— an anecdote of potpourris.
Tales of Her Punching Bag
What she does to reach the surface.
Silence.
The clock ticks,
ticks,
ticks;
screeching for an answer to fix.
Questions have been asked to seek what has been toying with her mind — playing with her every string. Yet no clue will ever come through.
The lady in white didn’t stop scribbling, even when no answer was ever said. Marching on she kept, with the scribes and questions.
The session always ends the same. A prescription — sometimes renewed — and a pat in the back — sometimes a hug. Three weeks have gone by since they’ve tried a method where it was only them three — the girl, the lady in white, and her chair.
“After all is said and done, what do you turn to, my dear, to release the tension?”
The room was a brimless puddle of silence and the three of them were the castaways — desperately swimming to reach the shores. The clock and all its ticks were nonetheless, the raging storm that angers what once were serene waves.
The girl tried to inhale the oxygen the room had tried to offer, even if it suffocated her lungs and mind altogether. She wanted this to end, just as how she uses every 11:11 to wish for her last breath.
“I’d turn to my punching bag”, the girl said.
“Do you care to elaborate, dear?” her eyes were fixated to the girl’s resting fingers. She was so careful to prevent each of them from picking fights with one another ever again — years worth of coping mechanism the girl had always known. Maybe this ‘punching bag’ deserves a round.
“Mine had two feet, and long hair.” the girl said.
Okay. It’s a person. Not good.
“Her cheeks are rosy. Too shimmering sometimes, from all the tears. No matter how hard I punch her, she would find her way to stand and keeps on asking for more.” she continued.
“She must love you that much” the lady in white said.
“No. She just doesn’t know how to make me stop. All she does is feeding me with more and more energy to hurt her. Some days, I didn’t even swing a single punch”
“Some days, all I needed to do to hurt her was… to search. For all the ways that can rip her open. On some days, I’d mess with her scars and wounds”
“I’ll keep on going until…” the girl paused. For a breath.
“Yes?” the lady asked.
“What was once a scratch now requires stitches.” the girl said, showing no remorse.
“Last question, my dear. Where can I find her?”
The lady in white knows the damage the girl’s capable of. The air soon turned bleak with all the truth surrounding. Drops of sweat drips from her temple, her hand-writing soon began to tangle. Her eyes are still fixated over this being who’s slowly feeding her description of terror — what parents hide their children from at night.
She even thought of a scenario where the girl would leave the room with puzzle-like clues for her to solve, about the whereabouts of this mystery girl who has been hurt over and over again,
just so the deranged can no longer feel pain.
But instead, the girl reached for her pocket,
and laid a mirror
on the lady’s desk.
