Lost Face
Eleanor was certain in her mind, “Everything in my life was perfect. It was perfect”. It was all part of the plan. Only months ago she graduated from university with a first in Law. Although the percentage of marks she received weren’t what she was aiming for, the result was enough. It was enough to be offered a job as a legal secretary. Truthfully, her heart was set on becoming a barrister. It was the job she needed, especially after all the books she scanned through in the college library over and over, the many hours of voluntary work taking coffee to those ‘arrogant fat’ office men whom she was convinced were smirking at her when she wasn’t there and the countless exhausting late nights studying. After all that work, all that determination, “It’s the job I deserve, more than anybody else”.
But when her father heard the news, he took a deep breath through his nose and kept his eyes off her whilst he thought until he cleared his throat to say “Well it’s a start, Honey”. He looked into his disappointed daughter’s eyes for a moment and flashed a smile before looking to the ground. Sensing that her expression had not changed, he put his arms around her and patted her on the back. “It will be alright. You’ll get there.” Arrangements were sorted out very quickly after that. She found a spare room in a shared house online to move into. It wasn’t her place alone. She felt as though she was borrowing an allocated space under a roof to sleep. But ‘it was a start’. Essentially she had a plan. She had it all figured out and calculated. Her suitcase was packed and ready to go. There was only one thing that went terribly wrong, the stack of lifeless bodies she kept in the woods. She looked down at the bodies beneath her feet. Their eyes were wide and stared, mouths open, into the dark autumn forest. Even in death, they looked like they had lost all hope, all their dreams dissipated with their fading future. This was not part of her plan. It was out of her control.
Never in her life did she imagine, even after all of her analysing and careful preparation, that in her most vulnerable self could she lose everything. That in her sleep would surface something she could never hope to control. It cost her everything… everything. Everything she kept behind her stiffened motionless exterior came invading through her at once, all the tiring nights of sore eyes and migraines, the heart-thumping anxiety when she handed in her bulks of essays, the dampening skin and breathlessness in her panic attacks, the fear of facing her father with eyes full of expectation… and her mother’s apathetic yet judging glare. It was all over for her now, as her knees caved in and fell into the deep mud and moist bark deep in the forest in front of the pile of reeking bodies, tears poured out of her stinging tired eyes and she let out a ghastly wail, burying her face into her dirty hands. As her tears emerged into the icy cold air and became drier as minutes passed, she lifted her head up slighting, looking into all the blank faces before her. It was in that long moment when she contemplated, “if those bodies were alive. If they knew me, if they knew everything... what were all those pompous plans for?” She reminisced all of this in her mind, smirking the more she did, until eventually… she simply let go of all ‘control’ and laughed long and hard at her own… life-long… crazed… stupidity.
cr: Opalnight
Nov 29, 2014 @ 5:56 PM / 0 humans