Monday, May 10, 2010

so i let go, watching you turn your back like you always do

I was young enough to think that I had seen everything there was to see in this world, and old enough to realize when I was wrong.
It was a simple job the delivery man had left me with: get your package from your neighbor where it is being safely kept and bring it home. The 'bring it home' was never explicitly said, but it was implied.
I was too distracted to remember that the simplest things are often the most complex.
My knock on the door remained unanswered, though I knew she was home because her car was parked outside. I knocked again. And again. And again. And a-
I stopped my raised fist a fraction of an inch away from my neighbor's forehead. “Sorry,” I said quickly. “But my package was delivered to you and I need to pick it up.”
She didn't answer. I couldn't remember if she spoke English.
“A package?” I repeated, miming a box with my hands. “It was brought here earlier.”
She didn't answer.
I finally looked down at her to make sure she was listening. Her shirt was torn and her hands bloody. Her face was streaked with tears still pouring silently from her red, puffy eyes. “Oh. Is this a bad time?”
She turned without a word and walked back into her house. She didn't close the door, and I followed her. She led me to the living room where she silently picked up a baseball bat from the floor, bloody fingerprints already on it, and began to beat something hidden by the couch. With every blow, she would let out a cry, until she was sobbing in rhythm with the hits.
I watched as she lifted up the bloodied mess of whatever she was destroying, and finally found her voice. “No one else was here to do this, so I thought I'd do it myself,” she told me, though I didn't ask. I didn't know what 'this' was; all I really wanted was my package. “There were too many walls, too many obstacles built to protect this,” she said as she tried to tear it in half. It was too strong. She brought it to her face to use her teeth, and I saw it clearly for the first time.
A heart. I had studied enough biology to know it was human. I looked down to the stain on her chest growing from the hole in her shirt and had a good idea whose heart it was. “Really, all I need is that package and I'll be on my way. The delivery man left me a note saying it was here.”
Her lips were dripping red as she brought the heart away from her mouth. “No one else was here to tear it from my chest, so I did it myself. No one was here to step on it; I ground it under my own heel.”
“If you could just tell me where you put the package, I could go get it, and you could carry on with this.”
“I took a knife and stabbed every place I was protecting. I took a club and beat the areas I hid.”
“Is that it?” I asked, pointing to a box wrapped in brown paper across the room. “I'll just check and then... Yes. My name. Well, I'll be taking this.”
A wild cry of anguished pain ripped through the room, and I saw that she had succeeded in pulling her heart apart. It seemed to get easier after the first tear, and she was shredding it into pieces.
“No one ever cared enough to break my heart,” she said between sobs. “So I broke it myself.”
“Thanks for keeping this for me,” I said, holding up the package. “I'll just be going home, now.” I turned back to the hallway we had come down towards the front door.
“And no one even cared enough to watch.”
Weird, I thought to myself as I walked home, already planning dinner in my head.

***

i've gotten used to the fact that almost everything i write elicits a "that's disturbing" from at least one person (usually my older sister). i'm beginning to see why. i mean, what the hell, right??

i have no idea where this came from and no idea why i'm posting it. i will probably end up deleting it the next time i see it, so yeah...

*Faint - Linkin Park

10 comments:

  1. Wow.... Just... wow!

    You are an amazing writer.. .seriously.. Took two reads to get everything and I really love it... Shocking though... Shocking >>

    Kinda dark

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  2. that's disturbing...lool just kidding.

    i mean yes this was dark as hannah said...but in a good way... the kind that makes you want to keep reading. not the kind that makes you think maybe the writer should be committed.. haha

    seriously i loved it...it was awesome.. maybe you should turn that little excerpt into a novel.. i know i would read it..

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  3. haha its weird typing my own name.. :D

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  4. hey, have you graduated yet?

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  5. Hannah... thank you so much! your comment made my day :)

    Anonymous... thanks, but i dont think i could turn it into anything longer. and how do the rest of my stuff make you think i should be committed??

    R... technincally, yes, last semester. the ceremony is tomorrow at 230, though.

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  6. You should try making some of your short works longer. I agree with Anonymous here. You have such talent. A novella, maybe, to begin with. I'd definitely read it.

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  7. i dunno. there are a few things that i have made longer, but i don't think i'd be able to develop this idea/these characters into anything longer without dragging it out into boring territory. maybe i'll try one day, though.

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  8. I thought that with Shadows in the Light of Darkness...

    The excerpt you will have, 6 months before anyone else, was a short story I did for English coursework. Got full marks. I never thought I could make it longer without getting boring...

    So, instead, I am using it almost like a prologue. This has happened... now I'm moving into real story...

    For example, here, this may have happened... she saw this woman do this (I get the impression that the narrator is female), and now she's moving on. They are in a dark time. Feelings are governed by the heart. To remove the heart is to remove all emotion. All love. And more people are reaching that stage, losing their love so that they can never again feel the pain. She, herself, can understand why they want to, but at the same time, could never do it to herself, recognising the joy that accompanies the pain. But all around her, the world is lost, destroying it's life, it's passion. Everything slowly becoming routine, and those that can feel becoming rarer and rarer. You'd almost be addressing the importance of bad feelings as well as highlighting the good...

    Just an idea I had >>

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  9. I love this the way it is. It doesn't need anything else, it might be destroyed if you try to expand on it. Don't delete it, though. My evernote isn't working and I can't save this. Keep it where I can find it if I want to come back to it again :)

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  10. yes, exactly. i dont want to take that risk of ruining it. but lool it will be here if you ever want to find it again. mostly because i dont delete blog posts which have been commented on.

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