08-16-2009, 12:33 AM
Ehhh, okay, this isn't great, but its decent enough to post. :]
So this is a story about a girl, who falls for a guy, but not in love as you might think, as she already knows that it’s the twenty-first century, and love died along with the Dodos.
So let’s give her a name, something no self respecting parent would ever name their child, not if they gave half a shit about what their child’s future social life would be like. Let’s name the guy something offhand as well, something you would be more likely to find in an obituary notice than in, let’s say, your tenth grade homeroom. Why don’t we make them different? From each other, and from the rest of the world. She can have a confused psyche, and he a confusing life. They will meet, not as a chance, or as a twist of fate, but as destiny’s path.
And just as a stroke of twisted morbid sadism, why don’t we make them both dead?
. . .
I looked at her strangely, like I was scared she would spring out an axe and threaten to chop off various appendages. For some strange, inexplicable reason, I was under the impression that if I just stared long enough, the off coloured pupils would surrender her secrets; that if I dove deep enough, I could make some sense of her. She stared calmly back. The kind of calm derived from a psychotic serial killer the moment before she decides to puncture your lung with a toothpick. Somewhere in the back of my mind, someone told me to go to sleep, but I ignored the command. I was fascinated. She wiggled her eyelids, enjoying the slight contraction of her pupil. She posed as such a mystery, everything she decided to do seemed unorthodox, like if she choose her actions based on how surprised the people around her were, rather than using logic. She looked surprised that I had thought of that revelation, her eyes went wide, and her pupils dilated. I blinked; she copied my actions, her short eyelashes temporarily closing my line of vision.
Go to sleep! The voice started up again, this time sounding a bit more like my stepmother, it materialized outside my door, sounding irritable. The muttering continued: and stop looking at that goddamned mirror! I closed my compact, and exhaled a breath that I wasn’t consciously holding. I flopped on my bed, utterly exhausted, and fell into a sleep not unlike the living dead.
Before I had the conscious decision to wake up, I could already feel a sort of simmering argument coming from downstairs. Before I realized it was an argument between two humans, namely my stepmother and my father, I knew it was about me. The square of every conversation under the roof of this house, confrontational or not, seemed to be about me being Here, and not Somewhere Else. Dear step-mummy was too worried about the kind of influence I would have on her spawn. The spawn of the devilish woman who sucked out the soul of my father through his “happy gland” and kept it somewhere along the area of her cervix, and in the process got herself knocked up. I wasn’t too fond of being Here either, so I just stretched, and waited.
The argument didn’t last long, it simmered, came to a boil, and then evaporated, just like most conversations involving something two sane adults and something they wanted to ignore. After five, ten minutes of silence, it dawned on me that they were waiting, waiting for me to go downstairs. I smiled; it seems as if they decided on some kind of agreement. I deemed it appropriate to haul myself out of bed, and brush my teeth as if I just woke up, and was slightly irritable with having to get up.
I clomped down the stairs and into the kitchen, looking everything like a fifteen year old in need of her morning sugar fix. They were there already, my dad and my late mother, and looking slightly apprehensive, much to my delight. While toasting my Eggo waffle, I snuck glances at the mismatched couple behind me. Stepmother looked more worried, her makeup smeared, as if she applied both mascara and eyeliner without sticking out her tongue in that artistic manner we all know so well. My father looked more stoic, passive. A plate of eggs lay before him, but he never touched, looked at or ate them. I remembered with a pang of something like sadness−but not quite sadness, because if I opened that dam it would never stop flowing−of how life was like before. When me and my dad would have petty play arguments about pointless things, like whether we should have ham or turkey for thanksgiving dinner, and if we had ham, whether we should call it “ham” or “jambon”. Because even though we lived in an Anglophone section of Canada, jambon sounded so much more appetizing.
The sound of her breathy, irritating voice brought me out of my brooding. The terrible bitch had a terrible bitching voice to match. Her voice matched her profession. It was the falsetto sultry kind. The kind that can charm underage patrons at youth bars straight to her bed, but also made her sound completely horny every moment of the day, like if she didn’t satisfy “her needs” three times every hour with a stick of some sort of stick-like object, she would go stark-raving-mad. She had a voice that matched her profession, and a name that matched her voice. Dahlia Noreen. She seemed to be saying “So, Azilia sweetie.” That definitely perked my interest. Delilah almost never used the “nice” approach. She usually just stomped, kicked or otherwise physically harmed anyone who came in her way. The nice approach was usually reserved for deaths of close family members, and when I catch her with someone who isn’t my dad. She continued. “We, your father and I were wondering if you’ve found a job yet. It’s the summer, and you’re finally of legal working age.” I arched one eyebrow. If this was all she wanted to tell me, she wouldn’t be so distressed. I shook my head slightly. She continued. “Do you have any plans for the summer? A camping trip with your friends’ maybe?” I narrowed my eyes. Dahlia knew perfectly well that I had no plans, as the moment I stepped in from the last day of school, I was grounded. Along with phone and internet privileges, the right to step outside my house without being gunned down had been revoked. I narrowed me eyes, but didn’t open my mouth. Silence obviously worried Dahlia more than talking, as she started slightly sweating now. She started again, stuttering “B-Because if you didn’t have any plans, w-we, your father and I though… maybe you could go to your m-mothers place.” The pin dropped. I finally spoke; making sure my voice was calm, and even. “Which mother?” She blinked. “Pardon?” My dad came to her rescue. “Meiya, your actual mother. I gave her a call last night, she agreed to take you.” I stood up. Dahlia paled visibly under her foundation, probably frightened I would attempt to arm her in some way, but I just calmly took a bite of my waffle, in my other hand, I held my weapon of choice, another waffle, dripping with maple syrup and butter. Dahlia sighed, probably ecstatic that I didn’t utter even one threat. That lapse in concentration was all I needed. Using my left hand, I rolled to waffle into a rough cylinder, and promptly shoved it up Dahlia’s right nostril. She shrieked. It was a mixture of comical and sad watching her franticly trying to scrape of the mixture of various sugary substances off her skin and well carved nose. God forbid even a drop of that maple syrup and butter drop from her nose to her mouth, it might contain half a calorie. My father stepped in to help, after shooting me his version of the evil eye; I fought to keep a straight face stepping up the stairs.
I went straight to packing as soon as I hit my room. Going to my mother’s place might be just as bad as staying here, but at least Dahlia wouldn’t be there. I grabbed some essentials, and shoved them into a bag of some sort. Tooth brush, toothpaste, All Dressed Ruffles, tampons, cell phone, and my contacts. Even though I had perfect 20/20 vision, I had complete heterochromia; one eye was the colour of coffee, and the other was the colour of stepped on grass. Way back, my father grew annoyed at people commenting on my eyes whenever he took me to public functions, so he payed an exorbitant amount of money to some optometrist to get two contacts, the exact shade of each eye. I pocketed those, and slipped a second set of contacts in a suitcase. In the suitcase, I loaded about half my wardrobe; there was no telling how long I would have to stay at mom’s place. I looked around, figuring out what I still needed to bring. There was a small canister of bug spray on my bookshelf, beside the Harry Potter. Remembering where I was going, I stuffed that in my bag as well.
My dad’s voice called me from the car. “AZILIA. LET’S GO! THE PLANE LEAVES SOON.” I stepped downstairs simultaneously carrying both my bags and phone e-mailing some of my friends, telling them where I was going and such. I was nearly out the door and into the SUV, but Dahlia came behind me, and shut the door. I whirled round wearing the most innocent expression in my arsenal. Her face was hilarious. If this had been a cartoon, her face would be the same colour as a tomato, and steam would have started pouring from skin orifices. Drops of syrup and Eggo still dotted her face. She started her tirade well, this was thought out. “YOU LITTLE INGRATE. IVE BEEN DOING YOU A FAVOUR, KEEPING YOU IN THIS HOUSE. I HAVE HALF A MIND TO SEND YOU TO A FOSTER FAMILY, AND A QUATER OF A MIND TO SEND YOU TO SOME INSTITUTION. HONESTLY, DO YOU KNOW THE TROUBLE YOUR FATHER AND ME GO TO… (Finish tirade somehow). I silenced her with a stare. Even though she was more or less used to the differently coloured irises, my stare had a certain quality to it, when my contacts were off. Calm brown eyes, paired off with lively green gave the pretence of insanity, or at least a mild case of psychosis. I flashed a lopsided half smile, and said Sorry, without sounding particularly repentant. She trailed off “Just, ah, be a good girl and don’t irritate your hosts…” I stuck out my palm and waved a cherry goodbye. Just one last piece of obnoxiousness, I said “Goodbye, Sweetie.” Opened the door, walked off. I sneaked a last look. Her face turned pale, and she shut the door. I smirked, and walked out of the house, for the last time for the summer.
I half carried, half threw my suitcase into the back of the SUV, and climbed into shotgun. I remembered to pop in a contact, deciding on brown, and then flipped the radio to 99.9. I nodded my head to a couple of seconds of an old Stabillo song, before my father changed it to 680 news. I gave him a slightly annoyed and flipped it back to FM. He gave me a kind of YouBetterNotDare look, and pressed the AM/FM button more firmly than necessary. I sighed, knowing trying to fight as futile, and compensated by rolling the window all the way down. The ride wasn’t long; the airport was only about 40 minutes away. I massed the time by looking at the world go past, first brick houses and trees, and then melting into grey-black asphalt.
About half an hour, the noise pollution was closing in on unbearable, so I rolled up the window, feeling the need to save my eardrums. My father finally spoke. “Honestly Azilia, I’m sick of your crap. You don’t have to like Dahlia, but she and I are legally married, and she should be treated as such. Sending you away wasn’t her idea, this was mine. Get yourself straightened out over the summer. Meiya lives in a cottage in a forest, along with her other hippie friends. She said she’ll come and pick you up at the airport. I’ll come to collect you late August.” He rummaged in his pant pocket for a while, and came up with a white crinkled envelope. Inside was a plane ticket, and three crisp hundred-dollar bills. “I’ll leave you here, you’ve been on the plane by yourself before, and so I know that you know how to get through. Remember though, if you skip out on this, you don’t have anywhere else to go.” With those eloquent words of goodbye, he dropped me off at a nearby sidewalk, and drove off. I thought about my options. I could do as a sensible child would, and step onto the plane. Alternatively, I could skip. Hole up in some swanky hotel room and down underage martinis’ for a couple of months. Along with the three hundred dollars my dad gave me, I also had about 400 in my bankcard, which I deemed to risky to use. Last time, my father traced my account, and found the motel I was in. Another option would be to go to any on my numerous friends’ houses. Though their parents wouldn’t approve of an extra house guest, and the fact that most of them lived down the street to my own house didn’t help. I sat on the sidewalk mulling it over. Currently, it was late June, and my dad expected me back by late August. Two months and three hundred dollars didn’t appeal to me. I sighed, and walked in the direction of the dome shaped airport, and stepped into the revolving door.
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