Everything ends, don’t you know?
It’s going to rain. I can already feel the moisture, heavy in the air; it’s a far more accurate indication than the ugly looking clouds blanketing the sky. More accurate than the smartphone widget that seems convinced that we’re in damn Birmingham, or anyplace other than Atlanta.
A light breeze kicks up, gently shaking the branches forming a completely ineffective shelter over my head. A few stray flower petals break free, nestling in my hair; I might pick them out later, or leave them.
“One of these days, I’d like flowers. Or just one.”
Sitting out in the rain is stupid. It’s stupid, because you get wet, and your shit gets wet, and if that shit includes your cellphone then you have to spend three hours at an AT&T store contemplating murder to get it replaced. It is a great way to indicate that you don’t give a shit anymore, though, aside from outright stating it. Sometimes I want to do that. Just drop everything on the train, stand up, and shout it, scream it, waving my hands above my head like a psychopath, anything to get my fucking point across.
“When did you stop giving a shit? You were never this goddamn apathetic.”
It’s not real unless someone hears you say it. How can someone tell that you’re ignoring them if you don’t outright tell them “I’m ignoring you”? People are stupid, dense little creatures. We don’t know how to read between the lines anymore, figuring out the meaning of a gesture or statement using context and previously derived information. You have to spell things out for people, these days. How will I know that you don’t give a shit anymore, if you don’t tell me? Trust me — I’m not as good at reading people as I say I am.
“I don’t give up that easily. I want to keep trying.”
The dark clouds have been replaced with darker ones, and the world around me is eerily silent and still. No birds conversing among themselves, no bees drifting just close enough to me to set my nerves on edge. A faint, barely audible rumbling announces that some miles away the rain has begun its descent. Not wanting to be outdone, the wind picks up, dislodging more soft white petals.
They ring my head, like a crown. I probably look beautiful, in this moment.
I’ve always liked flowers.
“One day.”
Nothing lasts forever, which is something they should really start telling you earlier in school. Before you grow up and don’t get asked to prom, or spend prom night in the hospital when your appendix goes rogue on you, while your friends drink from flasks hidden in shiny, puffy dresses and prowl the corners of the city, being young and uninhibited together. Before the disappointment sets in, and you find yourself, twentysomething years later, sitting under a tree, holding your cellphone while a thunderstorm threatens to loose itself overhead.
Huh. Sitting under a tree during a thunderstorm is probably the second worst idea I’ve ever had.
Doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere.
“You’re stubborn. I like that about you.”
A few fat raindrops splatter across the screen of my cellphone, as a large clap of thunder reverberates through the sea of ugly clouds above. With a deep sigh, I push the off button for good, feeling a slight pang of loss as the closing animation fades. Of all the phones I’ve had, this one has been my favorite.
I bow my head, holding one of the petals that works itself from my tangled locks in my hands like an offering. To whom, I’m not sure.
More thunder. It won’t be long now.
The particulars of Lucy’s world are, after only four weeks of college, just barely defined, but her life has settled into somewhat of a loose pattern.
Three days out of the week, she zips back and forth over campus for classes and their respective labs or study groups. Computer science is challenging, but the thrill of excitement Lucy feels when a piece of code yields actual results instead of an error (or, in some cases, completely crashing her laptop altogether) is worth striving for in her book. The other courses are basically just filler, core classes needed to fill her major’s requirements. British Literature would be fun if her professor wasn’t a short, wiry woman from Brooklyn that appears to hate her students passionately, and Chemistry is no longer the chemical-mixing controlled explosion-containing joyride it was in high school.
The other two days of the week are less structured than the rest. She has yet to actually join any organizations on campus, and she most certainly hasn’t developed a group of friends to spend the time with. Tuesdays and Fridays are mostly devoted to catching up on the sleep she’s missed, studying, and people-watching from one of the various benches dotting the landscape. Occasionally she wastes several hours catching up with friends from earlier points in her life online, either chatting or laying waste to generic monsters in some free MMO.
Usually the weekends are spent visiting her family, regaling her younger siblings with tales of the students who’ve already taken advantage of their newfound freedom to the fullest. The girl in a freshman dorm across campus who’s already on probation for having stored an entire party’s worth of beer in her room. The guy who changes his hair color every week — green to orange to purple, and back to green again. The one or two professors who spit profanity more than their students, bitter at having to teach when they’re really more invested in research. Allie and Danny cover their small faces with their hands, laughing uproariously while her mother shakes her head. And of course, once the twins have gone to bed, she rattles off prefabricated answers to the litany of questions her parents ply her with, every time. Are you eating well, are you using your meal plan, you’re not skipping classes are you, are you taking your pills every night, they can’t help if you don’t…
When she doesn’t go home for the weekend, she stays in her room and watches Ilena (who never goes home) water the plants in the morning, humming lightly to herself with her beautiful hair trailing behind her. There are always words on the tip of her tongue, a simple question — “Do you want to hang out?” Anything else sounds a little too forward, too familiar, and although Ilena is friendly Lucy doesn’t know nearly enough about her to risk offending her somehow.
But the words never leave their resting place, and those weekends are passed in quiet companionship (broken from time to time by Ilena initiating conversation or one of them leaving to visit the dining hall) that’s almost as good as spending time together elsewhere. Either way, the experience leaves Lucy perfectly content.
The body sliding along the wall grips at the weathered brick clumsily, in a piss poor attempt to hold itself up.
Blank eyes flutter beneath matted hair, taking in nothing; it is not sight that pulls the shell towards its target, but a cloying, unbearably intense aroma blooming in its nostrils.
Hunched over as the creature is, paired with its assuming stature, the people that still litter the streets even as the night inches on towards daybreak pay it no mind. There are bums, beggars, the invisible homeless folded into corners of the city at all hours of the day; why should the night yield any less?
Pale lips form what may or may not be fragments of words senselessly as the body chuckles to itself, shuffling forward in an unwieldy manner that suggests either one severely shaken by a night of heavy drinking, or a reanimated corpse. Ducking into the shadows that obscure an alley besides a bar overflowing with rowdy fratboys and girls in dresses that hug their bodies like vibrant second skins, the creature waits. It won’t be long now.
Its patience is rewarded but a few minutes later when a young man in his late twenties stumbles out onto the pavement amidst the sounds of young people reveling in their lowered inhibitions together. He coughs, blearily scanning the street for a modicum of privacy, and notices the narrow alley running alongside the building. Without further hesitation the man rushes towards the cover of trash bins and other assorted refuse, supporting himself against the wall while his body rejects the poison he’s been tossing down his throat with abandon all evening in an acrid stream of vomit.
Pale lips part in a ragged gasp, primal need jerking the slack body into motion. The smell of living flesh, rich, warm blood flowing beneath the surface is overpowering.
The young man is too distracted to notice the creature shuffling towards him, but he can’t help but notice when strong hands seize him by the throat, truncating a ragged scream. A flash of impossibly sharp teeth and dark, feverish eyes that gleam in anticipation, and the alley falls still and silent once more.
I missed two days, because I am a wanker. ._.
Lucy is still awake.
She’s dry, now, bundled up beneath her comforter. The clock reads 2:15. The blades of the ceiling fan swish lazily above her head, but the slight amount of breeze the motion produces is provides no comfort. Perspiration glitters on her forehead, sliding down her cheeks to dampen her pillow.
The howling in Lucy’s stomach has settled into a quiet bubbling, although it has yet to recede.
Although her eyelids are heavy, heavy, heavy, she’s apprehensive about giving in. The idea of sleeping tonight worries her, for some reason she can’t quite grasp. It feels wrong.
Actually, everything feels a little off. The faint light from her partially closed laptop is just a little too bright, the curve of the red digits on the clock sinister somehow. She is all too aware of the sensation of the comforter rubbing against her skin, and the dull hum of the air conditioner booming in her ears. How Ilena can sleep so soundly is beyond Lucy. Her roommate’s gentle snore is the only reassuring constant she can find to keep her tethered to reality.
She briefly considers going into the bathroom, where a forgotten bottle of pills that she’s only been taking on spotty basis recently sits innocuously among her toiletries. But the pills make her sleepy, and her college doesn’t really align well with medicines that prevent late night study sessions. Her parents would probably kill her if they knew, but Lucy can only do so much to keep her head above the water.
Still, the reprieve from her anxiety would definitely be appreciated, if she weren’t so scared of catching sight of herself in the bathroom mirror.
Lucy wishes Ilena was awake. It would be nice to have someone’s hand to hold, when things get this bad.
Unable to stand the tension any longer, she curls into a tighter ball of knotted nerves, inching closer to the wall before finally giving in to her body’s desire to rest.
To Lucy, the fluffy white towel in her arms has become somewhat of a sacred object.
It’s much nicer than anything she owns (she’s pretty sure Ilena’s family is quite a bit wealthier than her own), but the gesture is most touching. Many of the girls on their floor in Camden Hall aren’t as nice, and she can only imagine how wretched her situation would be if she’d gotten paired up with one of them. Perhaps her roommate assignment is the only stroke of luck she’s had so far at this school.
Lucy inspects herself in the bathroom mirror, surveying the further damage to her person. Medium brown complexion with a smattering of pimples, perhaps the product of four weeks of continual stress. Shoulder-length brown hair that’s become tangled, looking for all the world like the carcass of some shaggy animal draped over her head. Irises so dark that they appear to be completely black, which has always bothered her, somewhat. She places her hands over her stomach, patting it — the Freshmen 15 is no myth, although Lucy’s never been that skinny to begin with. Of course, there is the problem of the yawning hole that opens up in her stomach every couple of days, demanding a pagan sacrifice of calories that do nothing but settle onto her hips and cause the girls of the sixth floor to grin when she encounters them in the hallway late at night.
Bitches.
Unlike Ilena, who seemingly has no awareness of how unpleasant her floormates can be, and greets Lucy with a smile whenever she arrives ‘home’ first. She’s far more talkative than her roommate, as well, and feels no shame in chatting gaily as if they’re old friends, instead of two people dropped in a small space and ordered to tolerate each other. On the day they moved in, Lucy conceded the side of the room with the large window to Ilena, who promptly filled the sill with small potted plants that she tends to as lovingly as if they were children. Lucy likes to sit and watch her float back and forth, removing dead leaves and applying drops of water here and there. It’s a calming scene, filling her head with air like a balloon and making her feel just a little drowsy.
Thus far their paths haven’t crossed much beyond the four walls of their dorm room; Lucy is one of the few women crazy enough to be undertaking the computer science program while Ilena is, unsurprisingly, majoring in biology. Still, she would like to get to know her roommate better, even if she doesn’t have the courage to act on it.
The rain she predicted earlier comes much sooner than she would like, and Lucy finds herself temporarily distracted from her hunger as she tears along the sidewalk. She is nearly blinded by the ferocity of the downpour; it seems as if the rain is as unimpressed with her truancy as her professors will be.
Lucy may not be the most athletic girl alive, but she can most certainly run when she needs to.
Thankfully her dorm isn’t too far from her ‘secret’ spot near the computer science building, and within five minutes she stops short before slamming into the glass doors of Camden Hall. She keeps her keys on a lanyard around her neck just for this sort of occasion. With a minimal amount of fumbling, the poor girl manages to get into the building just as a thunderclap slams against the side of the resident hall, the courtyard washed in eerie electric blue light.
Even more ideally, the lobby in front of the elevators is completely deserted, so there’s no sets of unfriendly eyes to watch as Lucy drags herself to the elevator, leaving wet, muddy footprints on the thin grey carpet.
Lucy lives on the 6th floor of the residence hall, the very top, and while running up and down the stairs is a great means of exercise she’s in no mood for that kind of thing today.
As she approaches a door decorated with two foil stars that sport her name and that of her roommate, another kind of anxiety takes hold of her, completely unrelated to anything else she’s experiencing at the moment. Like the hunger, she swallows uneasily, in a futile attempt to ignore the disturbance, but it persists, reaching fever pitch as the key turns in the knob and the door swings open…
“Oh, are you okay?” The voice is tinted with a light Hispanic accent; warm brown eyes fixate on her bedraggled state and widen in concern.
The anxiety boils over, and Lucy is rooted to the spot, unable to tear her gaze from her roommate’s lovely face for a moment. Her long black hair is slick against her back, trailing from beneath a damp towel wrapped around her head. It’s clear that Lucy isn’t the only one the storm ambushed.
Feeling incredibly stupid, she merely nods, turning to head to her side of the room so the other young woman doesn’t see the soft blush blooming along her cheekbones.
However, her roommate, Ilena, is terrible at understanding social cues. She leaps up from where she sits, throwing open the cabinet she keeps her clean linen in, and begins to rummage around for another towel. “I hate the weather here,” her voice is muffled. “It’s so unpredictable.”
Lucy shrugs off her knapsack and dumps the contents out on her bed with a heavy sigh. She’s taken to keeping her valuable (electronic) possessions and her wallet in a neoprene sleeve, so there’s little damage there, but the edges of two textbooks and half a notebook are soaked through.
“Here.”
Lucy flinches in surprise, glancing over her shoulder to find Ilena standing behind her, a soft white towel in her hands. At first she appears to be glowing, but it’s merely her complexion.
She tries to wave the gesture off. “It’s okay, I’m fine, really-“
Ilena ignores her protests, draping the towel over her shoulders with a smile. “Just drop it in the bin when you’re finished.”
She withdraws to finish attending to her own disheveled appearance, and Lucy is finally able to breathe once more, watching her curtain of silky hair swish around her hips as she walks. Whether it’s more beautiful when damp and gleaming in the dim light, or fanning out around Ilena’s body in slight waves, she really can’t decide.
Lucy is probably still hungry, but the sheer sense of elation racing throughout her body has crowded out everything unpleasant for the moment.
Lucy wonders why her body has turned rogue on her.
She lays back against the remnants of what might’ve been a stone bench before time and overgrowth pushed its way into the foundation’s cracks, and stares up at the network of leaves forming a canopy above her head. It feels like rain, and it also feels as if she won’t make her last class of the day. Such a pity.
Lucy’s overwhelming hunger is a recent development, by a but a few weeks, and that’s what worries her.
It wasn’t this way, when she lived at home, with her parents, her younger sister, and her younger brother. Life wasn’t such a hassle; perhaps this is some strange form of homesickness? Could stress manifest itself in such a manner?
Lucy isn’t always hungry.
The hunger pangs are usually short-lived, although their onset is swift, and violent. By this time tomorrow, they will have receded, and life will continue on in as normal a manner as it is likely to achieve. The effects will remain, but her stomach will thankfully lie dormant and unresponsive.
Lucy should see a doctor.
Lucy is afraid to see a doctor.
She feels as if she can handle this, if she’s strong enough. She doesn’t want to be one of the new freshmen that cracks immediately, one of the girls that snap under the pressure and loneliness and call their parents sobbing at four in the morning, nor one of the lost ones that becomes a living zombie after but a single month, bloodshot eyes and a fake ID. She’s stronger than that.
Lucy is only eighteen, and she is still foolish.
But it would kill Lucy to admit it.
Drabble project. 100 to 300 words a day. I haven’t written consistently in ages, so maybe this will keep me on target. Practice makes competent. You’re never perfect.
Lucy is hungry.
Lucy is always hungry.
It starts as an itch, a niggling sensation in the pit of her stomach that’s easy to dismiss at first, and as the hours past, it intensifies. By noon, it feels as if her body is tearing a hole in itself, stomach acids threatening to sear a hole in her flesh and soak the front of her dress. When her first few classes end, she literally runs to the cafeteria, overpriced crap be damned.
Lucy eats, but Lucy is still hungry.
She knows they’re going to stare, so she shoves her fare in her knapsack and leaves, darting out the rear exit that leads to the building they teach the computer science classes in. She doesn’t eat in the cafeteria any longer, because girls aren’t supposed to eat as much as it takes to silence the roaring *need* festering in her abdomen.
Lucy eats, and eats, but…
She’s discovered a place, partially hidden beneath an unkempt layer of overgrown vegetation that the campus maintenance crew has either forgotten about entirely. She folds herself into this small space, and unwraps a sandwich. It feels like sandpaper, scraping against her tongue, and it tastes like sandpaper, scratching the lining of her throat as she swallows. Worse, it feels like nothing, once she’s scarfed it down, licking the mayo from her fingers even as she reaches for another.
…and eats, and eats…
— until she feels ill, both physically and mentally, disgusted with herself for what she’s becoming. It feels like nothing, and the burning sensation rages on, but the layer of padding on her hips says otherwise.
Lucy eats, but it’s neither what her body wants, nor what it needs.
