The Silent Attacker


by
Marcey Gray©2003

The frenzy crept up behind her - tugging her hair until it met quiet company with an unpolished floor, soon to be met with bluebell China and shards of regret. The saline drip she was saving for a day when life couldn't go on exploded in her hands. She fell to the ground in a crumpled pile. Her lungs were starved and she breathed a breath deep inside that felt tainted and used, but her heart stopped threatening. For a moment there was reprieve. For a moment there was quiet. For a moment she felt sanctity within the drying pool in her palms - until she opened her eyes and she saw it all around her. She crushed what she saw back into their waiting sockets and knew it was time. She knew this was it. It had to leave.

She opened her front door to greet the usual charge of cold breeze that always came in without proper invitation. She pushed through the force that kept her door closed even on bright sunny days when the sun called her name, and she walked out into the street - alone. She was alone and it pulled her hair. It taunted her and told her she couldn't go on any further. The bridge was up ahead and she couldn't go on. It told her she was alone and she should be terrified. She was terrified but determined. It had to leave.

The stares soon came - the ones that stare right through into something that isn't there. Looking for something. "What's wrong with you?" "You're damaged." "Don't you know those pants went out of style six months ago?" The stares. "What were they thinking", it asked her? "What do they know about you?" "You're not right", it shouted. The people still stared and the bus came - and then the bus, it stared. It was everywhere. It had to leave.

She thought about anything she could while she sat on that bus made of eyes, and when she departed the bus, she thought some more. It always interrupted her. It always jumped in and pointed out everything that was to fear. "The air is too cold." "You're not dressed for the occasion." "If you go on any further, you won't make it back. This is the point of no return." It wouldn't let her be. It wouldn't let her live without it. It didn't want to go anywhere. It was content where it was yet it had to leave.

She reached her final distress - a nemesis-cum-hopeful ally. She opened the lock and sat down in a shakes and uncomfortable pauses. She confessed her regrets though she always felt there were none. She shed her daydream until she sat bare before a faceless judge. It pulled her hair. It tugged, as it never had before. It held on for the dear life it had stolen away from her. It ripped and gashed and soon it fell. It had to leave and it was gone. Now what was she to turn to? Who would she be without it? It was gone. Now she had new friends in pink, purple and blue.

She returned to the bus, and pill-bottle smiles were handed out to all - even the ones in the windows of shops she passed by, for the tenth-first time. It was gone. She was still here - different, so very different, but here and alive - in doses.

The End