A Walking Travesty (Just Smile)

         She never liked talking about what was going on in her head with other people. She was the type of person to let it pool and congeal within her being. She could take a beating when she had to and was not afraid to hide the bruises with cosmetics swiped from her mother’s drawers. She could deal with humiliation without letting the perturbation show even when she was alone. She wasn’t the type of person people could describe as weak, for how she suffered, but they still did. They couldn’t see the things inside her head. They only saw the freak outside.

         It started like any other night before it; she came home after nine hours of repetitive mockery and sealed herself away in her room for another night without supper. She piled things around her (blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, clothes), searching for warmth and a cave to hide with the screams intensifying on the other side of the walls. It wasn’t until hours later, with the screaming done, the house dark and silent, when she could extract herself from her hole to search for food. She’d search the small kitchen for anything to satisfy the inherited need.

         That night she found the makings for a simple sandwich and with the threat of waking the voices she gathered the food into her arms and hid once again behind the closed bedroom door. She spread the food in front of her, constructing the peanut butter and banana sandwich slowly, slicing the banana in equal slices with the dull kitchen knife. Eating was an even slower procedure and she had yet to finish the sandwich when the first wave impacted her.

         Wave after wave of despondency surged through her mind, peaking in crests of heart shattering wails that were only heard in the confines of her mind. She clasped her hands over her ears, peanut butter smearing into her hair and her unfinished food falling to the ground unceremoniously. There’s a whooshing sound echoing around the room and she collapses onto her side one hand flailing out to try to find something to cling to. Her hand meets cooling metal and she pulls at it quickly, the skinny utensil resting in her palm while she recedes to the back of her mind where there’s quiet.

         The first sting doesn’t help, there’ no release so she presses harder. Nothing about the tool is chilled anymore and her hands shake with the effort it takes to focus her vision on the contrasting colors of peach and silver. She tries again. There. The starkness of the bite against the offending emotions is enough for her to exhale for the first time since the first wave hit. Soon a rouge color joins the melding of peach-silver in her sight and she can breathe, until the crimson kept coming. The beginning of the panic set in once she realized she’d finally done it, pressed too far, she’d crossed that bridge she promised herself she’d never cross and her heart constricted. A cut too deep is a wave too strong.

         She began to scramble then, trying to create a tourniquet out of pieces of her cave, worrying about the slowing rate of the noises inside her, and chiding herself for not thinking of cleaning her mess before the house awoke again. The voices would complain about the mess in the morning, when what was left of the girl would have to be scraped off the floor and disposed of. The stains would be impossible to get out, no amount of cola and bleach would erase the impurities she would be leaving behind.

When the pain stopped coming she sighed, laying back on the floor and staring at the dimming light under her door. The world around her blurred and shifted darker pleasantly. She resigned herself to the impending conclusion and smiled for the first time that day; at least she’d have quiet.