It's late at night, pitch black. A storm is coming. It smells like the clouds are about to cry. A little girl is shivering, huddled underneath the ledge that keeps the garage door dry. She's small enough to fit in the thin dry patch of concrete on the driveway right by the metal doors. The walls of metal keeping the cars warm. The storm grows, the rain falls, and lightening begins to strike. She can hear the crack of thunder in the distance and see the flash of electricity on the ground, but she doesn't look up. The drops begin to slant as the wind lashes her face with tiny bullets of cold. It smells like rain, like sadness, like loneliness. It smells like that taste of tears and snot and hatred. The little girl is soaked, the ledge can no longer protect her. She tries to break into the car parked on the driveway but can't remember the code. She is scared, thinking she may die in this storm, in suburbia, in her own driveway. Calmly she closes her eyes and pictures her father's hands as he unlocks the door for her, as he has done hundreds of times. With a clap of thunder her eyes open and there is no one to open the door. Reaching out she lets her fingers do the talking and hits five keys. The doors unlock. Climbing inside the back seat and closing the door behind her she locks the car. Wet, cold, unimaginably cold. Not the kind of cold you can come back from, the kind that chills to the bone. Cold that turns to night and freezes the soul. As she curls up on the cloth seats she continues to sob. She is alone. Slowly, as the rain pounds on the roof of the car as if to crush her inside, the little girl drifts away into sleep. A deep relieving slumber. As the moments pass and she falls deeper she wonders if she'll ever wake up. If she even wants to wake up. The comforting grasp of death welcomes her in away from the cold, out of the rain, into the eternal world of apathy. Time passes, an indeterminate amount of time passes. A knock on the window pulls her out of her dream. She isn't dead, she is still forced to live this life. Looking out the window she sees her dad. It is late, much later than she has ever been up before. It's like a completely different time, the twilight hours of the night. He takes her inside the house and up to her room. She changes into dry pjs and he tucks her into bed. And like a prince in the night he disappears. Blankets, so many blankets and yet still shivering. She stares into the blackness of her eyes and dreams of the sweet release of death. The sun shines, her mother opens the blinds, and the little girl wakes from the land of freedom to a 104 degree fever and an immediate need to vomit. Her mother asks her if she knew what she had done wrong. She nods knowing that it will be the quickest way for her to avoid another tirade. But honestly she doesn't remember why she was punished. Just the cold and the wet and the loneliness and the charm of deep everlasting slumber.
Life ur Life,
Victoria Niles
Life ur Life,
Victoria Niles
