TodayThere must be some cosmic rule that on the days that seem the quietest, the dullest, the most average, life has a way of bursting in with the reminder that it’s short, mortal, and so easily lost.The day started out normal enough, at least for the week: I woke up disoriented, expecting it to be Friday, when it was only Thursday in reality. This realization added disappointment to my already-upset morning, knowing I’d have to get up out of my warm bed. The one comfort was the fact I got to sleep in for fifteen minutes, but that fifteen minutes became twenty, and then twenty five, and what should have been extra rest was shattered by the frenzy of activity it took to get me up and ready in five minutes. I got to school, checked the story I’d posted online the night before for comments and critiques; like always, there was a lack in what I’d hoped, three comments or so, while the stories surrounding it, before and after, had upwards of five, ten, even fifteen. I’ve long since resigned myself to the fact that my stories don’t garner as much commenting as some others, but it doesn’t make sense to me, not when I have people at random telling me how inspirational my work is, how much they love it. I guess I’ll always just attract the silent, lurking appreciation, rather than the outward vocal kind that the others receive. Any sense of excitement fled the rest of the day as I trudged through Algebra, staring sightlessly at the board as logarithmic equations were scrawled across white, and droned about by a teacher with a hint of a Minnesota accent. Two periods of art came next. Normally I’d thrive in these two-some hours, but today my hand refused to translate to paper what I saw in my mind, so I gave up and surfed the internet instead. I netted 12k gold on Gaia. A fairly productive run, although not productive in the long run. About thirty minutes to lunch I was hit with a strong wave of nausea that came from nowhere. I sat in my computer chair, dizzy and concentrating on keeping the dredges of last night’s dinner down for a good ten minutes before the feeling started to pass, but it held on until well past lunch, into Yearbook, and only let go as I stumbled my way down the stairs to the office, for my online health class. I struggled to keep myself awake at this point, feeling my fingers sluggish and uncooperative as they trudged across the keyboard. Newspaper we watched a movie; a mockumentary about beauty pageants. The plot wasn’t too hard to grasp, so I was able to pay attention without getting an exhausted headache. The busride home was just as pleasant as it usually is, which is to say it wasn’t pleasant at all. It was hot, gave me a muggy headache, and my sister once again refused to respect me as her elder when we were headed toward the car; I’m house sitting for my neighbor, and I get a ride over there most days after school, just because the distance from the bus stop to our house to our neighbor’s is quite a trek. I took shotgun, disregarding my sister’s annoyance and lack of caring that I needed to get out faster so as to waste less time at the neighbors. When we got in the car, the first thing my mom says is “I have to go to the emergency room, so we can’t do anything else today” or something along that vein. We both immediately shut up, but Amber in more grumpy, disrespectful annoyance than worry, like I do, because the first thing that comes out of her mouth after my mother explains that her throat is closing and antihistamine aren’t helping is the fact that she’s angry at me for wanting the computer first. I wanted to strangle her. Her jerky behavior has known no bounds recently, and I can trace it all to stem from one thing: her starting to watch Lost. Obsession should not cause this much animosity toward anyone in her way. This is addiction. Mom and Dad leave for the hospital again right as soon as we get home, which means I have to walk all the way to the neighbor’s. The trip over takes seven minutes at a brisk pace, and I unlock the door, take in the birdfeeders, on autopilot, still seething over Amber’s horrible behavior, and worried about my mother. Nature calls, so I trudge to the bathroom. I glance into the toilet, force of habit after living with a man as disgusting as my father, and I snarl at the bowl: there’s something large and brown in the bottom. I can’t believe they’d forget to flush something like that. But then I look closer, and it’s not waste at all; it’s a chipmunk. His eyes are half closed in a wince, claws outstretched as if in a plea for help. The corpse floats there stagnantly, the water still, completely immobile. Terror spikes for a brief moment; it’s that moment after you see death, where you wonder if it’s really dead, if it’s alive, where you remember that someday you will be in the same place, corpse rent from soul in some macabre and disturbing fashion. The nausea from earlier tugs at me again, but I will it away, wondering instead how the animal found itself drowned in a toilet bowl in the first place. Perhaps it had snuck in that morning, while I was putting the bird feeders out; perhaps it found the bathroom, somehow figured out that there was water in the bowl, was thirsty enough to try to stretch forward, reaching in to rehydrate itself. Lost its balance, plunged face-first into the pool-sized tank of water to its small perception of the world. It probably tread water for as long as it could before its arms and legs gave out with exhaustion, and then it sunk. Maybe it thrashed, struggled with its last shreds of energy before it reached the moment of clarity where it gave up, breathed its last breath, and left its body for the next life. (continued in the comments) |
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