The Orange Dress

Heated peaks of flowers discussed words of pity as they watched, spilling over my eyelids in a fountain of hazy spheres. I hiccupped. The movement in my throat startled me. Foreign was the ability to move beneath my skin. The suitcase which had enclosed my mind creaked. Words attempted to escape, squeezing at the suitcases fraying edges. Abortive was the possibility to escape. Buzz buzz buzz. The redolent sounds crashed and whirred, propelling themselves into the smallest hollows of my mind until they consumed me. More words tried to escape.
The funeral slid onwards beside me. The orange dress comforted my shoulders.


‘I can’t breathe.,’
Jessica stared at me, questioningly. I didn’t know what I meant. I had heard of panic attacks, result of being overly stressed, upset or concerned. I wasn’t any of those things, I was fine.
Sitting in the back of an early morning Math class, unpredicted fear drilled through my stomach.


The windowsill groaned under the weight of the congealed dust. Beneath the pungent air-freshener hung the stale aftermath of alcohol crusted evenings, evenings the cleaner brought with him the sturdy form of cheap wine instead of his broom. I noted the flaking white paint that scattered the wilting carpet, dandruff on a starch scalp. The fly sitting on the windowsill had taken up a methodical buzz, mimicking the rehearsed sympathy the councilor was attempting to voice. Her lack of interest didn’t surprise me. If I was honest with myself I didn’t understand why I was sitting there. Perhaps it was that the musty office presented an escape from the ape infested math class I had just left. Perhaps it was a different reason.

I sunk deeper into my state of ennui and granted my ears the duty to listen as they were informed of previous high-school-relationship splits. I sunk deeper still. Jessica sat a steady metre from me, her mask of interest barely concealing the late nights and drugs that consumed her. Her blonde hair had frizzed from the combination of heat and dampness. I noticed this.
A single squeal from my pocket announced a phone call. I excused myself with little more than a turn of my chair. I answered the phone.
Thirty seven seconds of words.
I hardly noticed as my lips formed the words I heard.
Libby drowned. Somebody stabbed her. She’s dead.

She’s dead.
It was strange to see a persons’ pupils fall through their eyes, to feel the cold spark as they passed through the floor and into the damp earth. I watched Jessica slide from the cream coloured chair and onto the floor, her frizzed hair caging her face. I was across the barren room beside the windowsill before the mental capacity of my suitcased mind erupted, the molten pain etching itself into my limbs, numbing them. The dying carpet of that office never felt harder. A tear fell.


Later that evening I left the warmth of my bedroom, slipping silently past sleeping parents and out into the cold night. The sky had grown cold and silent. The moon shone through the ebony sky, blanketing the street I stood in a coating of soft light. The street lamps were ablaze. I could feel their light move into me, their questioning gaze frustrating me. Buzz buzz buzz. The night was cool and I thanked the clouds for holding themselves in, the late mildew had already caused a chill to hover beneath my skin.  I scuffed my shoe’s heel in frustration and thought. Never was I given a moment of silence. In the day I faced the angry chirp of cicadas and now it was the distant bleep of crickets which coupled with the angry buzz in my head. Perhaps I could borrow the bubble making machine. The clear foamy spheres could dance for me, and I could dance for them. I closed my tight eyelids and concentrated on the green and silver shapes that flittered through my mind.
The orange dress sat on the chair, waiting.


The day was vibrant. I stared at the faces that crawled into the room. I noticed that many were talking. I tried to understand how they moved the muscles in their throat. Creating voice seemed such an impossible idea. 
Jessica’s slightly damp hand was still clutching my own. The air-conditioning switched on, the whirr of powered fans sounding above us.

Jessica had beautiful eyes; large slate blue orbs. I could see the rare slivers of cardinal streaking her whites. Sleepless nights. The death which had crawled into her eyelids those weeks ago slivered it’s slimy hand through my skin. I shivered. 

Words of people I never met slid over me. The suitcase locked.
Buzz buzz buzz.
I could smell the colour of people around me, I felt small amongst the hundred others who stood. I closed my eyes. The orange dress swayed at my knees.

The vacuum cleaner was broken at home, the airbag exploded when I tried to turn it on. The tomato plants had wilted, the rotting fruit producing the acrid smell of death. I remembered my sisters bicycle which I had parked in the shed five minutes earlier. The paint had begun to peel the previous summer and the sticky pink hadn’t yet been replaced. I heard the tinkle of shattering china and the yelp of a child found guilty. I closed the heavy door, dampening the chip of cicadas. The distant pound of blood careening through my veins soothed me. I noted a scratch on my face as I stared back at dead eyes. Bathing in silence which for so long had evaded me, I welcomed the tears that drowned the floorboards in words.

Over bare hills and dusty roads was a school. A musty office basked in the silence of no students. Somewhere deep within the gritty windowpanes and bare plaster walls a small threaded carpet heaved. It wasn’t until the carpet sobbed that the bookcase and cream coloured chairs paid attention. There was no one walking along the corrugated road to notice the room which at that moment, on a heated summer day, sang a song. The desk fizzed through coffee stains. The windowsill sneezed at the dust. The chairs hummed. Computer whizzed. Bookshelf chattered.

A small tear laughed silently to itself, sinking deeper into the coarse carpet, listening to the sound of changing time.




Joy Foster