(no subject)
Diana Ottey
May 27, 2009
English 303B
Short Story
It was three A.M. and she was still writing this fucking paper. It was three pages long and she needed seven to ten. Why did she wait so long? She turned circles in her chair and twiddled her pencil between her fingertips. She always wrote her essays out on her yellow pad of paper before typing them. It was a habit she had picked up after reading a book by Maya Angelou. Kasey ran on the ideas of other poets and authors hoping they could inspire her somehow. It didn’t matter or work. It didn’t matter, because she blasting music and any method she attempted to use would spin back and smack her in the face the way this song by Flogging Molly was. It didn’t work, because what worked for one author couldn’t work for another, especially not a wannabe university student sitting in an empty dorm on a Sunday night. Her dorm-mates had all left for the weekend and wouldn’t be back until early the next morning. Kasey had decided to stay behind to work on her paper. The paper that had been assigned for the past month and a half was the current subject of tonight’s scrutiny, while another paper peeked out from the inside of her book bag. She looked to the pad of paper sitting on the desk in front of her where the empty lines seemed to mock her. “Oh shut up.” She glared at the paper and then looked away to her ceiling. “God, why do I wait so long to do these things?” Getting up and walking around the room seemed to be a good idea, and so she rose and paced the small room, being careful to avoid the bed pressed against the corner with clothes peeking out from beneath it, the overflowing trashcan next to the desk, filled to the brim with crumpled balls of yellow paper, and the dozen or so cords attached to sockets, alarm clocks, lights, a small television, a radio and a phone charger trailing the floor. “This place is a mess.”
She climbed onto her bed, away from the travesty that was her bedroom floor, and scooted to the head of the bed against the eastern wall. Her window was open and the breeze fluttered in. Kasey closed her eyes and felt the cool wind dance in her hair. It had been so long since she had last took the time to breathe, especially the morning air, before all of the other humans in her town decided it was time to wake up and pollute the air with their voices. She breathed in the quiet and felt her heart slow; it had started to race earlier when writers block had hit her so hard it was painful to remember. She blamed the tired feeling in her body, the feeling that was calling her to fall asleep in the comfort of her bed, to push aside any papers or assignments that were due in exchange for blissful dreams of the dark. She had no color in her dreams. She only had dark shapes and movements, never knowing who was moving, why they chose not to speak, or where they were going. She believed at one point in time, long ago, that she had dreamt in color. She couldn’t remember what it felt like, or what the dreams were about, but she remembered the sensation of understanding, though she no longer knew what she had understood.
“You’re such a pussy! Why don’t you grow some balls and learn how to treat a woman!”
“What? Where is this coming from? You’re so plastered you can hardly walk.”
“Don’t tell me what I am and what I’m not!” The voice began to slur its words together. “I do what I want and you have nothing to do it!” The voice was becoming shrill, “Back. Off!”
The second voice began again, pleading with the girl to calm down and stop screaming into the early morning. Kasey sighed. She knew the second voice was male and the first belonged to the girl who lived down the hall. They must have decided to come back early. Kasey kept her eyes closed with her face turned to the window as the girl continued to scream and the boy attempted to calm her down.
“Look, I know that you’ve had a bit too much to drink tonight. That’s why I decided to bring you home instead of letting you stay out all night at some guy’s house but-”
“But what?! You should have just left me there! I didn’t want to come back to this shithole! At least at Dillon’s house I could’ve gotten screwed!” “I know you don’t mean that-” He was cut off for the second time. “Don’t tell me what I mean and what I don’t mean. You don’t know anything about me.” Her voice grew colder as the alcohol clenched its fist around her heart. “And you know what else?” The sound of heels clattering on pavement reached Kasey, the girl was stumbling on her own now, without the support of the boy she had arrived with. “I don’t need you. I never have. You’re just a needy little bastard who doesn’t know what to do with a real woman. Get out of my way.”
Heels clicked out of hearing and Kasey heard heavier footsteps following them around the building. She heard doors slam in succession as he followed the drunken girl through the building. “At least tell me if you’re alright!” Kasey rolled off of her bed and went to her door. Peeking out, she saw the boy standing with his head leaning against the slammed door of the intoxicated young woman in a gesture of defeat. He turned away and from the light gazing out of the bedroom, saw the head peeking out from the doorway. “You hear everything? I didn’t think anyone would be back till tomorrow morning at least.”
“I stayed all weekend. I figured that no one has class until late Monday afternoon, so I could get some time to myself.”
“Yeah. Sorry that we messed with that.” The head moved as though it were shrugging and replied, “No biggie. I wasn’t doing much work anyways.” An upper body emerged and a leg stepped out. “Are you okay?” Her face held a look of concern as she looked upon the form of the tired being standing in front of the bedroom door.
“Yeah. Uhhh…would you mind sitting out here with me for a while? I didn’t drink much tonight, but I’m a little too buzzed to walk out right now.”
“Sure…” Kasey walked out of her room to join the boy sitting in the middle of the hall. They sat with their backs against the wall, side by side.
“I heard most of what you guys were yelling at each other, and it didn’t sound too pretty.” Her new companion grimaced, “Yeah. She was pretty loud.” Kasey looked over, “Are you going to be alright? Your girlfriend was pretty harsh.” He laughed, “She’s not my girlfriend.” After seeing a confused expression, he added, “It’s pretty complicated. I love her, but she hates me, especially whenever she gets drunk. The only time she shows me any affection is when there is no one else around willing to give her any. I’m her last resort.” “Oh. Well then why do you care? If she doesn’t love you, or even like you, why do you hang on?” “Ahhh…that’s a good question, and I don’t have an answer.” He stretched his legs out to the opposite wall. Kasey sat with hers crossed.
“And you don’t mind spilling your heart out to some random girl down the hall?” “No. I don’t mind at all.” He smiled at her, but she was distracted by a cricket hopping down the hall. “I guess we all have to bare our soul sometime.” “Yup,” his companion was still tuned into the cricket as it began its trek up the wall. “Yup, yup, yup,” he repeated.
She turned from the cricket to look into the face of her companion. His eyes were tinged with red and his smile was worn-out. She could tell he was too exhausted to be all there. “How much did you drink tonight?” “I drank enough to have a headache tomorrow morning, but not nearly enough for me to not know what I’m doing. Don’t worry about me, you have nothing to fear.”
“Good.” She turned to stare at the wall. “Is that why you don’t mind telling me about yourself?” “Yup.” “You sure like that word.” “Yup.” “Are you going to tell me your name?” “Yup.” “When?” “Eventually.” They shared another smile. “And you, ma’am? Are you willing to bare a piece of your soul with a complete stranger?”
“Yeah, sure, why not? Ask me a question.” She tossed her hair and stretched out her legs.
“What’s your favorite color?” “Blue.” “What’s your favorite band?” “Flogging Molly.” “The crazy Irish, I see.” “The music is good and the lyrics make me smile.” “Age?” “18.”
“Me too! That is something very nice to hear.” He shifted his body towards her, “And your deepest, darkest secret?” “Ahh…no.” “No?” “No.”
“Okay. Can I settle for a random dark factoid in your life to rival my unrequited love story?”
“Yes.”
“Good to hear, love.”
“A dark factoid to rival unrequited love…”
“Yes.”
“I dream in black and white.” The conversation paused as he looked at the girl sitting next to him. “And what exactly does that mean, per se?”
“It means that when I dream, I don’t know where I am, what I’m doing or who I am with. It means that when I close my eyes, I go to either a place where the darkness is so terrifying it makes me want to scream my throat dry or a place where the darkness wraps me in a comfortable nothingness. There are also time when the white light will come piercing through the dark blinding everything, and I remember once, although I can’t remember anything else, of a time when the soft light came through the darkness and illuminated everything.”
She looked at him and then turned back to the wall. It was growing even later and she could feel the sun coming up. She didn’t know how long the two had sat there in the hallway, but she had to return to her room soon. The breeze was waiting for her.
“That’s pretty intense.” His voice shook her out of her revelry. “Yeah, I know.” “I’ll admit that what you dream, sounds like what I live.” “I wouldn’t say that-” “Yeah, but I would.”
They reclined against the wall, turning to look at each other now and then, but overall, they simply enjoyed the others companionship. It was when she heard the birds call, that Kasey decided to speak again, “Look, I need to head to bed, it’s been a long night and I don’t know where this conversation is going. Plus, I really need to finish my paper and-“ “Don’t worry about it.” He rose and helped Kasey to her feet. “Thanks for sitting with me as long as you did.”
“Not a problem.” She turned and walked into her dorm room. The fellow followed behind and they looked out of the window. The sun had tinged the sky with clouds of blood red. They faded downward into a canvas of orange and black as the clouds created patterned streaks across the sky for the growing circle along the horizon. She could see now that his skin wasn’t the deep brown she was expecting, but a lighter shade. The man with the ivory skin stared out of the window as she looked at him. He opened his mouth, “I see your color and raise you a beautiful new day.” “God, that’s cheesy.”
“What’s your point?”
”What’s your name?”
“Marco. And what would yours be?”
“Kasey, but my friends call me Kaysah.”
He put out his hand to take hers.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Kaysah.”
She smiled, “It’s a pleasure to meet you too.”
They shook hands.
“Ms. Kaysah, it’s good to open yourself up to new colors now and then. I hear it does a body good.”
“Shut up,” she replied, “You’re lucky I’m so nice.”