sans intitulé

The door shut with an air of finality, and I was trapped. Except instead of in being trapped inside the building (which did look remarkably like a prison), I was trapped outside of it. The doors were locked now, so staying was useless.

I walked away from the doors. The day, already bright with the sun, hit me like a slap in the face. (It came to my attention that I usually did not think in such elegant prose. It was a quote from Camus, of course.) I instinctively looked around for an Arab.

There wasn’t one.

I walked to the bus stop. I didn’t notice much of anything except my own thoughts. There was something in walking alone, with so much purpose, that felt like strength. It was like not eating all day and feeling the pain in your stomach and laughing because you’re stronger than your body.

There were people on the streets, and on the bus. I didn’t notice them individually; they were indistinguishable. I was smarter, stronger, better than them, so what did it matter? If only they knew where I was going. I laughed. They didn’t know and I didn’t need them, in the same way that I didn’t need to eat.

I got off the bus. Everything seemed brighter and louder and more chaotic. There were hardly any cars on the street; it was only ten in the morning. But each successive sound and flash of color jarred me slightly, permeating the smooth steel of my psyche.

These intrusions – a dog barking in the distance or a bicyclist’s neon jersey – made me increasingly angry.

No, not angry. I shut them out of my cold, metallic mind with a clang.

The sun was now burning more intensely. Or maybe it was my imagination. It beat incessantly against me and the light reflected off the cool metal of my mind, until a solitary beam of searing white light penetrated a crack and burned the grey matter inside of my head. I screamed.

Panic set in and I realized that I was walking home and I had left school and it was too late to do anything, too late, I couldn't go back because the door was locked and there was no way back in just like there was no Arab and now I was trapped out here and there was nothing else to do.

But this is what I had planned. I was in control. This is where other people might have taken a deep breath, but I didn’t need extra oxygen. I felt detached from my body. I only needed it to take me home. And I was very close.

I looked both ways perfunctorily as I crossed the street. Walking was smooth and effortless. My mind was clean. I smiled at how immaculate it was. After sixteen years of my life, I was finally free from the distraction of my senses. The quiet suburban neighborhood I lived in was picturesque, probably deserving of a few paragraphs of pastel prose, but I didn’t notice it. It was meaningless to me. My memories were meaningless as well. I was once a sixteen-year-old girl who liked spicy food and Kafka and minimalism but now I was efficient and purposeful; I was a machine.

I only needed my body for a little longer. I unlocked the door and climbed the stairs to my room and found the purple jump rope. I did this all automatically, effortlessly, unnoticingly. But the jump rope was purple. That one fact pervaded my mind and swam in front of my eyes. My fingers recreated the knot I’d practiced every night. I started with the s-shape and coiled the rope around it methodically, mechanically, stopping after exactly thirteen coils. It was graceful and symmetric and through the noose, just on the other side, was the cold unfeeling freedom of the unknown.

In the garage, I tied the rope to a hook on the ceiling. I stood on a plastic container that I had turned upside-down. I realized suddenly that it was our recycling receptacle. How odd.

At last. Everything had gone according to plan. I slipped the loop of purple around my neck, and stopped to reflect on the freedom that would be mine once I was separated from the weight of my body.

It was this weight that caused the plastic beneath my feet to crack. The crack grew larger and then I was supported by nothing but the snake of purple around my neck. But the crack never stopped growing. It was no longer simply a crack in the plastic but now it was a crack in the metal –

and my last thoughts were swallowed by the yawning abyss.