Lucy walked around the living room ninety five times that night, counting each step in the first round, and then each one after that, until she reached 9,352, which she divided by 98 (the number of steps in one round) to get 95. She wrote all this down on a page in the back of her history notebook, and then scribbled it out violently and drew several vague sketches in blue pen on the next page. Then she walked around the living room a full thirty five times, using the same math but taking smaller steps so as to achieve a different average steps per round. Again, she wrote it all down, and again she scratched it all out, this time moving on to the next page with some lines of scattered verse that fell out of her head onto the page desperately, glad for a blank expanse, without other thoughts competing for space in a brain cluttered with snippets. Lucy put down her pen, which grudged her the misuse, and walked around the living room again, bigger steps this time, but declined to write down her calculations, sure now, from past experience, what she would do once she had. She tried to move directly to the next page, even scribbled out the nothing on the one that came before, but found that there was nothing in her head and no muscles in her hand to move the pen, which was relieved. Tired of walking around the living room, and dizzy come to that, Lucy sat in a chair and stared at nothing for a while, until she realized that she was staring at something, and that it was a houseplant that was dying of neglect, so she closed her eyes and turned her head to be doubly sure there was nothing to stare at. Soon, however, it became apparent that she was staring at something, and even though that something was nothing more than the backs of her eyelids, it was distracting, and prevented her from thinking.
Lucy lay face down on her bed and breathed deeply, trying to catch a whiff of the night before, but there was nothing but a blank scent that must have been her own and not enough air. She lay that way for a while, inversely smothered, trying to imitate tragedy, but with one nostril cheating ever so slightly to the side.
Lucy summoned snippets, wishing she had a fuller picture, and burrowed deeper under the covers. She fell asleep and didn't dream because she didn’t need to, and when she woke up the lights in the living room glared on her footsteps, and the pen had fallen to the floor and was attempting to hide under the pile of clothes she didn't want to move just yet because, among the snippets in her head, she remembered how they had got there.
Lucy stood and walked without direction, finding herself in the kitchen and staring at the toaster confused. Another snippet floated to the top of her memory, and she opened the fridge to look for it. She found it lurking among the water bottles, and going back to her room found that, indeed, there was an empty one lying on the bedside table.
Lucy lay down, on her back this time, and assembled all the snippets she had in a line in her head, and began the task of organizing them. Chronological order wasn’t very hard; it seemed that after time stopped being a given, but rather something that popped in and out of existence unexpectedly and at whim, the snippets arranged themselves, and the stragglers that surfaced late arrived in order, from first to last. It was significance she had trouble with. Each snippet was incomplete; she remembered the physical act, the names of things, but she couldn’t remember how she had felt – if she had even felt anything– about each thing as it happened. She managed to scrounge up, in relative order: unease, reckless abandon, surprise, excitement, contentment (this one was troublesome; the word needed to be stronger, almost violent, but she couldn’t think of any word that had this paradox as a definition), restlessness, worry, disappointment. These were the things that she could vaguely remember feeling, and she trusted them at least a little bit more than the things she would come up with next, which were brand new and retroactively applied to the assembled snippets. This part was like crying in a movie; any emotion she could come up with now was diluted, insincere, reflective of the fact that these things were happening through a blurry lens, to a different Lucy, under a different director.
Lucy might have lied. She wasn’t sure. She was stirring the snippets now, in a cup in her head, and it was hard to keep other things, irrelevant things from getting mixed in. Lucy didn’t have a problem with lying, per se; or rather, she felt perhaps that she should, but couldn’t seem to summon the necessary gut reaction for such morality, and so had given up on it. The problem was that, by default, she didn’t know if she had told the truth, and this made the snippets very hard to categorize and control.
It was the violent contentment that confused her. Lucy stood and looked at the bed. I want to always be lying here looking at you. It was the violent contentment that was the kicker. She knew what it meant; she had invented the term. But it was the violent contentment that confused her. Something more, there’s something more, there’s something not here that makes this contentment a violent contentment. She looked at the bed, squinting, staring at the sheets and the covers and the violent contentment that she could see but not touch. There was a contentment that was a violent contentment, and that was the kicker.
* * *
Lucy wrote love songs. Each one was sordid but discreet, very unhappy, and ending in pith. Lucy churned out love songs like a factory, her assembly line of nerves, brain, and fingers working haphazardly and predictably.
* * *
Lucy was surrounded by pictures of herself, staring down from the walls. There were too many of them, and they were laughing, looking out from behind different masks, they were grinning, they stared at her while she moved like a doll, arms stiff and eyes dull, while she took things out and placed them on the desk; heart, lungs, liver, stomach.
Lucy sat on the edge of the bed, empty nightstand, bare floor. The pictures stared at her while she stared at the air, which grew sparser, floating away, abandoning her in bored disgust. Bits of Lucy were numb. Lucy looked at her feet and ran to the bathroom to throw up. She returned, sat on the bed, lifted her hands to see fingernails, joints, soft skin, and ran to the bathroom to throw up. Washing her face in the sink, she looked up and the mirror threw the sharp, stark shapes of eyes, mouth, nose, skin back at her. She did not have time to run, and puked right there in the sink. Eyes, nose, mouth, skin, details, blank, cold, cheap, blank, cold, cheap; she emptied her stomach into the sink, looked into the mirror for the rest, rung the soft pink folds dry in the white ceramic. She returned, eyes firmly closed, feeling along the wall, which pushed her along with a recoiling haste, cold paint allowing only a brush of fingertips for the barest essential sense of direction. The bedroom moved away from the blind woman, who grazed no shins or toes or elbows as she felt for the reluctant bed. Sitting on the edge, she did not sleep and she did not cry.
* * *
Lucy sat down with her pen and her paper and her anger and realized to her delight that she had absolutely nothing to write down about your colourless, hazy face.
The End
Lucy lay face down on her bed and breathed deeply, trying to catch a whiff of the night before, but there was nothing but a blank scent that must have been her own and not enough air. She lay that way for a while, inversely smothered, trying to imitate tragedy, but with one nostril cheating ever so slightly to the side.
Lucy summoned snippets, wishing she had a fuller picture, and burrowed deeper under the covers. She fell asleep and didn't dream because she didn’t need to, and when she woke up the lights in the living room glared on her footsteps, and the pen had fallen to the floor and was attempting to hide under the pile of clothes she didn't want to move just yet because, among the snippets in her head, she remembered how they had got there.
Lucy stood and walked without direction, finding herself in the kitchen and staring at the toaster confused. Another snippet floated to the top of her memory, and she opened the fridge to look for it. She found it lurking among the water bottles, and going back to her room found that, indeed, there was an empty one lying on the bedside table.
Lucy lay down, on her back this time, and assembled all the snippets she had in a line in her head, and began the task of organizing them. Chronological order wasn’t very hard; it seemed that after time stopped being a given, but rather something that popped in and out of existence unexpectedly and at whim, the snippets arranged themselves, and the stragglers that surfaced late arrived in order, from first to last. It was significance she had trouble with. Each snippet was incomplete; she remembered the physical act, the names of things, but she couldn’t remember how she had felt – if she had even felt anything– about each thing as it happened. She managed to scrounge up, in relative order: unease, reckless abandon, surprise, excitement, contentment (this one was troublesome; the word needed to be stronger, almost violent, but she couldn’t think of any word that had this paradox as a definition), restlessness, worry, disappointment. These were the things that she could vaguely remember feeling, and she trusted them at least a little bit more than the things she would come up with next, which were brand new and retroactively applied to the assembled snippets. This part was like crying in a movie; any emotion she could come up with now was diluted, insincere, reflective of the fact that these things were happening through a blurry lens, to a different Lucy, under a different director.
Lucy might have lied. She wasn’t sure. She was stirring the snippets now, in a cup in her head, and it was hard to keep other things, irrelevant things from getting mixed in. Lucy didn’t have a problem with lying, per se; or rather, she felt perhaps that she should, but couldn’t seem to summon the necessary gut reaction for such morality, and so had given up on it. The problem was that, by default, she didn’t know if she had told the truth, and this made the snippets very hard to categorize and control.
It was the violent contentment that confused her. Lucy stood and looked at the bed. I want to always be lying here looking at you. It was the violent contentment that was the kicker. She knew what it meant; she had invented the term. But it was the violent contentment that confused her. Something more, there’s something more, there’s something not here that makes this contentment a violent contentment. She looked at the bed, squinting, staring at the sheets and the covers and the violent contentment that she could see but not touch. There was a contentment that was a violent contentment, and that was the kicker.
* * *
Lucy wrote love songs. Each one was sordid but discreet, very unhappy, and ending in pith. Lucy churned out love songs like a factory, her assembly line of nerves, brain, and fingers working haphazardly and predictably.
* * *
Lucy was surrounded by pictures of herself, staring down from the walls. There were too many of them, and they were laughing, looking out from behind different masks, they were grinning, they stared at her while she moved like a doll, arms stiff and eyes dull, while she took things out and placed them on the desk; heart, lungs, liver, stomach.
Lucy sat on the edge of the bed, empty nightstand, bare floor. The pictures stared at her while she stared at the air, which grew sparser, floating away, abandoning her in bored disgust. Bits of Lucy were numb. Lucy looked at her feet and ran to the bathroom to throw up. She returned, sat on the bed, lifted her hands to see fingernails, joints, soft skin, and ran to the bathroom to throw up. Washing her face in the sink, she looked up and the mirror threw the sharp, stark shapes of eyes, mouth, nose, skin back at her. She did not have time to run, and puked right there in the sink. Eyes, nose, mouth, skin, details, blank, cold, cheap, blank, cold, cheap; she emptied her stomach into the sink, looked into the mirror for the rest, rung the soft pink folds dry in the white ceramic. She returned, eyes firmly closed, feeling along the wall, which pushed her along with a recoiling haste, cold paint allowing only a brush of fingertips for the barest essential sense of direction. The bedroom moved away from the blind woman, who grazed no shins or toes or elbows as she felt for the reluctant bed. Sitting on the edge, she did not sleep and she did not cry.
* * *
Lucy sat down with her pen and her paper and her anger and realized to her delight that she had absolutely nothing to write down about your colourless, hazy face.
The End
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