A voice shook softly in the dimly-lit room.
“That’s it,” it said. “Easy does it...”
My shaky voice.
My darkened room.
I was minding my own business that afternoon when I suddenly came face to face with My Story.
“Hello,” she waved perkily at me, smiling.
I put the knife and my wrist down and stared at my visitor with a mixture of annoyance and relief.
“Oh,” I sighed. “It’s you.”
She sat on my bed, almost bounced on it, I noted with irritation; and proceeded to twirl her hair with her finger. I stared at her vibrant eyes and her sun-kissed skin. She wore a pretty mid-length dress, the yellow of sunflowers, and was shod in elegant white heels showing off her candy red toenails.
She felt my gaze and smiled a beam of light at me. In my lonely-bulbed fluorescent room, she was the sun, illuminating the cluttered inanimate extensions of myself in the darkened room.
“So,” she beamed. “What’s up with you?”
“You first,” I countered calmly. “Where have you been?”
My Story laughed and gaily twirled around the room, giggling. “I’ve been all over! To the most wonderful places! If only I could describe it all to you!”
“Try me.”
“Well,’ she eyed the ceiling thoughtfully. “I went to this seaside village where people still live in stone houses. Everyone, young and old, would walk around with heavy straw hats. I wondered why. A typhoon hit the place, pelting the houses terribly. That explained the stone houses and the hats. They were head umbrellas!”
“Ah.”
“And then I dived deep into an ocean and walked along the deepest part of the trench. It was so dark you’d think no living thing can exist there but I saw so many of all kinds. Scary ones; ugly ones; cute ones… So many that humans have never seen before!”
“Makes sense.”
“I also walked along the crater of this volcano. It was asleep but the heat against my legs told me it’s about to wake up from its nap! Every so often, steam would blow out from crevices and, if you listen hard enough, you’d hear a rumbling. It was the volcano snoring!”
“Ha.”
“Then I flew to this star that appeared more purple the closer I got. It was so small I could walk around it in a day. Next time I go I’ll wear better shoes. All over, there were these purple rocks embedded on the ground; like sugar gummies, you know. But they were not gummy-soft at all. And they didn’t taste anything like gummies. Bleh.”
My Story sighed and it freed her from her trance. She turned to stare at me, waiting.
“I’m glad you had fun,” was all I could say.
She then eyed me up and down; she spun around eyeing my gloomy quarters. “And you? What have you been up to?” She stood in front of me, a gaunt grey figure sitting on the ghastly mess I called my bed.
“Well,” I started tentatively. “My agent dropped me.”
I looked up at her; she was twirling her hair again.
“My publisher got tired of waiting for the sequel I signed up for. It’s been 2 years. He agreed to nullify the contract if I return the advance for the book I couldn’t write. My agent facilitated the agreement then dropped me. The problem is I no longer have the money.
“I was on a high, you see; I thought money would keep coming in after the success of the book. Cash, TV appearances, movie cameos… it’s amazing how quickly they all disappeared. I was broke; then in debt. I stalled for as long as I could and now they’ve hired this collection agency of assholes who threaten me daily.”
My Story was no longer listening. She was going around the room, picking something up, dropping it in disgust and moving on to the next; a dainty butterfly lost in a garden of dying flowers.
Still, I continued.
“And so I went into hiding. I stayed at Stacy’s for a couple of days and then, what do you know, I saw Rob again. I couldn’t believe it: in the cold cuts section in a bodega after all these years. He was divorced. He told me I could stay with him; that he’d help me out. And he was great…for a while. I should have realized no one could change that drastically. Soon he started getting jealous again. His attacks seem worse this time.”
I shook my head sadly; she yawned.
“He strangled me in a rage after I came home from buying some Chinese down the street. I remember choking, trying to get free. Then I saw the spilled chop suey on the carpet and I thought, “What a waste of good chop suey”. Strangely, at that moment, that angered me more than his hands around my neck.
“I was able to crawl away and grab the first thing I could from the coffee table. The happy stone Buddha from Rob’s days of enlightenment long gone just sort of welcomed my grasp. I hit him as he was coming for me again. I hit him on the head. He fell and I hit him again. And again. I must have hit him twenty… thirty times,” I shrugged.
My Story giggled as she held up a pair of old undies from my drawer, amused by the small hole in the center of the faded red heart at the center of the crotch.
“So I came back here, back in my little house emptied of all I’ve worked for. Those assholes must have come here and hauled off my stuff. And the rest,” I looked around, tears in my eyes. “The rest they just left like this.”
It was then that My Story found the switch for the overhead light. It filled the room with unwanted piercing brightness. It washed me with its illuminating yellow radiance.
My Story screamed when she saw the blood in my clothes; clumsily, she backed up against my old dresser filled with undies filled with holes.
I smiled. “I told you, I just came from Rob’s.”
I stood up, my feet and voice steady for the first time that night. “I came back here to end it all,” my head indicated the knife on the bed. “What’s a writer if she can’t write? You, My Story, left suddenly, taking my ideas with you. I found that, with you gone, nothing could inspire me. I lost all will to write. To live.”
I stared at My Story, unflinchingly in the light. “But now… you’re back.”
I grabbed the knife, the one that was supposed to end my life that night, and lunged for her, My Story, that betrayed me. I stabbed her in the heart, nearly where the hole of the underwear heart was, the one that made her giggle. I pushed it in as deeply as I could, savoring the sound and feel of her breathe as it left her; it rushed towards my face as air and light, I inhaled it and felt myself glow inside.
I kissed My Story then, for the first and last time, and laid her gently on the floor, my bladed hand still pressing into her heart.
And then I hurriedly opened her garment bag and dug inside. As I was choosing a dress from her bag, I found a big wad of money tucked in one of its many pockets. I wanted to scream, to let out a year’s worth of hiding and suffering, but I swallowed the primal sound of my soul and jumped into the shower, washing away grime, blood, and sin.
Sometime later, when I finally left the house, I emerged as sunlight and opened the door to a new day awash with sunshine. I wore a dress the color of sunflowers and smiled a beam of blissful light.
I put on my dark shades, deeply breathed in the summer morning air, and, in My Story’s elegant white shoes, stepped into my new life.
(I wrote this story back in 2006. It was among the first ones that I felt worthy enough to post online back then. Upon re-reading it years later, I had to ask Bronne for his opinion; feeling a bit low, I doubted it. But one must trudge forward so I'm reposting it for Friday Frights where the theme is Hidden in the Dark. Thanks for reading.)