Synopsis: A 28 year old Ayumi is driven to the brink of her destruction, the demon inside her is strong, and she feels weak. Will she make it out alive?
Warning: The content may be triggering to some, there is mention of depression and suicide.
Story begins below:
Chilling wind was rustling outside the window, hissing in a hot suppressed anger as it hit the edges of the old building, the little air that managed to force its way inside the room Ayumi was staying in, through the cracks of the window sill, kept the thin blanket from doing its job. It was fall after all. Ayumi curled in her blanket, and cussed out. Trembling slightly, she hugged her half naked body closer, hoping to spread the warmth of her chest to her cooled out limbs.
Next to her, her one night stand was sleeping without giving any effs about world. As she remembered, a man in his mid 30s, with a long and big face. His features were rather on the unique side, despite his age, he looked younger by a few years. Brown hair, almost on the verge of thinning, with a shaved chin and intense eyes. The type of people who like to domineer and win no matter what. “I work at the TKB TV station”,he had said the night before at the bar, when both of them were intoxicated by their martinis, as the reasoning was clouded, a desire had sparked in her libido. That’s how she ended up in this cheap motel room in a cheap neighborhood.
She scoffed thinking it was better to just sleep her room. Since most of sex was done under the influence of alcohol, she couldn’t decide if it was worth spending the night in the cold room.
After wasting several minutes in failed efforts of supplying heat to her body, she gave up the idea in sheer annoyance. She hoped that the guy would at least find a decent motel.
“Fucking bastard”, she muttered while gritting her teeth.
She sat up looking for her clothes. After she had donned her turtleneck and jeans, she looked for her sweater, it was on the chair, folded along with her coat. Just a sweater should be fine, she thought while wearing it.
Before she knew it, she had opened the window and started looking outside. The cold breeze was piercing through her woven sweater and hitting her chest with swift sharpness that it was difficult to breathe. However, the smell of that hour was somewhere between rough and calm. The smell of earth combined with the moisture in the ambience, to create something strong, almost addictive. It was weird but calm. The muffled sounds of the traffic and the ticking of the clock, an occasional breeze and the sound of her breathing, it was all the sensation that was keeping her connected to the reality. She hope that she would be able to escape into some other dystopia of herself, hoped she’d have a break.
She had been working as a software developer for a long time, but there was no satisfaction. Her colleagues came into the office, suited themselves into their desks and started to work. There was little to no interaction between them. It was as if no one there had any life in them, just like dead shells. She remembered the first day in her company, Ayumi had hoped to develop connections with people she would cherish for the rest of her life. After a wave of multiple abandonments and anxiety, she had given herself another chance. The cold shoulders of her colleagues were a big blow to her self esteem and there was nothing she could do about it. She worked in that dead environment, amidst machines who were developing machines, day in and day out. She had changed into one of them before she could realize it. She had become a workaholic in the last 6 years, she thought it sucked to have no social life and being perceived as nothing more that an emotionless wench.
She sighed as a car moved past her motel.
“Everything sucks”, she leaned on the window frame a bit more, to look below from the third floor.
She had become everything she hated, that gave a rise to her anxiety and insecurity, sometimes she hated herself and sometimes people around her. Her days were a sick cycle of waking up, going to work, coming back late and drinking then passing out. One day she decided that she had had enough of that, she quit her job and moved to another house, a bit brighter that the one before, and quiter too. It has been one month since then.
But people don’t change overnight, so do circumstances. She kept on falling back into the old ways and drowned in self hate. “Perhaps it was better when I had the job, at least I didn’t have time to think about these things”,she had muttered once, after her undignified resignation to her own demons. She felt lonely. And alone.
As her mind went back to those thoughts, she felt her heart grow heavier,cold spreading all over her body. Was she imagining? Or did she really become weak physically too? Probably. She reached her coat and took out a box of cigarette, bringing one stick out and put in her mouth. She fumbled her coat pockets for lighter, there wasn’t any.
” Tch. Where did I fucking lose it?!”, she knit her eyebrows in pure annoyance. She threw her coat in her chair and went to stand by the window again, now with a cigarette between her fingers. She was furious, at everything, at herself, at her parents, at her friends, at those office colleagues, at that one night stand, and at this life of hers. Her dissatisfaction had brought her to the point where she detested everything.
She had liked the infamous idea of ‘quit my job and found..’ but it turned out to be futile for her.
She was even more empty,even more frustrated than before.
She lowered her head on her folded hands crossed on the window pane.
“Is loneliness a part of me now?”,she thought as she closed her eyes. “Why is everyone happy? But not me…”
The grip on her cigarette loosened as her heart filled with desires, and greed. A greed to free from her emptiness. No one would notice if she disappeared this night, this instant. There was no one she could call her a family, no friend as well. A world full of people, still she was empty and alone. No one cared, there was no warmth for her in this cold place.
The stick wrapped in tobacco finally fell from her fingers as her tears empties her heart from frustration. Hot tear stream down her face as she held the window frame for support, she was being choked by her mentally ill self.
All of a sudden, a thought crossed her mind, more like a resolve. She didn’t want to die, but there was no meaning in her life. She decided that on her walk back to her apartment, if someone smiled at her, she’d try to live on, she’d try again, she’d fight again. If no one paid heed to her, her end was near.
As she closed her eyes tighter, drowning in deeper in the recent promise, she felt a light detachment, she felt like she was flying. Perhaps the end was really near.
Later that day, she felt a hand extended from the pitch black of her heart, as she put an end to her struggle, it pulled her into the bottomless abyss of her fear for loneliness. In the last minute, she realized that it was not the job, not the lack of people, although they played a big part in what she had done today, it was her wish for death. Those who wish death, lose even after trying. She had always wanted to put an end to this.
“Maybe I can be happier in my next life “,a small voice cracked through her mouth as another tear traced the path of the previous stream, down her face.
Author’s Note : It took me a lot of time to write this idea, I had to change the story multiple times, think of different elements and I finally decided that this would be the best draft to sketch out my thoughts. Thank you for reading.
Rainbow In Pastels 