Entry 3
I stood near the back of the bus holding on to the overhead support as hard as I could. It was ridiculously unstable. I glanced at it in annoyance. What is the point of making a bloody stabilizing contraption the most flimsy thing in the world? I shook my head and glanced back down. A woman sat in front of me. I shot a quick look at her face and met her eyes staring back at me. Green eyes. Or hazel. I don't know. I looked away quickly. I was never good with stare-me-down contests. Or eye colour. I stared down at my toes, then up at the overhead support, then down at my toes again. It was awkward. I was awkward. Every single day. It was the same. If I got a seat, good. I could stare down at the floor or out the window. If I didn't, well crap, because in a bus your eyes can never rest on a point too long, because almost every point is occupied by someone. Stupid points. Desperate to give my eyes a rest, I crouched down a bit to be able to look through the window behind the green-eyed woman. Hazel-eyed. Greenish-hazel. I must have looked a bit strange with one arm securing my bag on my shoulder, the other stretched to its limit clutching the overhead and my whole body tensed in this semi-crouch, because the woman shot me a confused look. I didn't care. I didn't like closed spaces. And my eyes needed rest. The window was my only escape. So I stared. At the city. At the people. Somehow, everyone was in a rush. People passing each other. No eye contact whatsoever. That was taboo! Come on! Annoyed looks and frustrated whispers floated around whenever the person in front was walking slightly slower. No one had time. No one wanted time. Time was an enemy. Time was running down as the sun got higher and higher. The sun was an accomplice of time and it was looked at in anger. In panic. I looked at it. It was high enough to just peak through the rooftops of the tall buildings. Not skyscrapers, I thought. They weren't tall enough. The sun got through. It was a spear of blinding light piercing through the cool morning air. Scattering a million illuminating shards here and there. Like little fireflies. Wherever they landed, it would be a little brighter. A little happier. I sighed. The woman looked up. I looked down. She looked away. Maybe not happier. My eyes snapped back to the window. I saw a kindergarten school building. Hmmm. Why haven't I seen that before? My gaze wandered over its corners and doors. Over its stones and bricks. Then I realised that I had that I had seen it before. Every single day, since I took the same bus. And every single day, I forgot ever seeing it. Right. It was sad. They had made one of the most optimistic establishments in someone's educational future extremely forgettable. I thought it was tragic. I might have been overreacting, but it was definitely sad. I looked at the school as the bus pulled away. Keeping my eyes on it till I couldn't see it anymore. Hoping to commit it to my memory. Knowing I'd forget about it tomorrow. It angered me. The future should never be forgettable. We wouldn't have anything left.As I stared out of my window, my mind slightly disturbed, greenish-hazel eyes stood up. She looked at me once. Telling me to kindly stop being strange and to move out of her way. I straightened myself and felt my muscles protest. Looking down at my feet, I stepped back a bit. Giving her room. Giving her authority. She took it. Lifted her chin, waited till the bus came to a complete stop and stalked past me. Relieved, I plopped into the seat she had just vacated.
Entry 2
I took a good look at the house before locking the door behind me. It was a nervous tick of mine. Made sure everything was in place. Made sure I knew the exact location of the few possessions I had. In case someone decided to break in, I would know if anything was taken. I rolled my eyes at my own paranoia and shut the door with a definitive click. Turn key to the left. Lock door. It was almost mechanical, with the most minimal signal being relayed from my brain to my hands. My right hand seemed to be alright. I stared at it again. The fifth time this morning. Wiggle, wiggle. Fingers were moving. I raised my eyebrows skeptically. Hmm. I hoisted my bag on my shoulder and started walking. And here we go again. Walk, bus – bus, walk. Back and forth, forth and back. That was my life now. One step. Two steps. I had been reduced to counting steps. It didn’t seem all that bad when I was counting steps. Concentrate. Don’t miss a beat. Good. Hundred and one steps. Hundred and two steps. And sometimes, it all became so automatic I could even let my mind wander. I looked up at the trees. Green now. With the colours of summer still fresh, like the finishing touches on a brilliant masterpiece. But it wouldn’t last. Summer was ephemeral. Green morphed into orange and red. And yellow. Bright yellow. Yellow was the danger signal. Yellow was deceiving. It paraded under the colours of the sun, as if nothing could touch it. Nothing could harm it. And the more yellow the world became, the colder it would be. The white would be over-powering after the dazzling yellow. I usually loved the white. And the cold. But somehow, this time, I knew it would be bone-chilling. I shivered. A little tremor traveled all the way down to my toes. I looked down at them and slowly buttoned up the light sweater I was wearing. Hundred and forty-seven. Hundred and forty-eight. I kept on walking. The distance between me and the bus-stop got shorter and shorter. My feet ate it up. I gave a little laugh. Funny. Strange. But funny. I sighed. Lately, everything seemed to have a twisted humour behind it. I wasn’t sure if it was healthy to indulge that. Right. Healthy. I laughed again, thinking about health and how ironic it was that I was concerned about mine. It didn’t make any sense. I kept on walking. I suddenly felt very tired. I swept a hand over my eyes in a vain attempt to wipe away my tiredness. I sighed. Deeply. Slowly. Languidly. When I looked up again, I was standing in front of the bus-stop. I had counted two hundred and seventeen steps as the bus rolled in. A rumble. A hiss. The sound of vacuum-sealed doors opening. And I let myself be swallowed into the commuting crowd.
Entry 1
I woke up this morning feeling something wasn't right. Something was different. Pain. There was pain. The groggy depths of my sleepy brain received this information without even bothering to bat an eyelash, as it were. Pain could be dealt with. Lack of sleep couldn't. As I reached over to my alarm clock to check the time I realised that perhaps the pain couldn't be dealt with that easily after all. I looked at my hand as a searing flame shot up through it, honestly expecting it to catch on fire. I couldn't move it. It was as if I were in this weird trance where the messages from my brain would not reach my limbs. Great, I thought. I'm on my way to a brain embolism. I stared at my fingers willing them to do something. But they wouldn't even listen to me. Annoyed at the unresponsive attitude of my right hand, I decided to teach it a lesson and smacked it against my bedside table. That seemed to do the trick. I remember thinking that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to further torture a suddenly mutilated hand, but that idea didn't last long in the frustrated fuzz that was my brain. At least the tough love tactic seemed to help. The fingers winced and immediately became obedient. That'll teach them to seize up on me like that, I thought. I glared at them till they finally curled up into a fist and relieved me of the pain. Hmmm. I gave my hand a troubled look and decided the incident was far too bizarre for me to go back to bed. My brain had been torn away from slumber and now it was too late to go back. So I got up, clenching and unclenching my right fist to make sure there hadn't been any permanent damage. It didn't look like it, but I punched my bed just to make sure. No pain. Right. No pain, no gain. That phrase would bug me the entire day.I took a deep breath. The house smelt empty. Bare. Cold. I shivered. Maybe getting back in the covers wasn't such a bad idea after all. And since when had I been one to pass up on extra sleep? I heard creaks and thuds. Creaks and thuds of an empty 52 year-old house. I felt sad suddenly. The sadness came and went. In pangs. In periods. In simple harmonic motion. I smirked in the darkness. Simple Harmonic Motion. Right. It had to be "graphable". Mathematical. Everything had to be mathematical, otherwise I would go insane. I smiled slightly, trying to graph my emotions. That is so moi, I thought. Pulling away. Stepping back. Afraid I had gone in too deep. It was like an alarm had gone off in my head. Beep, beep. Danger. It was then that my alarm clock beeped. It made me a jump a bit, but I would never admit that. I laughed in the face of danger. I had to smile again, thinking of the good old days when lines like those in movies like The Lion King had made me snort in derision. Ah well. It went on beeping and I counted the beeps trying to see how many would pass before they all poured into each other. Before they became a single loud monotonous beep. Like a mini foghorn, blowing to clear the buzzards in my brain. I thought how funny the human ear is. How funnily intelligent. How intelligently funny to tune out the pauses. To tune out the breaks. The breaths. The pauses. Rush, rush, rush. Wake up already. Well, I was already awake. Couldn't do any more, could I? I hit the "alarm off" button in a huff. Even the clock seemed to be pressuring me. Well, I wasn't going to take its crap. I had beaten it already. I was up and in the shower before the snooze function had the time to kick in.I let the water pour over me as I tried to wash away the sludge I seemed to be moving in lately. A sludge of madness, sadness and sarcastic monologues. Although, the monologues were quite an efficient way of entertainment. If only other people could tune in once in a while, they'd have the time of their lives! The water slowed down to a trickle. I looked up at the shower-head, daring it to decrease its pressure. If it went the way of the alarm clock and tried to coax me out of the shower, well dot, dot, dot, innit? I continued glaring at it. Surprisingly enough, it spat the water back out soon enough with a good amount of intensity. Hmm, I must be getting good at staring down inanimate objects. Lucky me. I sighed as the drops hit my body running down it and into the drain, continuing their journey down into the depths of society's filth. Anthropologists stood study sewers and dumps. They reveal much more than any household artifacts could. I sighed and looked up again. The water had finally washed off enough of my morning angst for me to feel slightly better. I even hummed a song as I got out. A certain Latin dance tune that I had no idea how I knew. It was a vague melody that had somehow stuck with me and I hummed it, as if trying to hum it into surrendering a name. But it didn't. So, I stopped. Everything was happening precisely to annoy me this morning. I huffed, got out of the shower and started toweling myself down vigorously. The day better be...well, better was all I could hope for, for now.
