Monday, November 21, 2011

A Glimpse of Fiction-Part 2

The sun peaked over the horizon, turning the sky into a masterpiece of reds, pinks and purples.  She looked at the beauty of the morning and smiled a sad smile.  Memories began to flood over her again, faces, places, smells and sounds that no longer belonged to her; pictures and memories of another life, another love, another time.  Sometimes she wished she could erase her own memories the way she erased her name.  It would be so much easier to walk away if you did not know what you were walking away from.  But now other memories began to encroach, memories of darkness and needles and screams.  Memories of endless corridors and insanity and blood.....so much blood.  Now it was easy to remember why she had run away, not walked away, but run like the devil himself chased her, because he did.  The panic began to rise, her heart began to race and her breathing came hard and fast.  She reached into her purse and grabbed a prescription bottle.   She desperately fought with the child safety lid and finally poured one pill into her shaking hand.  She looked at it, sitting in her palm.  She could swallow it and in fifteen minutes her world would right itself once again.  The terror would fade; the memories would once again become hazy and painless.  Yes, she could swallow this oblong slice of oblivion and everything she had fought so hard to accomplish would be for nothing.  Slowly, she opened the prescription bottle once again.  She forced herself to place the pill back inside the bottle, close the lid and place it back into her purse.  She willed herself to take slow, deep breaths and to silently count backwards from 100.  By the time she reached 35 she was calm once more, in control of her thoughts and her fear.  She glanced at the purse and thought about dumping the pills for good.  But no she needed the reminder. Yes, some memories one should never forget.
She cautiously looked around the parking lot.  It was empty.  First placing the knife in her purse she then unlocked her door, put her sneaker clad feet on the pavement and stretched.  She locked the driver's side door once more and made her way to the restrooms.  The smell assaulted her senses the moment she stepped through the door causing her to wrinkle her nose in disgust.  She glimpsed herself in the grime streaked mirror.  She looked like a street urchin, her hair still piled in the baseball cap, her clothes loose and ill-fitting, months of stress had reduced her appetite to nothing, her eyes over large and haunted.  She looked more closely.  Yes, she could be a Kate.  It suited her almost as well as her old name, maybe even better.  Kate....Kate what?  Why Smith of course!!  She laughed aloud, the sound of her own voice startling in the empty bathroom.  Listening to the sound of her own laughter Kate realized it had been 48 hours since she had heard a human voice.  She cleared her throat and held her hand out to the mirror, as if to shake hands.  "Hello.  It's nice to meet you Kate Smith.  You and I are going to be great friends."

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Kristine Meier-Skiff. Powered by Blogger.