Stickers

Stickers





Sticky Splatters. The Sorrowful Suicide. She sat on the train station chair and scratched off flakey blue paint. Funny, it seemed new not long ago. She stared at the Sticky Splatters where the Sorrowful Suicide happened. The bloody droplets had faded, mixed with dust, and turned a murky brown colour.

Colour.

A funny concept. Everyone talked about it; the blue of the ocean, the green of the grass, the yellow flowers, the red of blood… Where was the red now? A chill wind swept over her, its ghostly breath taunting, almost alive, but not quite. It did not blow the masochistic ideas from her mind, but never failed to remind her of the Sticky Splatters and the Sorrowful Suicide. It was all HER fault. Hers and no one else’s. Not His and Hers. Just…Hers.



Clouds tumbled and rolled over one another, overtaking freakish blue sky like a dark, roaring ocean devouring a body surfer. No white foamy peaks resided in their depths. Just grey. A murky mass of grey nothingness. The world grew dim, but to her, this had become a common, almost welcoming light. After the Sticky Splatters and the Sorrowful Suicide, nothing seemed bright or wonderful. The concept of a large expanse of nothingness seemed plausible...Normal. It made SENSE. Grey and black and white made sense in a world filled with confusing colours and smells. Colours that reminded her of some seemingly non-existent time. Unreal, just like the freakish dream-like greens and blues wafting wistfully through her subconscious. Smells that reminded her of death. And decay. Rust. Salt. Rotting flesh on dusty train tracks.

Blood.

Though, she pondered as the train departure board clicked down another minute, tiny orange dots rearranging to form coherent digits, things weren’t so bad. She could do it. It was just one small step. One. Then nothing. No pain, no loss. No one would notice another soul disappearing like the speed of a lightning strike. They may be shocked for the briefest of moments, but when it was over, she would be gone. Then again, the cleaners might become annoyed. And the train passengers…and maybe the dog. But there would be no one to care about her lack of existence…only for the inconvenience she had caused. Inconvenience. Inconvenient and Insecure.

WRONG.

Would one big inconvenience equate to less than all the little inconveniences she was sure to cause in her miserable excuse of a life?

Three minutes. Soon, soon, soon.

There was never anything special about her Hardheaded teenager; she was an idiot. Id-i-ot… I-D-EEE-O-TTT. But her Hardheaded teenager did like to write. Swirling, sickening images. Slaughters. Sex. Suicides…

She was sadistic. The curvy blade pointed toward his chest. He knew what was coming, but was frozen to the spot. This was worse than the pain. The seconds ticking by just before steel hit skin…

Maybe…



Her Hardheaded teenager was as plain as a navy school dress, though never boring. No. There was always some idiotic idea blowing through that naïve mind. Never stopping to think. Never stopping to breathe.



Hard wooden slats dug into her flesh as she slumped into memories of a Hardheaded twelve year old. A glowing orb lit up the sky, accentuating freakish greens and blues, absorbing the normal greys and blacks and whites. Her Hardheaded twelve year old thought it would be funny to visit the International Flag Park. And climb the flagpoles. And jump from one to the next. And fall off. And break her leg. And her arm. But there was no blood; no bright white bones jutting through dirty coffee skin at peculiar angles. There were only tears, falling pitifully from the glassy azure eyes. She had run over to her Hardheaded twelve year old, only to be scolded for being distracting. Because she was useless. Inconvenient and Insecure. It had been HER fault that her daughter fell. Not His and Hers. Just…Hers.



Those azure eyes had then written the twisted adventures of a brave, beautiful princess, who reached great heights, only to fall because of the Inconvenient and Insecure witch…

Even for witches, there are times of inconvenience. There are always times when a witch must hide. She had succeeded in the fall of the brave and beautiful princess, though now there was something bigger coming. She had a riot on her hands. A riot bigger than a tsunami, crashing over the coastline. Soon, the witch would have to pay for her terrible action. Soon, soon…she knew she had to hide.

A chewing gum wrapper, shiny with spit, flew up and stuck to her leg. She looked up to see a group of women in their twenties laughing obnoxiously at some stupid joke one of them had told. They were all dressed in freakish greens and blues. One of them was holding a child. A very sick child. Sneezing over the ground. Not spit…snot.

Ring a ring a rosies, a pocket full of posies,

A tissue, a tissue, we all fall down…

It had been her Hardheaded teenager’s favourite song. Twelve years ago. When her Hardheaded teenager had been a Hardheaded little girl, she had painstakingly painted roses over the dull, normal grey living room walls. Roses, as red as the Sticky Splatters. With freakish green stems. A beautiful lie, covering the dull, creating a deceitful depiction of pleasure. But for her own sanity, she had painted one sickly rose, almost hidden by her black leather couch, that was dull and twisted and wilting. Petals were missing, and the stem was cracked. Broken thorns jutted at odd angles, not quite fitting… not quite belonging. A sick rose. As sick and sadistic as her Hardheaded teenager’s mind…as sick as Her…



There had never been a father: just one unpleasantly drunk night in the company of a pedophile in some cheap, dingy hotel. She had been seventeen. He had been God knows how old. Probably late thirties, possibly early forties. They were on a train, travelling to the same station. He followed her into a dodgy club, where she had used her sister’s ID, and he’d probably slipped something into her drink. His face was hazy, though every time she looked at her Hardhead teenager, she could see his shinier-than-usual gapped teeth, his square-jaw, his azure eyes. But she had been drunk, immature, and stupid. Of course, she received a terrible shock waking up in the arms of a greasy naked figure the next morning. A small yelp had escaped her lips, and she dashed from the toxic room like a gazelle trying to outrun a lion. There was an unusual jumpiness about her that day. Wispy clouds floated through a fresh morning, illuminated by the freakish green sun.

“If you stare into the sun, then look away and close your eyes really tight, you will see green, not yellow!” her sister had once informed her. “Therefore, the sun MUST be green!” Stupid science study. So…the fresh morning and the wispy clouds were illuminated by the freakish green sun. There was too little substance in them to hide the aeroplane she saw gliding through the sky. Too little substance to hide her from the world…or her mother…



The pregnancy had almost made her a beggar, for her mother would not allow such a humiliation within the normal family household. Imagine that! A nice, NORMAL family, with a pregnant seventeen year old daughter. I DON’T THINK SO! That was the end of that. The conclusion. Finish. Finale. Her stay had been terminated, and she had become homeless. Homeless and pregnant…not the best combination. A big-bellied woman, alone on the street. Alone by the train. On the train. With its bright blue seats and noisy crowds. Fat, sweaty people. Eating hamburgers and Subway sandwiches. Hot meat. Fresh bread. Bananas…and…vomit. Carrot cravings. Orange vomit. Sardines with sundaes. Sticky, smelly vomit. Clogging up the public toilet drains. Sticky Splatters on the train tracks. Cold, rusty train tracks. Spattered with muddy blood droplets.

Two minutes. Soon, soon. 

There was one friend; he was imaginary. Her Hardheaded teenager had come home screaming one day for no apparent reason. Screaming, carrying on like a child. A child with no friends. Pathetic. Useless. Her Hardheaded teenager wailed because her imaginary friend was not quite so useless, not quite so inept. Insignificant and Insecure.

“He betrayed me just like YOU!” her Hardheaded teenager screamed. “Took my v-card when he tried to f-”

“That’s enough!” she screamed with iron lungs. What if this wasn’t imaginary? What if her imaginary friend was very real? What if he wasn’t a friend? Thirteen was too young to know. Too young to experience this kind of…thing. Too young. She was much too young. Too young to live…too young to die.

It’s funny how the people you trust the most are the ones to let you down. They say they will be there for you, but they never are. They say they won’t hurt you, but they always do. They say it’s a normal thirteen-year-old’s experience. It’s what all the cool ones do. But it’s not. He stole it. He stole ME. He has left nothing but a dark black hole. And I’ve crawled into it. I don’t think I should come out.

But then…everything was fine. There were more friends. Fourteen years. It had taken her Hardheaded teenager fourteen years to make three friends. She was happy. It didn’t matter that they dyed their hair funny colours. It didn’t matter that they had piercings in strange places. It didn’t even matter that they sometimes smelled of smoke, or other…things. All that mattered was that her Hardheaded teenager, fourteen years old, had friends. Real friends. In the real world. Safe friends. Sort of. There were two boys, and one girl. Pink and Red and Blue. That’s how she remembered them. But their violent shades of hair and their piercings in strange places and their cigarette smells didn’t come around anymore. Ever. The Sticky Splatters and the Sorrowful Suicide scared them off. Because it was THEIR fault. But it wasn’t. It was just Hers. Not His and Hers. Not THEIRS and Hers. Just…Hers.



Rain spattered the train tracks. Plop. Plop. Plop. It fell like lead, tiny bullets striking her uncovered head. In this light, they were shiny, colourless. They were just as see-through as the lies from the media. Just as see-through as her make-believe world. But only in this light. In another light, maybe they would shine through with freakish greens and blues.



The media had never made sense to her. Her mother had always said to listen to the media “without question because they are always right”. But they could never always be right. What if they were wrong? What if they didn’t check their facts properly? What if…they just didn’t care? Maybe they just wanted a good story. Some of their stories seemed just as believable as her Hardheaded teenager’s. Flying monkeys. Haggardly old witches. Bomb explosions. Train suicides… Admittedly, there was usually SOME truth to the media stories, unlike her Hardheaded teenager’s. She remembered the day she lost all faith in the reporting system. It had been a Tuesday. The car crash. The sirens. The serious people in funny white clothing. It was a little ironic…not really funny, she thought. Just sad. Angry splatters of blood had appeared then, too. Dark and dreary and blue-black, painting the gravel in unusually sick patterns.



Drunk Driver Kills Family of Two. But he didn’t. It was THEIR fault. Not His. Not Hers. Not His and Hers. Just THEIRS. Although, if her mother and sister had been alive, she was sure they would have argued differently. It was HER fault. Not theirs. And then there was the second part…Family of Two…so what was she? Some pathetic pregnant woman crawling through the streets? Covered in vomit… She had attempted, after her daughter was born, to regain her mother’s acceptance. Surely her mother couldn’t stay mad looking at such an innocent piece of human life. But she could. In drunken despair, her mother had screamed and shouted. Pathetic. Inconvenient and Insecure. And then… “You are no one.”



And so the article had read:

A mother and daughter, no known family, were killed last night on highway 9. WRONG.

A drunk truck driver had swerved to avoid a possum, and crashed front on into the car of the two women.

WRONG.

He now faces charges of Man-slaughter and Reckless Driving.

But he wasn’t the drunk who killed them. They killed themselves. In a head-on collision. THEY were the drunks who killed THEM. But no. It was an ACCIDENT. Just. Like. Her.



Orange numbers flickered, flashed. Dots rearranged to form coherent digits…



One minute. Soon.



Stupid games. Stupid people. Stupid accidents. It was all HER fault. Not His and Hers. Just…Hers. She went wrong. Teenagers couldn’t possibly come up with such an idiotic idea. Stickers. Stickers on trains. She didn’t even know until it happened. The Sorrowful Suicide wouldn’t ever make mention that it was HER fault. It was really a homicide. She was a distraction. HER. Maybe, if she hadn’t decided to show up at that particular moment, her Hardheaded teenager would have been alive. Writing sadistic stories. About train suicides. And stickers. But the timing was sickeningly perfect. To a ‘T’.



She hadn’t meant to go out. She had meant to stay at home drinking her cup of tea. Eating her biscuit. But SHE had decided to go and collect her Hardheaded teenager. Just for a surprise. She could sacrifice her treat for one day. Just to surprise her daughter at the train station. And the Hardheaded teenager was surprised. And so were the friends. But she hadn’t seen them since…



Her memories never played in slow motion, though somehow, the crack of a freakish blue monster against a human skeleton served to haunt her more than any romanticized recount. The Sorrowful Suicide used soft, simple language. A picture of a train. A sad train driver. A picture of an unsmiling teenager. It wasn’t her daughter. The hair was the same, and the azure eyes, and the square, manly jaw…but this girl…something was too serene in her blank expression. There was no red. Red was a colour newspapers liked to avoid when it came to children. But blue was okay. Even though the blue monster was the destroyer. No… SHE was the destroyer. It was HER fault. With her inconvenient timing.

A girl was killed at 3:02 yesterday after jumping off a train platform. WRONG.

It is believed that this was a result of bullying from people in her school.

WRONG.

The girl, 15, attended Broadbank public school, known for its unruly behaviour and cohort of disobedient teenagers.

WRONG.

The funeral will be conducted next Tuesday at her school, and she will serve as a reminder that bullying must be stopped.

But it didn’t happen like that at all. It was the Stickers. A sticky form of Russian Roulette. Maybe Red had come up with the game. Red, making red splatters. It made sense. Pink didn’t have it in her. Though it could have been Blue… 



Why did she go? Why didn’t she eat her biscuit? Because it was life? It had taken one moment. And her Hardheaded teenager had looked up. She was standing right there. Her Hardheaded teenager couldn’t move…only stare. And in that one moment, all was gone. The seconds ticked by as glassy eyes faded into lifelessness. And there resided no shock. No fear. Just freakish greens and blues. And then grey. And drips of red, rolling from the eyes like tears of a crying child. Tears she could never remember seeing. They fell from a plain face that people would forget within the week, onto the dust-ridden tracks, spilling through the gaps between the rocks. It took one moment.



And after the rape and the lies and her mother’s rejection and the truck and the Sticky Splatters and the Sorrowful Suicide and the blood…she knew she could do it. She only needed one moment. She could see the two trains approaching, their deathly smoke smell more pungent with every tick of the clock. They were so close. Ten seconds. Rain battered down on her head. Mascara ran down her face. It looked like she had been crying, but she didn’t cry anymore. Ever. Everything was silent, except the ticking of a countdown in her own head. She knew she could spring up at any moment and throw herself over the edge. They were closer. Closer. Almost, but not quite there. The moment was NOW. NOW. NOW…No.

It’s a simple game really. You have your stickers. You write funny things on them. Then you pick the best ones. You wait for the 3:02 trains, because that’s when it’s the scariest. The trains cross at almost exactly the same time. I think there might be about ten seconds in between the first one stopping and the next one passing through on the other side of the tracks. Because the one passing through is an express, so it doesn’t stop. It just keeps on going. Whistling and rattling along the train tracks. The first train pulls up, and you RUN. You run as fast as you can. You have your stickers, and you can’t drop them. If you drop them, you lose. And then you have to stick them on the 3:02 train. I usually only do one because it’s scary. Though Red has got up to four! And then you run back. As fast as you can. You have to get back before the other train comes. It’s scarier than the Tower of Terror. Or those haunted house things where people jump out in front of you. But as long as you don’t look up, and never stop, everything is always fine. Everything will always be fine.

The 3:02 trains go by. And still, she sits. Maybe tomorrow will be different.

No.