn’t. She can’t be distracted, but she can edit out the noise. Bid Sis is waiting. People come and go, passing by her without making any particular impressions. People are just people, all the same and nothing alike, like ants with no antennae.
She’s there early. Big Sis isn’t there yet. She occupies a table, sitting quietly and waiting, sipping iced tea while she waits and lights another cigarette. People eat and chatter in words idle and disjointed and none of her concern. But she listens, catches words like a bad habit, an eavesdropper.
Big Sis arrives; jostles in, smiling awkwardly and approaches the table. She envies Big Sis, looking pretty without much of an effort—not super-model pretty, just normal, vivacious sorority girl. Big Sis is carrying her day-bag, big, black sturdy thing with a strap like a seat-belt.
Big Sis pulls a chair, sits and puts her back down with a long, content sigh; everything is well in the world. She hears Big Sis’ apology: Traffic, terrible traffic, an accident blocks the main road, a school-bus. Dead children block the road, she thinks, not a bus, their ghosts are gathering and holding people off until they’re done, until they’re done with a life they don’t have, until they’re done dying.
Big Sis remarks that she looks well. She goes through the small talk ritual. She likes this ritual: It makes people comfortable unless it draws out for too long, because they don’t have to mean whatever they say.
“Your studies going well, then?”
Studies are studies, they just go.
“Mum called. She’s quite livid that you didn’t show last week. I told her you were working on that project of yours but you know how she is.”
Of course.
“Not that you really missed anything.”
The usual—she hasn’t been a part of this family in years.
“But don’t you think you should put that in the back seat—just for now?”
Not possible, needs to be done, needs to get out—
“Anyway, don’t worry. You didn’t miss much, really. Just try not to dump your life in the bin for its sake.”
What life? It is my life. It’s my life. You didn’t have one to throw away, that’s why you’re here now, instead of moving people to tears as Desdemona or something.
Small talk is fun. She gives the expected answers, but thinks others, her own answers. Screw you, to everyone, these are private.
They order. Chinese is a pleasant change, an exotic little luxury full of spices and calories for two sisters. Big Sis is going on about her architect. They’re planning a vacation, not sure where, just the two of them. She listens and without realizing, sees Big Sis four years ago, abandoned at nearly the doorstep of the church –so to say- and crying for days. He preferred older beauties with more money. Big Sis is now happy.
She starts to drift off as Big Sis starts about work. She starts to think about all the things she wants to say. What she wants to talk about. What she wants to hear but never can. She thinks about how she’s been stuck for weeks at the same spot. They go through lunch that way.
“What do you plan to do with it, by the way?”
She lights another cigarette, after her plate is empty. There’s no real plan with this sort of thing. It isn’t something you can just toss out into the world.
“You need to settle out what you’ll do.”
Big Sis talks as if she doesn’t know what her dream, her desire is.
She doesn’t reply, just thinks that Big Sis sounds like mother. Not yet like father, mercifully. That’d be a disaster for everyone, especially for the architect.
She takes another draw from her cigarette, not listening to Big Sis’ comments on her job and money: Nothing of interest to reply to, really. She’s had quite enough. Big Sis just sides with mother. What she does is childish, they agree, her work is meaningless because it doesn’t mean anything for her future.
But the future—what is that, really? Isn’t it merely the idea of moments to come, the concept of time yet to pass? The future never comes, it’s always the future and it doesn’t care what people do now, it’s still going to be there and always be the same. The present is here, though, and it matters, it matters a lot.
She gets up, puts out the cigarette and tells Big Sis that she has work to do. Big Sis protests but she walks out of the restaurant, feeling oddly relieved yet still burdened down. Her way home is the same, empty faces in crowded streets.
Home is quiet, a sanctuary, nest and cell all together. She goes through the motions to make coffee but changes her mind as soon as the water boils and makes cocoa instead. She changes, cotton pants, cotton shirt—the soft fabric is good, people greatly undermine the greatness of cotton. She settles down at the computer. She holds the warm mug in her hand; the warmth soothes her tightened muscles all over. She opens a document to continue writing.
Chapter Thirteen, she writes, and waits for ideas on how she will start this one.
This is a story that describes depression but you'll be surprised to find I was rather chipper when I wrote it. ._.
---
“The Creative Process”
A sigh. Her chest rises and sinks.
Without thinking about it she gets up. Her feet shudder at the sudden contact with the cold floor. She should have worn pajamas. A shirt doesn’t cut it anymore, it’s the middle of the winter, but every day feels the same: Humid, cold and gloomy. She looks at herself in the mirror of the bathroom.
The face of an insomniac—or just someone who hasn’t slept. She looks sedated and quite like a zombie from one of those low-budget films where the zombies wear very heavy make-up and move like robots. She can only look at herself for so long before she ducks over the faucet and washes her face, her body protesting at the repeated assaults from cold things, first the floor, then the air outside her room, now the tap water. The frozen water numbs her fingers. She drinks greedily. Even after this supposedly refreshing start she still functions like a machine, her brain still groggy. When she turns off the faucet she leans over the counter and watches water drip from her nose and chin and vanishing down the drain.
Like her brain every day, she thinks.
She brushes her teeth mechanically, in the same way that she brushes her hair into some obedience and ties them into a clumsy ponytail. She hates the term ‘ponytail’. Horsetail sounds true to her and suits her better too—she’s never been a ‘pony’. She slips on cotton pants but doesn’t change her shirt. It’s warm and has the essence of sleep on it and feels comfortable. People greatly underestimate the value of cotton shirts.
The next moment she realizes she’s in the crammed, dreary little kitchen, taking care of her two biggest needs: Cigarette and coffee, in that order. She lights the first smoke of the day over the coffee-maker pot. She draws in some smoke and feels a bitter, familiar flavor in her mouth. Smoke fills her and wakes her up. Then coffee—coffee gives her a tiny amount of energy, black with minimal sugar. She sits in a kitchen chair in the gray monochrome light, idly smoking and drinking coffee, like a machine.
She’s hungry and gets up to make toast.
Toast is a very peculiar piece of food, completely plain and humble yet veritable and aristocratic in its lack of pretense and lack of particular taste. Toast tastes like toast and that is the end of it.
The phone rings while she stands over the toaster, mulling over thoughts about her affairs. She answers—it’s mother. A rather dry hello, a comment of surprise to find her awake so early (mother doesn’t know that she’s hardly slept) and a typical query about her health. Then she cuts to the chase:
“When are you coming home, dear?”
She knows that what mother means is ‘When are you going to drop that nonsense you’ve been up to and come home to work?’
Mother doesn’t approve. Father doesn’t forgive. Neither of them can accept. Both think she has failed. Both think she is crazy. They want her to go home so they may control her—for her own good, so to say.
She repeats the routine of these calls; idly listening to mother’s preaching about her studies drawing long, about how her useless cousin got married (well, congratulations to her) while she wastes time dreaming. She just concedes in a hollow, soulless way that mother doesn’t like. Mother gets weary. They say goodbye in mutually calm, cordial ways—she tells mother that she loves her. This is true—she can’t help it. They both hang up.
The toast is good. Not too hot, the butter just melting on the crust. It goes well with her cooling coffee. She thinks as she eats; it’s been a while since she left home—ran away almost—for fear, for freedom, to piss them off, to challenge them all.
Her ‘go to hell’ moment, 8 years too late. Her self-exile is a prison and freedom together. She can work freely and rest between her job and her studies. Her work is everything. But her work is also capricious. It comes and goes, there when she can’t attend to it properly, absent when she needs it. Frustrations, frustrations, frustrations…
She lights another cigarette, another wisp of smoke; a few more dead cells. She ponders her work in the kitchen, only the ticking clock on the wall rolling out in the silence of the room. She must resolve a situation formed, but what to do?
What to do…
What to do…
She spends a long time there, just thinking of her next actions. She must plan carefully or it’ll be an embarrassment. She turns on the telly. The news-cast is on and she watches, having nothing better to do. Politics leave her uninterested, economy is the same as yesterday (in the gutters) and there is nothing that she cares about in the gossip. She becomes interested on the report of an accident involving a school-bus. Dead children, that sends a chill down her spine. For all her apathy and jadedness, that idea of little dead bodies on the road, does touch her.
She turns off the television.
She finally puts out her third cigarette in the ashtray, smothering the butt in rather harshly. She’s annoyed.
The phone rings again. It’s almost midday now. She picks up again. It’s sister. She and Big Sis get along alright, she supposes, they’ve kept each other’s secrets enough.
“How are you? We haven’t talked in a while.”
Big Sis is always calm, level-headed (father says) and quietly successful. She’s a lawyer engaged to a dreamy architect. Big Sis works and earns a modest amount and hasn’t got a care in the world except for the usual, middle-class ones. She tells Big Sis that she’s doing fine—what else can she say?
“Dad said mom called you. Everything alright?”
Father wants to know everything—or mother wants to tell him everything. Father wants her to drop the nonsense, finish studying and be like Big Sis: Making money, lots of money, knowing people, important people, hanging of the arm of an heir architect. Sacrifice your dream, darling, dreams don’t feed you, dreams don’t line your pockets. Trample on your dream—dreams just keep you from becoming a machine. Do what daddy wants—for your own good.
“I’ll be in town today. Let’s go out for lunch, I’ll buy.”
Lunch with Big Sis is a nice idea; a highlight in a dull day. Big Sis doesn’t judge--worries, most likely, but doesn’t judge. She agrees. They’ll meet at the restaurant, just two sisters meeting for lunch, two worlds colliding. She hangs up, they part cordially. She has to shower.
The water is hot but it feels good. Water sometimes almost feels erotic. She keeps thinking, forming ideas and plans. She doesn’t like them, always going back to the drawing board, so to say, doing them over, trying to put them in words. Nothing works. She’s annoyed.
On her way to the restaurant she doesn’t listen to the ambiance of the world anymore. She’d like to have her iPod on and listen to something better but perhaps it’s for the best that she doesn’t. She can’t be distracted, but she can edit out the noise. Bid Sis is waiting. People come and go, passing by her without making any particular impressions. People are just people, all the same and nothing alike, like ants with no antennae.
She’s there early. Big Sis isn’t there yet. She occupies a table, sitting quietly and waiting, sipping iced tea while she waits and lights another cigarette. People eat and chatter in words idle and disjointed and none of her concern. But she listens, catches words like a bad habit, an eavesdropper.
Big Sis arrives; jostles in, smiling awkwardly and approaches the table. She envies Big Sis, looking pretty without much of an effort—not super-model pretty, just normal, vivacious sorority girl. Big Sis is carrying her day-bag, big, black sturdy thing with a strap like a seat-belt.
Big Sis pulls a chair, sits and puts her back down with a long, content sigh; everything is well in the world. She hears Big Sis’ apology: Traffic, terrible traffic, an accident blocks the main road, a school-bus. Dead children block the road, she thinks, not a bus, their ghosts are gathering and holding people off until they’re done, until they’re done with a life they don’t have, until they’re done dying.
Big Sis remarks that she looks well. She goes through the small talk ritual. She likes this ritual: It makes people comfortable unless it draws out for too long, because they don’t have to mean whatever they say.
“Your studies going well, then?”
Studies are studies, they just go.
“Mum called. She’s quite livid that you didn’t show last week. I told her you were working on that project of yours but you know how she is.”
Of course.
“Not that you really missed anything.”
The usual—she hasn’t been a part of this family in years.
“But don’t you think you should put that in the back seat—just for now?”
Not possible, needs to be done, needs to get out—
“Anyway, don’t worry. You didn’t miss much, really. Just try not to dump your life in the bin for its sake.”
What life? It is my life. It’s my life. You didn’t have one to throw away, that’s why you’re here now, instead of moving people to tears as Desdemona or something.
Small talk is fun. She gives the expected answers, but thinks others, her own answers. Screw you, to everyone, these are private.
They order. Chinese is a pleasant change, an exotic little luxury full of spices and calories for two sisters. Big Sis is going on about her architect. They’re planning a vacation, not sure where, just the two of them. She listens and without realizing, sees Big Sis four years ago, abandoned at nearly the doorstep of the church –so to say- and crying for days. He preferred older beauties with more money. Big Sis is now happy.
She starts to drift off as Big Sis starts about work. She starts to think about all the things she wants to say. What she wants to talk about. What she wants to hear but never can. She thinks about how she’s been stuck for weeks at the same spot. They go through lunch that way.
“What do you plan to do with it, by the way?”
She lights another cigarette, after her plate is empty. There’s no real plan with this sort of thing. It isn’t something you can just toss out into the world.
“You need to settle out what you’ll do.”
Big Sis talks as if she doesn’t know what her dream, her desire is.
She doesn’t reply, just thinks that Big Sis sounds like mother. Not yet like father, mercifully. That’d be a disaster for everyone, especially for the architect.
She takes another draw from her cigarette, not listening to Big Sis’ comments on her job and money: Nothing of interest to reply to, really. She’s had quite enough. Big Sis just sides with mother. What she does is childish, they agree, her work is meaningless because it doesn’t mean anything for her future.
But the future—what is that, really? Isn’t it merely the idea of moments to come, the concept of time yet to pass? The future never comes, it’s always the future and it doesn’t care what people do now, it’s still going to be there and always be the same. The present is here, though, and it matters, it matters a lot.
She gets up, puts out the cigarette and tells Big Sis that she has work to do. Big Sis protests but she walks out of the restaurant, feeling oddly relieved yet still burdened down. Her way home is the same, empty faces in crowded streets.
Home is quiet, a sanctuary, nest and cell all together. She goes through the motions to make coffee but changes her mind as soon as the water boils and makes cocoa instead. She changes, cotton pants, cotton shirt—the soft fabric is good, people greatly undermine the greatness of cotton. She settles down at the computer. She holds the warm mug in her hand; the warmth soothes her tightened muscles all over. She opens a document to continue writing.
Chapter Thirteen, she writes, and waits for ideas on how she will start this one.