Exploration

Exploration:  Using a 3rd person narrator, explore the internal pain of a 
character and an interaction with someone in a specific physical space, using 
expressive language.

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	Miriam strides through the house, over and over and over.  The kitchen,
hall, living room and dining room, over and over and over again.  She can’t 
stop because that meant she would have to stop counting.  And, counting is what
was keeping her on the sane side of the world.

	Miriam is by herself, kids at their dad’s and she is by herself.  She 
had gone by herself, book in hand, to the Indonesian restaurant, where the 
young dark-haired waitress had asked, “Where your son?  He so cute.”  She’d 
gone by herself to Starbucks where the barista asked if her daughter was in
the restroom while he glanced around, obviously searching for her.  Then, by 
herself, she had come home.

	At home, her mind whirls with possibilities of aloneness.  Of the 
evening, weekend, of two evenings by herself, where the distractions of the 
kids are missing, unable to keep her together.

	Everytime  Miriam walks through the dining room, she consciously looks
to the door of the kitchen, but she feels the cursor on the computer on the 
desk as it blinks at her.  She can feel it there, blinking and blinking and 
blinking.  The fifteenth time through the dining room, she stops, blinks back 
and reaches for the mouse.  Just email.  I’ll check email.  And so it goes….. 

	And, surely as surely does, there is Miriam in the chat room.  Not a 
chat room most would pick, but a chat room, none-the-less.  She sits, watches 
and reads, loneliness and insanity at bay.  The monitor has become her lifeline
and an escape from her life at the same time - a way to stay away from the 
pills in the medicine cabinet, or the car and the bridge down the road.  She 
watches the typed Yes-sirs and No-maams and At-your-commands.  She can almost 
hear the fingers snap and the slap of leather gloved hands on bared cheeks.

	Several people IM her, asking her what she is wearing or what her shoe 
size is, but she ignores them.  She wants to lose herself, not amuse someone 
else. 

	But then there is a “Who are you?” and she answers.  A “Where are you?”
follows and she types in her address and pauses before she hits the enter key.
Her belly tightens as her pinky finger stretches out and strikes – a traitor.  

	“One half hour,” pops up on the screen.  “You will be standing in the 
house with the lights off.  The curtains will be open.  You will be nude.  When
I walk up to the door, you will open it and let me in.”

	She knows not to wait too long to answer, but hesitates….

	“Yes, sir.”

	“One half hour.” 
 
        “Who are you?” she asks, but she can see that he has signed off.

	She stares at the screen for a few minutes and starts to shake.  She 
turns off the computer and flicks off the lights as walks through the kitchen, 
the hall, the dining room and the kitchen again.  She walks into her bedroom, 
takes off all her clothes, looks in the mirror and notices in the lights from 
the street that her eyes are the size of saucers.  At the front door, she 
shivers with her hand on the doorknob and she waits for the headlights to show 
up at the head of the street.  She knows there are many ways to die.


Kathleen Speck
05/10/2009