Shivering.
Rolla lay on the floor, her body trembling faintly, without stopping. Her bones pressed against the thin cloth with a dull ache, but she had no strength to rise. She could only curl in on herself, like a discarded object, a mechanism caught halfway through a movement, sobbing and sobbing. The curtains were sealed shut: a dark casket, a developing room that admitted no trace of light. Without noticing, she bit the skin on the back of her hand, leaving shallow red marks.
Blood from her nose mingled with tears squeezed out by pain and ran down to her lips, like developing fluid.
The strange yet familiar metallic saltiness made Rolla drift, as if she were a strip of film being exposed to light. Memories flickered frame by frame, so unbearably dense that suffocation rose from the heart, up through the throat and into the nasal cavity, nearly crushing her breath. Every sense was overloaded, breath, the faint rustle of eyelashes, all amplified until her brow locked tight. Even the brush of fabric against her ankles pierced into awareness like needles. Within her body, a wind seemed to roar; she reeled, almost falling.
Rolla struggled to lift her head, gasping in great, heaving breaths. She wanted to scream like the suffering characters in movies, only to find that when she opened her mouth wide, no sound came out. Her throat felt blocked.
She could only imagine herself as a sea cucumber expelling its innards, the organs pushed out through the crown of her head, then drifting slowly in the sea, weightless, rising to the surface... As if her blood had stopped flowing, as if her breath had been drawn away.
The air pressed every sound down onto Rolla. From the garage came reversing beeps. She seemed to feel the taillights cast against her skin. Instinctively, she drew herself inward, as if truly being seared. By sound alone, Rolla could imagine the details of the person: the motion of exiting the car, the lock’s click, the stairway steps. The footsteps grew sharper, louder, clearer, hard to ignore. Through countless nights of tossing and turning, she had heard such footsteps. Rolla wished—so desperately—that those steps would stop at her door, lift her from the floor back onto the bed, wipe away her tears with a tissue, and pat her gently to sleep, just like when she was a child.
But it never happened. Only after confirming the door next door was shut could she slap herself hard, telling herself not to fantasize, swallowing more pills, letting the pain—and the swelling and numbness still lingering on her cheeks, push her into sleep. Let the heaviness. The dizziness. Carry her away.
"No… no, don’t come."
She prayed this in her mind. But the knock fell like the toll of a judgment bell.
"Are you there? Could you open the door?"
The sound struck her like an executioner’s alarm. Her whole body shuddered, a breathless husk, feeling herself sink rapidly toward the ocean floor. She struggled to steady her breathing, forcing herself to answer.
Why now, of all times, did this have to happen? She told herself she had to stand up, had to respond, to stop making others worry, to stop doing things that made her disliked.
"Wait."
She slowly pulled herself up from the floor. White flooded her vision. Her legs were frozen and numb; even when she stretched them, she felt like a wounded soldier. Pain spread from her ankles as she dragged herself toward the sink. She left the light off—she could not bear any more brightness—and washed her face by touch. Then she made her painful way to the door, pulling an oversized black parka around herself. She opened it with the expression of someone just waking up. The person outside, she knew, would have no interest in the moments when she trembled. Nobody wanted to see her tears.
If Rolla could function normally now, everything would be fine. She had to manage it, had to hide what was happening inside her. Again and again she struggled through the fog of SSRIs, numbing herself, turning to dried clay until only an empty shell remained. The thought made her heart ache more sharply. She did not want to live this way. She really did not. She could not remember when this had become her life: swallowing pills, forcing herself to stop, hollowing Rolla out. Her reactions to the drugs grew stronger; she felt herself tilting toward madness, toward helplessness. And so today, in a foolish act of defiance, she had swallowed all the pills she accidentally spilled.
The door was pushed open, and light fought its way in, almost toppling her. The visitor paid no attention to her, or perhaps was simply accustomed. Yes, Rolla’s breakdown had long since become as ordinary as breathing.
She remembered a moment at the dinner table, fixed on the crossing of blue-green veins on her left inner wrist, imagining them being cut open, blood surging. She could not help imagining the reactions of those around her, imagine the admiration for her epitaph. Her brow unconsciously relaxed, sinking into a whirlpool of hallucinations.
When she came back to herself, she was in the kitchen with a knife in her hand. Startled, she let it fall. There was no one here to stop her from walking toward her own death. The realization brought no relief, only an endless disappointment, then fear, then guilt. Death’s door stood open. No one waited there to turn her back. She believed that living itself was a form of atonement. She could not throw her life away so carelessly. It would be too…
SELFISH.
“You’re on your own for dinner tonight. Your sister wants to go out.”
"You can come along if you want," she added, sensing her silence.
"There's no need to specially come for this kind of thing." A demon seemed to seize Rolla’s mind, making her say the opposite of what she felt and leaving her with endless regret.
“I was afraid you hadn’t seen the message.”
“You’re always so hostile toward her,” she continued.
Rolla only said, “I’m going to sleep.”
“She doesn’t owe you anything.”
“I’ve let you both down.”
Then, she sat on the bed, her left hand tightly wrapping her right, against her chest, feeling the rise and fall, confirming her heart was still beating. Then she lowered her head, pressing the second joint of her left index finger to her nostrils, inhaling slowly, like in prayer, so earnest.
She gazed at the profile picture on the other end of the phone—three people in the photo, just without herself.
A short, mocking sigh escaped her. She grabbed the water and drank in hurried gulps, then wrapped herself in the thick quilt. She imagined lying on the tracks, awaiting death’s judgment, washing away unseen sins with her blood. But in truth the next train would never come; the platform had long been abandoned. So she climbed up, crossed to another platform, and went on being an “obedient” passenger. No future. No destination.
“Stop spending the whole bloom of your youth pondering decay,”
She whispered to herself.
Still, she could not know if this garden even needed a single flower like her.
To be continued…