Carol stared at her socks. The stripes of purple and pink began to melt into each other and blend then separate again. Her eyes were acting funny. She looked to the door and saw that it was still empty. Her mother was not going to feed her anytime soon.
“Do you wanna play?” she asked her pillow.
There was no reply. She sucked her thumb and lay back on the bed, dreaming of butterflies fluttering in the wild garden outside and of a plate of biscuits soggy with milk. Soon after she fell asleep, she felt her shoulder being shook.
A strange girl with a small face and long neck asked, “Are you hungry?”
Carol nodded her head sleepily. “Mommy will be home soon,” she said.
“No, she won’t.”
Carol sat up and stared at the empty doorway then back to the girl. “Why?” she asked.
“Because she doesn’t want you anymore. All you do is eat and sleep.”
“But she still has to come home,” Carol whined.
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Why are you being so mean?”
The girl sat down on the floor and said, “I am right. I am not mean.” Carol squeezed herself into a corner of her bed. The girl continued, “Wait if you want. I will check on you again tomorrow.”
I stared at my keyboard then back to the half-filled page. Slowly it dawned on me, I can’t write. Disgust overwhelmed me as I reread the words. I can’t write anything anymore. Expressing myself was now a pointless effort. Nobody reads my writing anyway. Nobody. I scanned the pages of my blog, not at what I’ve written but at the zero comments tag. Nobody cares, I decided.
Should I finish the story I started? Should I tell about how the strange girl returns and about how Carol rejected her offer a second time? “Who cares,” I said to myself aloud and shut down my laptop.
I fried an omelet for dinner and watched a meaningless show on TV. I surf the channels trying to look for something interesting, but nothing caught my attention. Nothing makes me want to write anymore. Rage began to build up inside me. Rage against myself, against my life and against the people who had instilled hope in me. I was so angry my hands began to shake and my heart began to pound. My head throbbed so loud I could it hear above the noise of my beating heart.
I grasped the fork and stabbed it into the back of my hand. Almost instantly the rage subsided and I stared at my bloody hand, stupefied. Feeling a litte mortified, I shuffled to the kitchen and dropped the half-eaten plate of dinner into the sink. Then I washed my hand. The wound was only a surface cut, I saw with relief. After putting some iodine on it, I went back to the living room to sit in front of the TV.
Just as I began to doze off, a strange girl appeared on the screen. “Come and play,” she said.
“I have work to do.”
“You don’t have to do it. You can come and play if you want.”
“Leave me alone. I am not as privileged as you.”
“But you are free,” she said with a little frown on her face.
“I have nothing,” I insisted.
“You have yourself. Come and play.”
“Go away,” I said and switched off the TV. I leaned my chin against the window sill and watched the activities outside: Neighbors moving in and out of their well-lit houses and cars driving by slowly. I tried to think but I couldn’t. I tried to feel but my senses were numb. Then I wondered if I was dead, so I pinched myself. It stung.
Since it was such a pointless day and I was living such a pointless life, I decided to go to bed. Maybe sleep would bring me back to my senses. But the moment I shut my eyes, I saw her.
With exasperation I asked, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”
“I am you,” she said, “and I am here to help you.”
“Then help me finish my work.”
She frowned, “But you are not here to work. You are here to live.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone is born to live. The moment you stop living, you die,” she said mater-of-factly.
“Well, maybe that is a good solution to my problems.”
“But if you do not complete your part of the game, others will not be able to finish theirs too.”
“Who cares,” I said vehemently.
“You do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why are you so angry?”
I woke up and stared at the dark ceiling. Why was I angry, I wondered, and it occurred to me that I was so angry I had wanted to murder myself.
I sat up and switched on my laptop.
Tomorrow, however, turned into weeks then months. All that time Carol’s mother never came back and Carol had to learn to eat wild berries growing by the edge of the house and bitter vegetables growing in the garden.
On her fifteenth birthday, the strange girl again came. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
Carol stared down at her own callused hands and tattered dress. “I am. Do you have any food?”
“I do, but not here.” She gazed into Carol’s face. “Will you come with me?”
“Where will you take me?”
“Anywhere you wish to go.”
Carol nodded and the strange girl helped her fill a basket full of bitter vegetables. Then she led Carol out the gate. They walked for a mile down an overgrown path and soon came out onto a road. The girl sat by the side and Carol imitated her. Soon a car slowed to a stop in front of them.
An elderly woman came out of the backseat. “What are you selling?”
Carol was too shy to say anything, so she showed the contents of her basket.
“How much are you selling them for?” again the old lady asked.
Carol stared at her, unsure about what she meant. The old lady smiled, took a couple of bitter gourds and paid her some money. Then she opened the trunk of the car, took out a shirt and a dress and gave them to Carol, saying, “These are mine. They are a little old fashion, but they are clean.”
The driver, a middle aged man, held out a plastic wrapped bun and said, “Give this to her too, mother. We have plenty.”
The old woman passed her the thick bun with a smile. Then she returned back to the car. That afternoon, one car after another stopped, and before long her basket of bitter vegetables was empty. She refilled it with the money, the clothes and food that she had received and walked back down the overgrown path alone.
I stared at the words on the pages. Bitter vegetables. Was that what I was writing? Was that why nobody read my work, because they were bitter and uncommon? I closed my laptop. I had nothing but bitter words in me.
“That is alright,” the strange girl said. “Bitterness is a part of the human taste bud because it is meant to be experienced.”
“But nobody wants to experience it.”
“Everyone will have to experience it at some point in their life. And when they do, they will need to be shown that it is only an experience.”
“That is crap.”
She smiled and disappeared into the shadows. I stared into the corner willing her to appear again and finish the conversation, but she never did.
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