Monday, December 16, 2013

Ms. Everything [Season One: Episode 1]

Mindless Metaphors 

It had been a long night. When I finally collapsed into a permissible horizontal position at exactly 2:51 AM, my mind was still charged by being awake for far too long. Lying atop the crumpled sheets, my loud head raced to the thoughts of the only thing that would shut me up. Involuntarily, my fingers dug into the frictionless edges of the pleasantly unfamiliar pillow and I wrapped it around my ears to keep my thoughts from escaping. I had just re-learned the meaning of hunger. The muscle-memory of the newly acquired pragmatism was still too fresh. 

I reached out in the semi-darkness and got hold of a stray tissue, and improvising with a blunt eye-pencil, I wrote:
His eyes were too swift and his movements too subtle. He was blending in, marking his predator territory. He put only one step forward and no more, waiting for the sound of a wet muzzle in the the grass. The doe pattered her hooves in his direction, drawn by the velvet scent of his night soul. He stood like the shadow in the golden haven of pre-dusk light. He knew it would only take a minute. Soon, she would raise her treacherous nose and her doe eyes would meet him. And he would see the Death fade like a twinkle in them.


*********

"Shall I turn off the light?" a voice asked from the other side. 
I nodded. I was too weary to even acknowledge the shuffling of another body that got into bed a moment later. In the darkness of my mind, I had already raised my nose to meet the gaze of a pair of very hungry eyes. The moment to be ripped apart was not far. Meanwhile, The Aviator was operating on a different scale of time altogether. He took flight a full second before I had anticipated. I ducked and spun two arms' length away just in time. His jaw snapped angrily. 

"What's the matter?" I said, "You thought hunting was that easy?"
"And you think I cannot give chase, do you, my deer girl?" he asked. 

So it had begun. A prelude, a chase- in a pattern devised by the ancient rules of survival. The hunter had to eat, and the doe had to be eaten. There would be the swift, liquid motion of frantic limbs; the one precise action of a pounce. There would be much shredding of skin and flesh, and his claws would leave the scars of his triumph on my body. The beautiful brown skin would always bear the marks of true hunger. 

I felt a breath on my shoulder and slowly turned to displace the soft tickle of it. 
"God, it sucks to pull an all-nighter!" Ms. Newton groaned beside me. My cat-loving nerd friend had just helped me study for an exam due to happen the following day. She had also offered to share her congested single bed with me, her pupil- without putting the stuffed cat out, of course. 
"I am so hungry!" she continued as she tossed uncomfortably. Her elbow sunk into the foreign texture of a sheet of paper below her, stopping her short of her complaints. 
"Are we sleeping on my fucking notes?!" she cried, alarmed. 
Lights were turned on and the crime scene was cleared. As I lifted my weary body off the bed, Ms. Newton shot a none-too-subtle glare at me. 
"I'll go back to my room" I said, and gathered all my things. The banality of my ever-vivid imagination stopped short at nothing to make me miserable. As I walked out of Ms. Newton's room, I couldn't help but wonder why all the excitement in my life happened on the surface of the wrong kind of sheets. 

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