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no, i'm not the best writer in the world. but i do get bored. so i was bored one day, and i started typing. and yeah it may suck. it may suck a lot. it may also make no sense whatsoever. but that doesn't matter, now does it? i'm posting it anyway.
“Good afternoon.” The warm greeting turned to ice as it passed through my lips, my characteristically acid tone pressing all of the innocence out of those two simple words. “My name is Persephone Rose. It is truly my pleasure to join you all here.” I glanced through the room at each separate face, taking in every pair of eyes that stared back at me. None of them were friendly. None of them accepted me. I bowed my head, watching the thin stream of hair fall over into my visage. I didn’t need to look at them anymore. The message in their eyes was clear. I’d never belong here. But that fact was trivial, disgustingly fickle, and much too easy to overlook. I took my solemn place at the lone empty desk in the very back corner, fidgeting nervously with the handle of my parasol, not even trying to pay attention to what the teacher was saying. I couldn’t even remember his name. The class lasted too long. I hardly noticed when it was over. But I heard a voice, close next to me, telling me it was time to go. I looked up. A boy, about my age, with loose brown locks that framed his freckled complexion a little too innocently stood at the edge of my desk. It was so easy to see the strain in his face, the edge to his words. He was making some kind of self-sacrifice, just to make himself talk to me. Was I really that scary? “Oh. Thank you.” I stumbled out of my seat, using the desk to right my balance. My new shoes were gorgeous, but torture to walk in. Platform stilettos, I was beginning to see, were not high school worthy apparel. It was a horrible experience, skulking to wherever I was supposed to go. By this time (lunch time), after the fourth class of my first day in this new torture of a high school, I had mostly figured out that almost no one else here ever even dreamed about doing things the way I did. None of them seemed to care to try, either. Not that it really mattered much. I was almost getting used to it. I went to sit at an empty table, staring idly at the wall behind me, deciding I wasn’t at all hungry. I was too nervous, too confused, to be hungry. But forgive me. How rude of me to start somewhere so...unclear. Here, let me begin again, where all of this truly started.
“Persephone Juliana Rose! Where do you think you’re going? Do the words ‘house arrest’ mean absolutely nothing to you?!” My mother was screaming at me again. I looked down at her from the top of the stairs, smirking. I could feel the cruel flash of my teeth part against my lips. Lily Rose, my mom, was always screaming. And it was always at me. “I’m getting a glass of juice, Lily,” I said, as calmly as I could. It was hard, I had to admit, to choke back the sarcasm and hatred from my words. My bare feet slowly led me down the steps, my toes relishing the feel of the hard, cold wood beneath them. “I’m not trying to escape. Don’t blow a casket.” Of course as soon as I reached the ground floor, she was screeching in my ear. “How dare you use that tone with me! I’m your mother – I raised you! I deserve more respect that! Persephone, where are you going? I told you to stop!” The woman was possessed, I had finally concluded last year. She was a demon sent to bring me back to her hell. She never would shut up, and she never spoke. She only yelled, screamed, and broke the sound barrier, broke my ear drums. No wonder I was prone to migraines. “Lily, I told you. I’m going to the kitchen to get a glass of juice.” It was a miracle that my patience lasted so long. I kept walking, ignoring her, cursing her for making the walk from the stairs to the kitchen such a long one. Drowning out her insane voice, I concentrated on breathing steadily in and out, on placing one foot before the other, on getting to the kitchen. “Don’t call me Lily, you ungrateful wretch! I’m your mother!” This was trying my everlasting patience. I had never, and would never, call this woman Mother. She had hated me since that fateful day years ago when I had rejected her milk. That hadn’t even been on purpose – I had to cough, and she took it the wrong way. I was only a baby – like I knew any better. “You’ll be my mother when you start treating me like your daughter,” I growled, reaching the fridge. As I poured my juice, staring into the thick, red consistency, I found it much easier to forget her. Then I noticed she had actually stopped talking. “What?” The short hand on the clock moved faster than she did, I swear. It seemed to take her an eternity, but she made her way to my side, her grey eyes blazing with furious indignation. It was more than obvious now that she wasn’t sober. “You...you...” She gulped, swallowing her words. I couldn’t help myself. I had to speak. “Stuttering again, are we Lily? Maybe you should lay off the heavy stuff, at least for today.” Instantly I regretted my sarcastic words. Her bony hand lashed out and raked across my cheek. Thank God I had set the V8 carton down. The blow sent me reeling back; not because of her strength, or her force, but because of the action itself. No matter how bad things had gotten, she had never hit me, not before this. Reluctantly, I lifted my hand to my stinging skin. I could feel the ache setting in underneath my steady tears. I dropped the glass of juice that I had just poured, flying up the stairs to my room, ignoring the witch standing in the kitchen, cackling with delight, ignoring the shards of glass attached to my foot, ignoring the V8 juice that stained my favorite jean skirt. My mother, Lily Rose, was sick. It had started just after I, as a baby, had been released from the hospital. My father had left our little crumpled family, without even telling her goodbye. See, he ruined us from the start. It was all his fault. Tony Rose had taken away my happiness before I had even known how to hate him. He had walked out on my mother, vulnerable as she was, the night I made my grand entrance into my new house. At least I got the only available room all to myself. Lily slept on the couch. We had lived in Eunice, Louisiana all of my life. Tony had fled to the capital city of Baton Rouge a long, long time ago. I didn’t even remember him. I knew him simply through the bitter mutterings my mother uttered in her sleep. All I really knew was how much I hated this town; how much I hated Lily. But most of all I hated Tony. No matter how much he had left me after he died, no matter what he might’ve tried to do to make it up to me, I could never forgive him for damning me so completely at birth. He was horrible. I’d never let myself forgive him. The tears stung my eyes, burned my skin, rolled down my shirt, and pooled irritatingly in my bra, just where I couldn’t reach them. I stumbled to my bed, drawing the chiffon curtains around myself, curling up into a ball around my face, holding my cheek in my hands. Lily had struck me. The thought was too horrible. I didn’t want it to sink in. But it was, and doing a very merry job of it. My head didn’t even bother to find the pillow. It sunk into the feather-soft mattress, nestled in against silken sheets. Tony had left me his entire fortune in his will just before he over dosed on meth. (not that that changed anything in how I felt about him). I didn’t share it with Lily. Any of it. I used it to get everything she couldn’t have. I used it to make her hate me more. I don’t know how long I lay there sobbing, my make-up streaking down my features, staining my sheets, but I must’ve fallen asleep. When I woke up, the light outside of my window was grey as opposed to the sweet golden it had been when I had tumbled into bed. I glanced solemnly at my clock. Twelve o’clock midnight, the numbers flashed. I sighed, wiping below my eyes to smear away the mascara. Softly I pushed myself from the bed, shuffling self-loathingly to my bathroom. The searing water of my shower calmed the turmoil of my mind, and somehow managed to unlock the tightened muscles of my neck and shoulders. I sighed again, massaging my scalp, pouring a cool bout of shampoo into my hair. I think I wasted about half of the entire world’s clean water supply in just my shower. But hell, did I ever need it. When I stepped from my glass-enclosed sanctuary, I found my entire bathroom was filled with smoke. I needed to quit using such scorching water. I was beginning to find mold everywhere from the humidity. Slipping into a towel, I brushed a circle clear in the huge mirror big enough to show me my entire form. My eyes were too big, and too round, and too...light. They were almost yellow, but closer to the color of sand. The pupils looked so alien surrounded in their simplicity. I felt my long sigh, realizing I had been holding my breath; my fingers pressed against the purple circles below my eyes, pulling at the skin, watching the way the shape of my vision changed. Turning away from my reflection, I pulled another towel from a self just above my head, scrubbing it over my head, trying to get most of the moisture to leave the requiem of my unnaturally black locks. In contrast to my wastrel habits with hygiene, it took all of a minute to dress my body in clothes suitable for bed. I stretched a pre-fitted corset down over my head, pulling my legs through the two holes in my undies. Of course the nightgown I was so infinitely fond of was unthinkingly brought down over my undergarments. My hair still twisted up in the towel, I turned to face the window overlooking our backyard. The snow still coated the ground out there, reflecting the silver sheen of the stars up above. There was no moon tonight. That fact bothered me, without even knowing why. The nightly routine was almost finished. I kneeled beside the cold paneled glass, gazing up adoringly into the face of the heavens, my eyes seeking the solace of the North Star. It was the first glimmering apparition to catch my eyes, twinkling with its heart-breaking beauty beside the spot where the moon should’ve been. A wish, as futile and desperate as a rose in the winter snow, danced softly across my parted lips. I sat for a moment, thinking, then slowly crawled back to my bed, slipping in between the sheets, ignoring the plentiful stains lighting their surface. I cried too much. It was a habit I should never have started. I was just too sensitive, the guidance councilor concluded. I needed to suck it up and accept things. Something so simply said was just too hard to carry out.
I had fallen asleep easy enough, and had woken just in time to catch my alarm clock before it went off. Today was time to start school. My new school. The school that was meant to ‘fix’ me. Lily actually believed that I was diseased. She couldn’t see that I was just socially inept and clinically bipolar. I guess she was deaf and blind to anything I had to say in my own defense. I dragged my feet to my bathroom, grabbing the cheap plastic comb and running it through my long hair, my eyes watching my every move through the cool resonance of the mirror. Overall, the morning routine took about an hour and thirty minutes, so it was necessary for me to bite back reluctance and start early – about 5:30 – so as to finish in enough time. Damn me and my persistently egotistical personality. When I finished tweaking my pathetic appearance, I glanced back into the mirror, appraising my looks for just a few moments. My hair, I supposed, didn’t look wholly atrocious. Its shockingly black color threw off my unhealthily pale skin tone, setting fire to my light brown eyes. And it was long, and naturally straight, all cut up into layers, the longest of which stretched down to just above my waist. The thin strip of bangs – these I cut myself – that pulled across my face hid just enough of my left eye and almost all of my forehead, a single clip holding back the layers. I sighed, watching my face, loving how much like a doll I could make myself look. I didn’t bother to look at what I was wearing – the denim mini and rainbow hoodie were the two most casual things I owned. Of course, my shoes weren’t exactly casual, but I wasn’t changing them.
ps. of course it's not edited. (:
regardless incompletion · Thu Jul 12, 2007 @ 04:18am · 0 Comments |
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