Hearing Anna

i.ii

SHE STOOD AT THE precipice of the memory again as she stared at the prescription bottle. 'Zoloft', it said. It had been her fiftieth time staring at the bottle, but she still couldn't understand it. Something about the time passing so quickly in the last month, from the moment those hands touched her until now, had made everything blend into a brisk sequence of events.

my fingers fly across the keys of my laptop quickly as my brain calculates the words i find fit for the tale. the story was one i had thought on, likely more than anyone else in our literature class.

of course, they hadn't spent a year before being assigned the paper thinking about the story; i have thought about it for every other moment for three-hundred thirty-two days. i'm not psychic.

not psychic, just filled with memories anyone would wish to forget.

i keep wondering, as i write this fiction piece, if professor jameson will know that i didn't follow the rules of the assignment. i continue to contemplate if he knows that the 'she' whom i write about is familiar to him.

    i reassure myself that he won't, that he would simply be too clueless and amazed with my writing to know that the girl named emily is actually a young woman named anna.

    before i can fall asleep again, i'm startled by the unlocking of my dorm door.

    "anna!" hollers a familiar voice. i don't need to turn my head to know that my flatmate has arrived. her boisterous entry is proof enough for that. "you'll never believe what just happened!"

    slowly, i closed the lid of my laptop, easing the memories back into their box. they scream as i shove them away, but lisa doesn't hear the frequency of my mind's worst stores. she, like everyone else, is deaf to the din.

    "there was this guy at a café who was totally hitting on me. can you believe?" she certainly doesn't sound like she believes it.

    "yeah. you're a moderately attractive person."

    "he looked like a fugging model," she swoons. 'swoons' is not a word i have ever used in reference to lisa.

    "lucky you. get his phone number?"

    "no... but that's beyond the point! he was hitting on me."

    "probably just wants to fuck," i deadpan.

    "you think i would mind a beau like that bedding me?" she cackles. when i finally turn to look at her, i see that she's keeled over, wheezing out her raucous laughs.

    i only smile wanly. if only she knew it wasn't so nice, perhaps she wouldn't think like that. i let it be, though.

    "wanna smoke?" i ask.

    "sure. thank goodness my last boyfriend taught me how to disable smoke detectors," she adds in as she fishes a pack of cigs out of her pocket. i provide the lighter after opening the window, and she gives me a cigarette. i light both of our death sticks, and we lean up against the wall by the window.

    she's bathed in an orange glow of her contained fire. the girl who smokes for fun, killing herself for no reason in particular other than for the thrill she gets from it.

    i wonder if she sees how much i want the smoke to kill me, if she sees how close the butt burns to the end before i finally put it out.

    "we need to stop smoking," she always muses.

    "then we need to stop continuing to die."

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