Tick-Tick-Tick
Although the floors were cheap, the walls were thin, and the foundation was deplorable, everything was very clean. That gimcrack linoleum was mopped everyday, and even though it felt as if you were walking on some kind of undulating, eggshell-brown moorland, it shined. If you rubbed a finger on any random window pane, it squeaked, like the mice that scattered around the place. It was, as if, the only reason the faculty cleaned so meticulously was so that the bland, silent residence could feel clean, on the outside--could look clean, on the outside. However, if you thinned out the flawless, unmarred paint on the walls and scratched away the plaster you could begin to hear the death-watches tick. Tick, tick, buzz, buzz--so annoying. If you really took the time to listen, though, you could hear them whisper, “You’re leaving next, you miserable, old fool--one more birthday; one more year. Don’t worry, we’ll still be with you, gnawing away at your dead, old bones.”
At least, this is what Addie heard, late at night; when her obnoxious, garrulous roommate, Eliza, finally shut her mouth and went to sleep. Sure, maybe she considered suffocating Eliza with her own pillow once or twice; while she slept softly and gently, just so that the death-watches would take someone and cease their tick-tick-ticking. Although, she never had to do that, because one day, the beetles that were a constant reminder of Addie’s old grandfather clock that was, eventually, going to strike twelve one last time--forever--were quiet. Addie’s peace was all brought upon by one, seemingly, routine visit from another Campfire Girl, named Marian. When Marian first arrived, Addie was able to find some peace from Eliza’s constant prattling; since Eliza’s energetic attention was then focused on the new visitor. However, that didn’t exempt Addie from Eliza’s nosey nose and big mouth.
She just had to go on and on about how “sick” Addie was. Addie’s mental health was really none of Eliza’s business. What did Eliza care, anyway? She always had something to say about someone else, thought Addie. It didn’t stop there, either.
Eliza rattled on, and on about how the flowers, that the tedious little girl brought with her, were “so pretty”, and how Addie and Eliza just enjoyed the visits from the Campfire Girls so immensely. How could Eliza dare to speak for Addie? That wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back, though. With that loud, detestable voice of hers, Eliza divulged, to this complete stranger, that that day was Addie’s birthday. In an instant, Addie could feel her cheeks become reddened with rage, her heart pounded like thunder in her chest, and she could feel herself holding something back; yet she couldn’t tell what it was she gripped so tightly inside her chest, until it burst out of her like water through an old plumbing system that had been clogged up, for years.
She felt the dampness on her face, like all the other times. However, this time, those little droplets of her pained soul weren’t falling sometime in the middle of the night; when no one could hear her laments. No, this time her face screamed recognition--acknowledgement. As Addie buried her face into her pillows, she knew that she was beat. The whole world would come to know that the elderly woman in room 2B, at the senior housing building on Janeway Avenue, was just as sad and miserable as all the other elders roaming the empty halls of a lifeless residency.
She’d be just another wizened, glum face to read the bible to on occasional visits, a stranger’s good deed for the day, a second-class citizen, an afterthought. Addie was sure that she seemed silly to the two watching her weep, but the fact that someone else outside of those four walls knew it was her birthday--knew that she was a year closer to her demise, made the end seem so much more real. She was to live out the rest of her life becoming more and more atrophied, and incapable of function, like an already rusty car sitting in the pouring rain. That was the truth, and it was kind of funny. It was funny because she was sitting there wasting the years she had left in pain, pain that she didn’t have to experience. She was already in enough pain, the world was full of enough pain, and now look at her.
When Eliza left the room to follow Marian, and Addie could be all alone with the buzzing beetles, she paused her weeping and listened, for a moment. The grandfather clocks of the death-watches had made their last rings.
