Hopes and fears

Hopes and fears.

She spooned smoked salmon over to my plate. “I hate raw fish,“ she complained, giving an  exaggerated grimace, almost as if sushi was uncooked, bacteria infested fish flesh. “So, erm, this paper says i’m supposed to find out about your greatest fear.” The scene was a friend’s parent’s apartment, a mixer under the disguise of a relaxed gathering. But I’m like oil, not because I’m worth a hundred dollars a barrel or because I’m crucial for the hedonistic lifestyle of those in developed countries, but because I was less dense. The others were like water, and I was aloof, a part of me too bored and uninterested to make more than a half-hearted attempt in chatting up the girls. You could take me, stir me for a year with these people, and I would still be buffered from them.

Then this person came, high forehead, slightly pimply face, but with eyes that twinkled, as if permanently amused by her surroundings. She sat next to me, playing the game we were supposed to play, that no one else was playing, too busy stuck in their watery clicks. She wasn’t oil (except maybe her face), but she wasn’t water either. Maybe alcohol? Whatever, all that mattered was that she floated above the rest, and she was interesting, possibly even fascinating. “Rejection,” I mumbled with a mirthless grin. “Injections?! I hate them too! I remember when I was a kid...” Yadder yadder yadder, she launches into a story about how she was injected multiple times when she was a kid, only to find out later that all that pain was completely unnecessary, that no amount of injections could cure her anaemia. To my surprise, I find myself sympathizing with her plight, making a generic condemnation of inept doctors and the plight of poor young children having to undergo traumatic inoculations. Then I repeated “I meant rejection.” “Oh,” She gave a slight giggle, looking at me to see if I was serious. “You aren’t one of those emo kids who slit their wrists at night, are you?” she asks, mock suspicion written across her face. “Nah, I do it in the day” I teased, smiling slightly to show that I wasn’t to be taken literally. “Ah... You aren’t gonna finish that, are you?” she asks as she casually spears a chicken wing off my plate. “Probably not now that it’s on your plate” runs through my mind, but I keep silent and smile. “How about you?” I ask. “Hmmm?” A quizzical look flits across her face, mouth masticating my food noisily. “Your greatest fear?” I clarified. “Mmmm,” she finishes chewing, and gives a cute pout while thinking. “Loneliness,” she finally decides. Polishing up the last morsel off her plastic plate, she stands and drifts off towards the crowd, and I watch her retreating silhouette with the shadow of a smile on my face.

End.