MARLA
ACT I : MARLA’S LONELY NIGHTS
Stuffing her face with the last of the cookies, she sits on her creaky bed, staring at the walls in front of her which seem to be staring right back, looking as eerie and lifeless as her. The uncontrollable rush of thoughts in her mind is akin to paint mixing in water, spreading in all directions but making a chaotic yet beautiful design.
Like always, the mad rush of strange thoughts and ideas, dreams and desire, hope and emotion collide together to reach the paradigm of the storm in her mind: Him.
She chokes on the cookies and the crumbles fall from near the edges of her mouth. Marla was about to spend yet another sleepless night.
ACT II : MARLA’S MUSINGS
Marla sat there with her laptop propped open on the common work table she shared with a handful others, staring into space, as if transfixed with a pole star. Even though she was there in her being, her hips firmly fixed between the two arms of the chair, back leaned and legs stretched; she felt hazy, just about to evaporate in the air, to be sucked in by troposphere.
She gazes intently at the archetypal feminist strutting around in her ripped white shorts. Kara was fair, had a silver stud firmly penetrating the dermis of her nose and lips accentuated with a plum shade lipstain. She walked with the air of a woman who knew that she did not require talent or labour to be accepted in this crazy breed called society; her looks did it all. Her shins did the talking when she needed to be assertive, her butt cheeks peeking through her shorts, rejoicing in the leering gaze of men which confirmed the accomplishment of her mission.
Marla recalls a line uttered by one of her most famous characters ever, the Joker. ‘Desire becomes Surrender. Surrender becomes Power.’ She smiles to herself at this twisted analogy which finds full acceptance in an even more twisted world.
Fidgeting in her chair like she always does when consumed by a powerful thought, Marla wonders if she should really thank the feminists for trying to liberate the woman. Or that the Gods were right in asking the woman to cover up because, oh woman, you indeed are a treacherous creature.
Did not Hamlet say, even to his mother, ‘Frailty, thy name is Woman.’
ACT III : MARLA & THE TRAVEL BUG
If there was something Marla really loved doing, it was traveling. Apart from the novelty offered by the places she went to, she loved the idea of leaving behind all things familiar, like a snake ripping out of its skin to be born again, looking at the world with a fresh pair of eyes. She loved taking a plunge into the unknown because it made her feel alive, unlike the rest of her days where she drowned in caffeine to tolerate the mindless chatter of her colleagues, and the loneliness that jeered at her at the end of the day in her empty apartment, making her crave for the touch and the warmth of the one that got away.
Also, Marla particularly found comfort in solo traveling because withdrawn as she was, she did not want to carry with her even a piece of the world she so longed to escape from. She was easily weary of people who talked about ambition, money and responsibilities because she did not want to belong to this ‘real’ world that was thrust upon her. Rather, she dreamt of a world where there was little to be chased and much to be enjoyed. To lie on the grass with her beloved, gazing at the stars, resting her head on his chest and feeling safer than she ever felt in her whole life. She would make love to him till the break of dawn and they would walk back to their cottage, hand in hand; with her bearing the smell of both his perfume and manliness and him with a fire in her loins as well as his heart.
Traveling to places far and wide made her believe, if only for a moment, that she could escape the make-believe world amassed with zombies and blood-sucking vampires who were unaware of the death of their souls and blindly worshiping their murderers- the asshole bosses, the governments, the momentous routine and the goddamn devil that was money. She was terrified that she would turn into one of them soon if she didn’t do something soon. Thus, she planned her escape.
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