Flash Fiction
Apparition
Loved ones note her reluctance to let the past go. Living in the past, she ignores the present and frequently mentions fond memories. Fond memories are interwoven with less pleasant ones but she only dwells on the good.
For a while, she sleeps fitfully. A year passes. At 7 AM on a Monday in early July, she springs up utterly horrified. She thought she knew what she was doing. She was in control of her life, for once. The realization slowly dawns on her. The air is suffocating. The mid-summer heat is sweltering, even indoors. She lifts her head from the desk she must have fallen asleep on the previous night.
Sticky sweat breaks out, forming larger and larger beads on her forehead. Awake and fully aware of being a shell, a ghost, broken, is too much to bear. Cleaved apart, laid bare, and left to rot. One part of her is composed, the other is manic, and another is so very confused. Who has she become. Who is she. Not who she wants to be! Far from it. She reaches one milestone closer to perfection and hurdles unexpectedly crop up.
Over the past year, she tracked personal growth markers she mentally mapped out. She isn’t a child anymore. Not a girl but a woman. She hardly feels. She stands up for herself. She doesn’t take crap from anyone and has established boundaries she won’t hesitate to enforce. Steeling herself took effort and now, she is as tough as can be.
She gets to the bathroom and washes up to start the day. Next, coffee. She pours purified water and spoons grounds into the machine on the kitchen counter. She presses the button for it to brew her favorite medium roast. Grabbing a mug, she fills it with coffee until it is nearly overflowing. On her phone, she turns on her café playlist and raises the volume, all the while taking tiny sips of piping hot coffee. The strength and heat of it simultaneously comfort her and make her alert.
Other than drinking mug after mug of coffee, she doesn’t eat much. Her cheeks are sunken in. Her eyes, blank bottomless ones which look right through a person. It’s obvious she is wasting away. She resembles a hollowed-out corpse. She hasn’t any life left in her and her appetite has gone. She despises herself. She’s not living in the now and can’t find any joy in her days. Seconds, hours, and days drag on forever. Her mind is a dark labyrinth where evils lurk in search of prey.
Her first heartbreak initiated what had been the most painful time in her life. From that point on, she decided it isn’t so bad being alone and free to do whatever she sets her mind to. Truthfully, belonging feels like a cage. Safe and comfortable, perhaps. But a cage, still.
No, no. In comparison to that, it must be better to have no one. Better to be alone than fumbling around and forced to conform, misunderstood by all. If she has to fall for another person, just to have them underestimate and give up on her when she starts opening up, for the umpteenth time, she will crack and dissolve away into ashes. A nameless discarded nothing. Used up with little left inside. Having to start from scratch once again. This time, no seconds spared for anyone save herself, committed to no one but herself.
