Short fiction

Stolen Silence

Sitting in the same spot . . . The same, simple spot. Sitting and waiting. The grey scratches circling the skirting board are so familiar, I think I could trace them on the inside of my brain if my eyes weren’t there to guide me. Grey lines web the white paint in shadow; white glowing beneath grey, aching for release. They cross and hatch and whirl and cut across each other. I sit . . . I sit and I wait for the pressure to stop.

Opinions piling up against the

door.

Snowing me in. 

Piling up, and up, and up; every second I spend here makes my return less likely. I sense the unspoken words settling against the door and freezing solid like ice. Blocking me in to safety.

Waiting.

The web of scratches so difficult to follow, but I persevere. Circling round and round, over and round I follow a single, scratchy grey thread. . .  only to lose it again amongst the tangles. The scratches . . . beautifully mundane in a way I have never seen before. Insignificant, yet mesmerising at the same time. . .

Perhaps I’m making too much of them . . . I probably make too much of everything. That’s an opinion. I spit it out onto the snow drift where it belongs.

My safe spot had to appear drab, you see. It had to seem unappealing . . . alien. Not somewhere you’d think someone would voluntarily sit, whiling away the hours in the gloomy toilet stall. Somewhere they would never think of. No. No, they would never think of here.

A spike of bleach cuts through the air, overriding the stale smells of piss and cheap soap, and catching bitterly in my throat. But so calm . . . it was worth it for this calm. Safe here amongst the rank odours.

They would never come here.

Yet . . . there was also that feeling . . . that almost guilty feeling you get when you find solitude underneath,above or even

rightnextto the buzz of activity. When you steal away from an awkward party, when you stay a moment longer in the echoes of the restaurant toilet

clipping and re brushing

clipping and re brushing

clipping and re brushing

clipping and re brushing

 hair already firmly in place.

Yes, the best word would be waiting. I have tested other words to frame my funny little habit; avoidance; escaping; forestalling:  freak. But truth be told, what I am actually doing is just waiting.

Yes. Yes, I like the connotations of waiting. It seems the safest term . . . it is undoubtedly unusual to wait in a toilet for hours on end, you might even say I was “out of the social loop”. But only just. I’m on the fringes of normality, I am, I’m not avoiding. I’m definitely waiting.

Opinions are piling . . . yes, yes they are definitely settling,

hardening from conjectures into facts. Up, up, up they

go against the cubicle door; snowing me in.

So I wait . . . and I study, I study the images. The images that aren’t really images at all . . .  the textured pattern of the grey damp patch in the corner, the timeworn scars in the lino catching on my heels as I swing them tooo and fro . . . too and fro; but however many times my heels snag, I know I will never actually stand.  My feet will never actually implant themselves on the floor, preferring to skim safely over it in the air like two swooping swallows.  I (will never) stand, I (will never) open the stall door and stroll across the lino, I (will never) perform that insultingly cursory mirror check, and I (definitely will NEVER) breeze out to join the masses in the labyrinthine corridors; no floor connection, no action. Just sitting. Sitting and swinging and imagining = safety.

I did walk over to that mirror once:

blotches

                       blue patches pooling under eye level                              

wrinkles everywhere                                                                         

everywhere                         everywhere                   everywhere

blood vessels lurking below papery skin

                                         dry skin flaking my skin to dust

gravity. Or lack of.

                         dead hair straggling                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               seaweed...                                                                seaweed spill

ing over bony shoulders

And those wrinkles.

I didn’t like what I saw. What they saw and shunned me for.

I have my own friend anyway, here in this stall. There is a crack that dances higgeldy piggeldy out from the edge of the ceiling towards the dusty light bulb at its centre. Deep and black it cuts a jagged path into the splintering ceiling. The crack in the ceiling became a music conductor long ago; he strikes his crooked baton at the iron pipe running along the edge, commanding it to creak out a tune. The more I gaze, the clearer he becomes, his baton vibrates with tension, desperate to unfreeze from the static pose he must maintain.

I am often absolutely certain he is about to move, willing him to, squinting at his spindly form in anticipation of the movement I know he desires . . . but time and time again I sit back, disappointed. He is a music lover condemned to silence; made still . . . like me?

No . . . my silence is stolen, my spot is my choice. I love the silence . . . the silence and the stillness of loneliness, and no one can ever make me move.

Donna Helen