A short story that I wrote:
Pieces Falling Into Place
She leaves her pens uncapped 一 ink draining, at the top of her table. The mountain of terror, she calls it. Piles and piles of arbitrary trinkets topped onto each other, creating a mountain of terror. She puts away the things she doesn’t deem important to that mountain.
The pale green gradually faded away from her once painted nails. The sides were chipped, leaving blank spaces of emptiness. Each ten of her fingernails were different shapes. Some a perfect crescent moon, the others a bumpy road. She has a bad habit of biting her fingernails when she’s stressed.
Brown hair rest atop of her head 一 vaguely similar to a cinnamon bun. Strands falling to the side of her face, as if she didn’t care the icing was melting from the cinnamon bun. She pretends that she doesn’t care, maybe she doesn’t. Who cares? If she doesn’t care, then others wouldn’t too, right?
A wide-grin is positioned at the bottom of her face. Sometimes it’s fake;sometimes it’s real. She’s having a hard time telling the difference between the two nowadays. All she knows is that it has to be there because if not, questions will be thrown in her way. Besides, it’s not too hard. She has lived this way her whole life, why stop now?
Under the table, her leg bounces up and down. Up and down. Up and down. For what? She’s got no clue. Recently, her heart has been pounding 134 beats per minute, thoughts are tangled up in her head, and stomach in knots.
By the time dark takes over light, she’s in her home eating dinner with her loved ones. The dining table is lit, an orange glow casted above them. The aroma of fried garlic wafting around the air. She digs into her food, gets one cup of rice, then another and another to the point her stomach is about to burst. One of them asks her how her day was, she says it’s fine. She talks with them for a while, retelling stories of the events today. After she finishes her story, the conversation averts without so much of a reaction to her story. She nods her head and aligns the spoon and fork on her plate, quietly excusing herself from the table. Although she knows they didn’t hear her because they were too busy debating about the recent political news. It’s okay. She’ll talk to them another day.
Lights closed. Check. Sink turned off. Check. Fire off the stove. Check. She lies down on the pink sheets. Not even a second had gone by until she double checked. Lights closed. Check. Sink turned off. Check. Fire off the stove. Check. Then triple check. Lights closed. Check. Sink turned off. Check. Fire off the stove. Check. This goes on until she’s tired. The light is closed 一 the electricity bill won’t go up. The sink hand is on the left 一 the bathroom won’t overflow. The stove is off 一 the house won’t burn down. She repeats this in her head until she is forced to believe her words. It seems to work, but not entirely. Somehow she finds the power to fight the urge to stand up and check for the nth time.
As she finally lies down on bed, she stares at the blue-light screen 一 way too long for anybody’s liking. People tell her that she should do something more useful in life. “Be like this person,” or “Get up from bed and go outside.” She lets people believe that she’s lazy 一 she is, but in this case it’s not laziness. It’s tiredness. Tiredness from the hurtful comments. Tiredness from being ignored. Tiredness from faking a smile in order to please others. And tiredness from herself.
Dark bags rest under her eyes. She covers them up with as much concealer as possible. At night, she tosses and turns 一 the nerves at the pit of her belly taking over sleep. Psst, You want to know a secret…She’s afraid to sleep. She’s afraid that she’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a newfound discovery.
From outside her room, passerbys would hear the thumping of the bass coming from her speakers. She likes the music because it makes her feel less alone. Distracted even 一 from the thoughts that are pushed to the back of her brain. If you wanted a visual of her brain, just take a look at the mountain of terror. That’s how it is. Problem after problem stacking on top of each other. One single touch and it will fall to pieces 一 she will fall to pieces.
Falling to pieces. Maybe that’s what she has to do. Fall in order to start over. This time transforming into the mountain of beautifulness. Oh, what she would give for that to happen. But, it can’t. She can’t fall into pieces. Why? The answer was simple. She didn’t know if she could put back the pieces together. She didn’t know if she could get back up. So for now, she had to deal.
One single touch. That’s all it took for the pieces to fall. And man, did she fall. Problem after problem tumbling down, drowning her. Her frail arms pushed. Pushed. Pushed. And pushed. Through the swarm of problems that has been weighing down on her. Through the problems that didn’t allow her to breathe. Through the problems that kept her from batting an eyelid at night. For one honest second, she didn’t think that she would make it. But, with one last push she got out. And what she felt was unexpected. Foreign. Because for the first time in a very long time, she inhaled and was able to exhale. A weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She breathed again. And again. She was trying to pinpoint this exact feeling. What was it? Hope? Happiness? No, she got it. It was freedom. Freedom was what she was feeling.
The dark world around her changed into a burst of various bright colours. She blinked once, twice, and another time. She had forgotten that the world she was placed in wasn’t just black and white. A wave of emotion took over her, a dam broke. She’s crying. But, this time not because of sadness, but happiness and relief. Happiness to see that she was able to pick up the pieces. Relieved because she realized that there’s another world out there, that she wasn’t stuck in that abyss of darkness. She was finally out.
Her vision landed on the mountain of terrors. Ink drying out from her uncapped pens 一 the sight made her frown, the pens were just like her. She grabbed the caps, popping each of them on, saving the pens before they’re gone. She looked at her chipped nails 一 the blank spaces bothered her, she poured acetone into a cotton pad, erasing away the emptiness and filling it up with yellow. Her hair flops down on her head, seeming though it has given up on it’s fight. She washes it and pulls it up into a slicked back ponytail. She stares at the mirror, there’s a glow to it. And weirdly enough, there was a bright smile on it. This time, she knew. She knew it was real.