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In a Coma- Part 1
Posted by JSYL
on
Sunday, August 17, 2008
in
JSYL's Prose
Mia
She replaced the receiver in its cradle slowly.
Her hand remained outstretched, and felt heavy as though it were still holding the phone.
Just minutes before she had seen what damage hands could do.
She stared at it. The pale, long, fingers ended in perfectly manicured nails. Small. Unassuming. Dulled by the beam of the florescent panel directly above her head. She watched it tremble. She observed her own hand as though it belonged to someone else.
The draught sliding down between the crimson silk of her dress and her spine would not quit, though the glass door was folded shut behind her. Her bare shoulder blades lunged toward one another to shake it off. Once. Twice, for good measure. She could hardly breathe. Those same long fingers curled around the edge of the door and shoved it across.
She sharply sucked in the night air like she was taking her first hit, and it shot straight past her tongue to the back of her skull. It stung her cheeks- pink with cold and too much rouge- and dotted her arms with goosebumps. An empty shell, she trudged through the dark on autopilot. Her eyes remained fixed on what was directly in front of her, with no spark of interest in anything in particular. Her legs took her further and further away in long, steady strides. With each one she breathed a little easier. She did not look back once.
Alone, all the hours that followed passed by her in a blur, as scenery would a moving train. The words- 'what have I done?'- chanted to her, as if willing her to think about what they meant. Faster, and faster still, in time with the clack-clack of her heels on the pavement. But her legs wouldn't let her stop walking.
It was something about the constancy of the rhythm of her steps and her breathing, and yes, even the chanting, that gradually dulled her senses after a time. No, not bitterness. Just a numb sensation, a familiar sort of indifference that comforted her as much as the sight of her apartment building in the near distance. The fabric of her dress clung to her thighs uncomfortably and her calves burned, but it was a good kind of pain.
Living no longer held any joy up ahead. Death seemed to her just as empty a prospect.
But just when it seemed as though her mind might be sucked so far into that vacuum of self-indulgence that she would fade away completely, she stepped off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic.
Bam.
A bus narrowly missed her ribcage by inches. And that rush, that chemical reaction that instinctively pulled her back onto the pavement, made all the difference she needed. It physically forced her blood, which usually ebbed and dripped reluctantly through her painfully thin body, to thrust itself into her heart.
She woke up from her deep sleep, and saw the ground beneath her for the first time in days.
But it only lasted a second.
She slowly walked out onto the now near empty street, looking only at what was directly in front of her.
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She replaced the receiver in its cradle slowly.
Her hand remained outstretched, and felt heavy as though it were still holding the phone.
Just minutes before she had seen what damage hands could do.
She stared at it. The pale, long, fingers ended in perfectly manicured nails. Small. Unassuming. Dulled by the beam of the florescent panel directly above her head. She watched it tremble. She observed her own hand as though it belonged to someone else.
The draught sliding down between the crimson silk of her dress and her spine would not quit, though the glass door was folded shut behind her. Her bare shoulder blades lunged toward one another to shake it off. Once. Twice, for good measure. She could hardly breathe. Those same long fingers curled around the edge of the door and shoved it across.
She sharply sucked in the night air like she was taking her first hit, and it shot straight past her tongue to the back of her skull. It stung her cheeks- pink with cold and too much rouge- and dotted her arms with goosebumps. An empty shell, she trudged through the dark on autopilot. Her eyes remained fixed on what was directly in front of her, with no spark of interest in anything in particular. Her legs took her further and further away in long, steady strides. With each one she breathed a little easier. She did not look back once.
Alone, all the hours that followed passed by her in a blur, as scenery would a moving train. The words- 'what have I done?'- chanted to her, as if willing her to think about what they meant. Faster, and faster still, in time with the clack-clack of her heels on the pavement. But her legs wouldn't let her stop walking.
It was something about the constancy of the rhythm of her steps and her breathing, and yes, even the chanting, that gradually dulled her senses after a time. No, not bitterness. Just a numb sensation, a familiar sort of indifference that comforted her as much as the sight of her apartment building in the near distance. The fabric of her dress clung to her thighs uncomfortably and her calves burned, but it was a good kind of pain.
Living no longer held any joy up ahead. Death seemed to her just as empty a prospect.
But just when it seemed as though her mind might be sucked so far into that vacuum of self-indulgence that she would fade away completely, she stepped off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic.
Bam.
A bus narrowly missed her ribcage by inches. And that rush, that chemical reaction that instinctively pulled her back onto the pavement, made all the difference she needed. It physically forced her blood, which usually ebbed and dripped reluctantly through her painfully thin body, to thrust itself into her heart.
She woke up from her deep sleep, and saw the ground beneath her for the first time in days.
But it only lasted a second.
She slowly walked out onto the now near empty street, looking only at what was directly in front of her.
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