mmmarmalade's Stories

Reunion

2008-03-03T07:34:44Z

Strange, living inside a body and all. Some of them work so perfectly, and some of them are just such a struggle. It feels good to be free of it all, the pain and the wishing.

There’s a certain contentment in that. So I sit, pluck grass, and turn the world into Emerald City. There’s a dark green fuzzy dot on the horizon. I squint at it. It bobs toward me, increasing in size, speeding up to a gallop. I throw the grass away. I suck in a breath. In a moment, I am enveloped in green grass and gray fur and loud purring.

My baby has come to see me. I can’t even make a sound at the happiness bubbling up from my heart. My baby. My little purring bundle of unconditional love. Oh my God, I’ve missed her so much. I never got the chance to say goodbye. It broke my heart. Is it wrong to love a cat more than people? I don’t mind being wrong, if it is.

That Was Then

2008-02-24T05:17:22Z

I’ve been waiting. You would think that once you finish there, you’d be done with the waiting. That that stuff was just for the DMV and ladies’ rooms now. The butterflies came to visit. I liked that. The man who brought me here seemed nice. Told me to wait, all shiny in his suit. Like a new silver dollar. Pants, and vest, and jacket. Like John Travolta blended up with My Favorite Martian. I wish the butterflies would come back.

I get up and walk around. Everything looks so….normal. But when you look closer, it’s different. Not bad, just…more.

Take the grass. You pluck it out, and you look at it. But when you look close, it’s all translucent, like stained glass, and if you look through it, everything turns this springy apple green. Funny.

I’m glad it’s finally over. It seemed so intolerable at the time, and now it all seems, I don’t know——trivial, I guess. Didn’t feel that way at the time though. It’s hard to see it all from that perspective. Not surprising. It’s a funny set-up.

Burdens

2008-02-14T00:28:21Z

My eyes flitted back to the book, nubby embossed leather and pages aged yellow at the edges. I wanted to touch it, feel it, like the sweet burn of alcohol in a drinker’s throat first thing in the morning.

It repulsed me how much I wanted it.

I looked up at her again, my eyes drinking in the blood red of her hat, her scarf, her glistening lips.

“If I keep this here, you know what will happen. Take it to someone else, anyone else. Just get it out of here.”

” I can’t. You’re the only one left. You’re the last choice on my list, God knows, but you’re the only choice left.”

She looked surpised at my shock.

“You didn’t know? That they’d disappeared?”

“No. I haven’t had any contact in over a year.”

“Well, I suppose a reluctant saviour is better than no savoiur at all.” She pulled me up out of the chair, shoving my coat into my hands.

“Come on then, you know as well as I do that we have to go now.”