Descriptive Non-story

I was depressed before I saw the paper towels gleaming happily in the store window. With tears still drying on my cheeks, I’m sure I hardly looked like the average customer. 1

Stepping into the white brightness and complete disarray of the “convenient” store, I nearly collided with an older woman, probably mid-fifties. Certainly old enough to have gone through the change and gain a few grays on the way. She and I said are obligated apologies and followed each other to the back desk. 2

All the front registers seemed to be down for that moment and as usual, I wondered of the competency of the people who worked there. I grabbed a paper envelope marked Rite Aid Express and shoved my insignificant canister of film into its depths. 3

I should have felt better. I was getting rid of this stupid project for an hour. An hour where I had no responsibility towards it. Why then, did I feel like I was leaving my escape route with a stool pigeon?4

From the store to the street, I muttered incessantly within the confines of my skull about the horrible frigid weather, at the same time wondering if I should just stay out there. It was a thought that I took seriously.5

Unlike the deer, to which I’ve been compared before, I waited for my chance to dart into traffic and hope that I might come through it alive. Just two lanes and still considered a major road, somehow that didn’t make sense to me. But I’m just me. I don’t tend to make sense to other people, why would I make sense to myself?6

In any case, I made it out alive. While rubbing my tear dried face, the cold nipping at them as well, I walked past the neighbor’s house with her prickle bush. I considered shoving my hand into its depths. I don’t know why…Hurting myself physically, when I feel so horribly depressed, seemed like the right thing to do. The berries, still clinging to what looked like a dead plant, hung like droplets of blood, as if someone had already tried the stunt I wished to. Splattering their blood on the tips of the branches, like rain falling from the heavens.7

Gravel crunched under my leather shoes. I felt the dread well up within the pit of my stomach. I hated it. I stepped onward anyways, never pausing with the terror. 8

It didn’t immediately catch my attention that the car was missing, why should it? On more than one occasion, I had stepped into this very garage to find it missing. It would disappear for days, near full weeks at a time. It wasn’t so surprising to me to find it empty.9

When I did realize it was gone, I was already inside and it didn’t matter anyways. Heel to heel, I slipped off my shoes, and stepped into the tiled kitchen. Bright and dim at the same time, the kitchen always gave me a foreboding feeling. I could never step out there with anything less than full clothes, even though I had more than once found myself on the sunroom with little more than hands or a towel between me and the neighbors. 10

I stopped in the dining room. This is the place it happened. That moment that made me grab my shoes, in anger, and flee from confrontation. The place where the disappointment seemed so much more. While mom sat slurping her soup in that most annoying way and stared at me over my test scores.11

I knew I had bombed it. Why did she have to drag it out in that horrible way? 12

I remember her asking where I was going, but when I had told her where, she had made a face and told me she would drive me. If she thought it was tiring acting as chauffeur to an angsty, stress-filled teenager, then she obviously didn’t see my need to be free. For moments we tossed the idea violently. 13

I walked back to the door, from whence I came just moments ago; there I shouted that I could walk. See how independent I am? I can walk.14

I sucked the breath in between my teeth, and walked on through the house, hanging up my coat. Straight up the stairs to my attic room I went, where I could hide, with Cassie, sobbing heavily with my frustration.15