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Oct. 31st, 2006 05:13 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
freakshownia.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
multiplicity_archivesThis is a story I wrote for my creative writing class, and since it's relevent to this community I thought I'd share ^_^
Elmira was asleep on the couch when the man knocked on the door. Her eyelids fluttered open, but she made no other movement, having no interest in opening it. Elmira was in no mood for visitors today, regardless of who they were. The man outside knocked again, louder, but Elmira ignored it and turned over on the threadbare cushions. She closed her eyes, waiting for him to leave. It wasn’t until she was certain she heard his footsteps receding down the hallways of the apartment building that she rose and went to look through the peephole. The hall outside was empty. Elmira sighed, irritated that her perfect silence had been interrupted. She opened the door, keeping the safety chain on, and looked out. Nothing, Elmira closed the door and slumped back to the tattered couch, and grabbed her pack of Newports and a lighter off of the overturned box which served as her coffee table. She lit a cigarette and lay back down, letting the ash drop on the cushions as it fell. Elmira closed her eyes and blew the smoke out through her nose
* * *
I wasn’t expecting much when I knocked on the door. I knew she was at home, but I also knew of her tendency to ignore the world around her, preferring her own world of cigarette smoke and moldy sofas. I knocked again, louder. Nothing. I was tempted to call out her name, Elmira, but I didn’t bother, even if she was aware that her husband had come to see her, I doubted it would make any difference. Still I refused to give up on her. I was stubborn, yes, to keep trying to reach her. We hadn’t spoken in over a week; I suspected she hadn’t left her apartment after returning there from my own. Our own. She had lived with me there for over a year, but had never given up her own place. Just in case. An ominous sign that I should have recognized at the beginning. It should have been the first major warning sign. But I naively ignored it, insisting to myself and those who tried to counsel me that I loved this woman, Elmira. Five years my junior at 26, she seemed amazingly sophisticated to me. I was attracted to her subtle smile, her wry humor, her love of beatnik poetry. But that was then, long before we were married.
When I told my sister I planned to propose to Elmira, she rolled her eyes and assured me that this was not a good idea. I should have listened. But I was in love. And I still am, or at least that’s what I tell myself, even as I stood in the hall outside of Elmira’s apartment, as I stood there being ignored by my own wife, knowing that she was inside, waiting for me to leave before she got up.
I retraced my steps back down the hallway toward the stairs wanting to try again, tomorrow perhaps, but knowing there was no point. She’d come to me when she was ready, though I had given up trying to understand what was really going on in her head, why she suddenly got up and left one day, without saying a word to anyone, and returned back here. I glanced up at her window hoping to at least catch a glimpse of her before I left. But no one was there.
* * *
She could hear his car driving away, she recognized the sound of it and knew it was him; she had been right in her assumption. But Clarence was the last person she wanted to see right now. Elmira sat up and took another drag off her cigarette, allowing the ash to fall in her lap, not bothering to brush it away. She ran her hand through her unwashed hair; she hadn’t showered since she returned here.
Her apartment hadn’t been quite as she had remembered it. She had imagined it as it was before her first marriage. She had lost all of the furnishing to her first husband in the divorce, and now the once stylish apartment was reduced to this: a stained and tattered couch, a cardboard box, and her pack of Newports. The phone service was disconnected and the electricity cut off, but still she regarded it as paradise compared to where she had come from; this was her home. No one could disturb her here aside from vainly knocking on the door. Not even Clarence, her husband. She hadn’t eaten in two days. Elmira stubbed out her cigarette on the box and lit another. She breathed out the smoke in a sigh, and she knew she wasn’t going back.
* * *
I tried not to think about Elmira too much, but despite how I tried she wouldn’t leave my thoughts. When I returned home the phone was ringing; it was my sister, calling to see how it went, wanting to know if I had been able to speak to Elmira. No, I told her, I had not. I half listened as she alternately told me not give up, and that she had told me something like this would happen. But she had no idea what was going on. I didn’t even know. I’ve worked it out in my head a million times, but not a single explanation I could come up with seemed reasonable. I just have to accept that there’s nothing I can do right now, and hope that whatever it will only be temporary.
* * *
Elmira was down to her last cigarette. This was bad, it meant she’d have to venture outside her apartment or suffer the consequences of nicotine withdrawal. She held up the empty Newports box and placed the lighter underneath, striking a flame. The box caught. She held the burning box in her hand until it had extinguished itself, and then, disgusted with the burnt and empty object, she tossed it out the window. She didn’t hear it land, but she didn’t care. She returned to the couch. She collected the cigarette butts scattered around her and placed them on the overturned box. She then carefully arranged them to spell out her name, Elmira. When she had finished she gave the box a violent kick, sending it and the butts across the room, the box hitting the opposite wall with a loud thud that surely the neighbors must have heard. But no neighbor had spoken to her since she’d returned. Those that knew her from when she lived there before would give her polite knowing smiles when they saw her; she was ignored by the rest.
What the woman on the couch never told her husband was that she was no longer the woman he had married. No longer Elmira. The name only could be used to refer to the body, but not any of those who lived inside. Coming home was an act of desperation, grasping at the ghost of a routine long since given up. Where Elmira had gone no one knew; she had just disappeared one day. Unfamiliar with their surroundings, unsure of how to act around her husband, and unsure of life in general, those who Elmira left to pilot her body were unprepared to take over her life.
Jessa smoked the Newports. She liked the ad she saw in the magazine. She was only 13, and smoking looked fun. Having a husband seemed silly to her. But neither her nor the others knew what to do, what could be done. None of them had ever gone out alone before, none of them had held a job, none of them had loved Clarence.
* * *
Once again I returned to the apartment, but now more than a week had passed. I pressed my ear up against the door and listened, hoping to hear anything that would indicate someone was alive inside. No sound. “Elmira! It’s me! Please!”
“Don’t call me that!” a scream from the inside. Softer, I said “Elmira?”
“No! We hate her!” I paid closer attention to the voice of the speaker. She didn’t sound like Elmira. Another woman was in her apartment, and Elmira was not there.
“What’s going on in there? Where’s Elmira?”
“She left! She’s gone now! Ok?!” the screams were becoming sobs.
“Who are you? Where did she go?” by now my cell phone was out, and I was prepared to call the police. I feared the worst. However, now the only sound from within was the sobbing of the woman. I left.
* * *
We were abandoned. So what if she hated her life? What she did wasn’t fair. It was always only Elmira. She never let us do anything, she never even talked to us. And then one day POOF! And we have to take over with no life experience whatsoever unless you want to count watching the movie Life Of Elmira for 26 years. The body isn’t right for any of us. We needed practice, so we ran away. What were we supposed to do? If we’d stuck around, Clarence would have known. He would have known I’m not her. And then he would have sent us away. I’ve heard stories - I know it’s what they do. Oh, so you’re different today? You must be crazy! See ya! Well I wasn’t about to let that happen, no way. Why did Elmira do this to us?
* * *
I located the landlord and convinced him that I needed access to Elmira’s apartment. Even though I was her husband he made it difficult. We paused outside of the door and listened - the strange woman had stopped crying. “We’re coming in!” said the landlord. There was a shriek of “No!” from inside. The landlord unlocked the door and opened it for me. Immediately I saw her - the woman was desperately trying to crawl out the window onto the fire escape. “Hey! You! Stop!” I stuttered. She looked familiar. The woman pulled herself back inside and turned around. “Elmira?”
“No, I told you, she’s gone.” The frustrated sobbing began again. I embraced her, but she did not return it, and stood stiff as tears ran down her cheeks. What had happened? Was this…. drugs? “Elmira… are you… ‘on’ something?” I asked. The look of pain in her eyes answered my question. I didn’t understand. I released her and she collapsed on the couch, more alone then I ever could have imagined.
* * *
They came for her the day after. Doctors in fancy shoes and white coats, and even a policeman or two. Her husband had requested it. He didn’t understand what had happened to his wife, and people fear what they don’t understand. Living in the hospital Jessa tried in vain to explain the irony of the situation to the nurses. Now that they were locked up they could never adapt. They could never get better. This wasn’t the real world. They would never learn. Their doctor called them Elmira. They hated him. At night alone in the wards, they would take turns crying and screaming, venting their anger and frustration towards Clarence. Towards Elmira. Toward the world.
* * *
Far, far, away somewhere, Elmira peacefully slept.
Elmira was asleep on the couch when the man knocked on the door. Her eyelids fluttered open, but she made no other movement, having no interest in opening it. Elmira was in no mood for visitors today, regardless of who they were. The man outside knocked again, louder, but Elmira ignored it and turned over on the threadbare cushions. She closed her eyes, waiting for him to leave. It wasn’t until she was certain she heard his footsteps receding down the hallways of the apartment building that she rose and went to look through the peephole. The hall outside was empty. Elmira sighed, irritated that her perfect silence had been interrupted. She opened the door, keeping the safety chain on, and looked out. Nothing, Elmira closed the door and slumped back to the tattered couch, and grabbed her pack of Newports and a lighter off of the overturned box which served as her coffee table. She lit a cigarette and lay back down, letting the ash drop on the cushions as it fell. Elmira closed her eyes and blew the smoke out through her nose
I wasn’t expecting much when I knocked on the door. I knew she was at home, but I also knew of her tendency to ignore the world around her, preferring her own world of cigarette smoke and moldy sofas. I knocked again, louder. Nothing. I was tempted to call out her name, Elmira, but I didn’t bother, even if she was aware that her husband had come to see her, I doubted it would make any difference. Still I refused to give up on her. I was stubborn, yes, to keep trying to reach her. We hadn’t spoken in over a week; I suspected she hadn’t left her apartment after returning there from my own. Our own. She had lived with me there for over a year, but had never given up her own place. Just in case. An ominous sign that I should have recognized at the beginning. It should have been the first major warning sign. But I naively ignored it, insisting to myself and those who tried to counsel me that I loved this woman, Elmira. Five years my junior at 26, she seemed amazingly sophisticated to me. I was attracted to her subtle smile, her wry humor, her love of beatnik poetry. But that was then, long before we were married.
When I told my sister I planned to propose to Elmira, she rolled her eyes and assured me that this was not a good idea. I should have listened. But I was in love. And I still am, or at least that’s what I tell myself, even as I stood in the hall outside of Elmira’s apartment, as I stood there being ignored by my own wife, knowing that she was inside, waiting for me to leave before she got up.
I retraced my steps back down the hallway toward the stairs wanting to try again, tomorrow perhaps, but knowing there was no point. She’d come to me when she was ready, though I had given up trying to understand what was really going on in her head, why she suddenly got up and left one day, without saying a word to anyone, and returned back here. I glanced up at her window hoping to at least catch a glimpse of her before I left. But no one was there.
She could hear his car driving away, she recognized the sound of it and knew it was him; she had been right in her assumption. But Clarence was the last person she wanted to see right now. Elmira sat up and took another drag off her cigarette, allowing the ash to fall in her lap, not bothering to brush it away. She ran her hand through her unwashed hair; she hadn’t showered since she returned here.
Her apartment hadn’t been quite as she had remembered it. She had imagined it as it was before her first marriage. She had lost all of the furnishing to her first husband in the divorce, and now the once stylish apartment was reduced to this: a stained and tattered couch, a cardboard box, and her pack of Newports. The phone service was disconnected and the electricity cut off, but still she regarded it as paradise compared to where she had come from; this was her home. No one could disturb her here aside from vainly knocking on the door. Not even Clarence, her husband. She hadn’t eaten in two days. Elmira stubbed out her cigarette on the box and lit another. She breathed out the smoke in a sigh, and she knew she wasn’t going back.
I tried not to think about Elmira too much, but despite how I tried she wouldn’t leave my thoughts. When I returned home the phone was ringing; it was my sister, calling to see how it went, wanting to know if I had been able to speak to Elmira. No, I told her, I had not. I half listened as she alternately told me not give up, and that she had told me something like this would happen. But she had no idea what was going on. I didn’t even know. I’ve worked it out in my head a million times, but not a single explanation I could come up with seemed reasonable. I just have to accept that there’s nothing I can do right now, and hope that whatever it will only be temporary.
Elmira was down to her last cigarette. This was bad, it meant she’d have to venture outside her apartment or suffer the consequences of nicotine withdrawal. She held up the empty Newports box and placed the lighter underneath, striking a flame. The box caught. She held the burning box in her hand until it had extinguished itself, and then, disgusted with the burnt and empty object, she tossed it out the window. She didn’t hear it land, but she didn’t care. She returned to the couch. She collected the cigarette butts scattered around her and placed them on the overturned box. She then carefully arranged them to spell out her name, Elmira. When she had finished she gave the box a violent kick, sending it and the butts across the room, the box hitting the opposite wall with a loud thud that surely the neighbors must have heard. But no neighbor had spoken to her since she’d returned. Those that knew her from when she lived there before would give her polite knowing smiles when they saw her; she was ignored by the rest.
What the woman on the couch never told her husband was that she was no longer the woman he had married. No longer Elmira. The name only could be used to refer to the body, but not any of those who lived inside. Coming home was an act of desperation, grasping at the ghost of a routine long since given up. Where Elmira had gone no one knew; she had just disappeared one day. Unfamiliar with their surroundings, unsure of how to act around her husband, and unsure of life in general, those who Elmira left to pilot her body were unprepared to take over her life.
Jessa smoked the Newports. She liked the ad she saw in the magazine. She was only 13, and smoking looked fun. Having a husband seemed silly to her. But neither her nor the others knew what to do, what could be done. None of them had ever gone out alone before, none of them had held a job, none of them had loved Clarence.
Once again I returned to the apartment, but now more than a week had passed. I pressed my ear up against the door and listened, hoping to hear anything that would indicate someone was alive inside. No sound. “Elmira! It’s me! Please!”
“Don’t call me that!” a scream from the inside. Softer, I said “Elmira?”
“No! We hate her!” I paid closer attention to the voice of the speaker. She didn’t sound like Elmira. Another woman was in her apartment, and Elmira was not there.
“What’s going on in there? Where’s Elmira?”
“She left! She’s gone now! Ok?!” the screams were becoming sobs.
“Who are you? Where did she go?” by now my cell phone was out, and I was prepared to call the police. I feared the worst. However, now the only sound from within was the sobbing of the woman. I left.
We were abandoned. So what if she hated her life? What she did wasn’t fair. It was always only Elmira. She never let us do anything, she never even talked to us. And then one day POOF! And we have to take over with no life experience whatsoever unless you want to count watching the movie Life Of Elmira for 26 years. The body isn’t right for any of us. We needed practice, so we ran away. What were we supposed to do? If we’d stuck around, Clarence would have known. He would have known I’m not her. And then he would have sent us away. I’ve heard stories - I know it’s what they do. Oh, so you’re different today? You must be crazy! See ya! Well I wasn’t about to let that happen, no way. Why did Elmira do this to us?
I located the landlord and convinced him that I needed access to Elmira’s apartment. Even though I was her husband he made it difficult. We paused outside of the door and listened - the strange woman had stopped crying. “We’re coming in!” said the landlord. There was a shriek of “No!” from inside. The landlord unlocked the door and opened it for me. Immediately I saw her - the woman was desperately trying to crawl out the window onto the fire escape. “Hey! You! Stop!” I stuttered. She looked familiar. The woman pulled herself back inside and turned around. “Elmira?”
“No, I told you, she’s gone.” The frustrated sobbing began again. I embraced her, but she did not return it, and stood stiff as tears ran down her cheeks. What had happened? Was this…. drugs? “Elmira… are you… ‘on’ something?” I asked. The look of pain in her eyes answered my question. I didn’t understand. I released her and she collapsed on the couch, more alone then I ever could have imagined.
They came for her the day after. Doctors in fancy shoes and white coats, and even a policeman or two. Her husband had requested it. He didn’t understand what had happened to his wife, and people fear what they don’t understand. Living in the hospital Jessa tried in vain to explain the irony of the situation to the nurses. Now that they were locked up they could never adapt. They could never get better. This wasn’t the real world. They would never learn. Their doctor called them Elmira. They hated him. At night alone in the wards, they would take turns crying and screaming, venting their anger and frustration towards Clarence. Towards Elmira. Toward the world.
Far, far, away somewhere, Elmira peacefully slept.
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Date: 2006-11-01 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 03:12 am (UTC)I actually just turned it in today so I haven't gotten a grade yet.
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Date: 2006-11-01 03:15 am (UTC)my
Date: 2006-11-01 04:55 am (UTC)