The Dead Girl
Filed under Writing
This is not my usual style at all. I wrote this after reading Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, and found that this story (which is a subset of a much larger story in my head) took on a very different tone than its parent (a more teenage drama). Anyway, here it is: The Dead Girl.
Unlike many others in her position, she did not fear death. Nor did she accept it. Instead - with a confirmed death sentence but no fixed execution date, like some Sword of Damocles hanging over her head - she swung perilously between hating it and denying its complete existence. If that dark spectre were to sweep through the open door to her bedroom right now, she would be torn between punching (and yes, it would be a punch, not a weak, clichéd slap) him then and there, or burying her face in her pillow and burrowing underneath the sheets.
But of course, while the sheets could separate her from the literal ghost in the room, in the end it would offer no protection at all from the force that would eventually wash over her, stopping her heart and her breath and her life. Indeed, it was already inside her, eating away at her like some horrible creature feeding off her, and growing. Some days she imagined that one day she would simply burst open, like one of those poor host insects she saw on a nature program once. Or perhaps like that poor man in that alien movie she had never seen.
She made a mental list to add that movie to her to-do list. It seemed that all she did these days was add things to the list, and it grew faster than she could ever accomplish things. At first it only contained the big things - turn twenty-one, see a specific band in concert, go to Disneyland, that sort of thing - until more trivial things started to make its way onto it. And then finally anything and everything was being put on it, until it turned into a list of movies to see, albums to listen to, and books to read. If she were to start right now and watch, listen or read whatever minor thing on that list was non-stop for the next few months (assuming she lived that long), she might start to make a dent in that list. If she was willing to give up her party, attend the concert, or have her photograph taken with Mickey Mouse.
So far though, only one thing was achieved. It was written on the whiteboard above her desk in permanent marker, and every morning she crossed it out with a whiteboard pen. Every night she would erase the thick black (or blue, or red, or whatever colour pen happened to be chosen) line and would once again cross it off in the morning. One day, though, and she knew this, she would not wake up to cross out the large determined LIVE ANOTHER DAY that watched her as she slept.
Perhaps then she was not denying death’s existence. She was afraid of it, and she denied her fear of it. She did not tell anyone (save the hushed silence of the room she felt certain she would die in, and the near-invisible eyes that watched her) that yes, she was afraid and no, she was not ready. Not believing in the steps that the counsellors had told her about, she preferred to things her own way. She made her own way in life, and she would do so in death.
In the end, when it, the end, when death finally came, she would not deny it. But until then, and long after, she would defy it. Or at least try.
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A very powerful and emotive piece. In a few paragraphs you captured the personality of your character incredibly well.
I’m exhausted so I’m afraid my comment is rather pathetic :p