2 Years, Three Months
She set down her pen and let her head fall into her hands. Papers covered in pointless scribbles and childish doodles stained an angry grey as her shadow passed over it, blocking its view of the lamp on the ceiling. A textbook lies just barely beyond that.
2 years, three months.
She stands up, not really feeling her legs, just using the memory of when she once could, to guide her to the bathroom. Vicious thoughts swirl around her mind, sharp as a kitchen knife yet dulled so inexplicably they are like a fuzzy dot in the distance. She had had 2 years.
A stack of lined paper sits on the corner of her desk, packaged like printer paper, the opening of the envelope faces her retreating back. It’s still full. She had had 2 years to empty it.
A notebook lies on top of the angry ink-stained paper, its colours a bright mint green with shiny gold lettering. A black elastic hold it closed. Keeps the hidden lies from being seen. Its pages are filled with near-illegible scrawls of ideas flowing from every corner of her mind like a river that broke its dam and just wouldn’t stop flowing. All of the wrong ideas. Ideas alien to the other book lying open on the table, its spine creased from staying in the same position day after day for 2 years.
Other things lie on the desk as well: Gum for concentration, coloured pens for organisation, and flowers for colour and optimism (fake, because it takes too much time caring for real ones). All of them are left sitting there, alone and disregarded as she walks towards the door and turns the handle.
The hallway is dark. Faint outlines of the walls and the swivel chair are illuminated by tiny floor lights spaced 2 meters apart. It took less than 2 years to build it.
The bathroom is bright. The warm yellow-orange of the lamps are soft and inviting. The fluffy white towels are warm on the electric towel racks and the mirror is clean and crisp. But the expression in the reflection is blank and tired, eyes staring, not emotionlessly, but as if all sense of purpose has left them, but not like they have run out of things to do, but like they’ve been told that who they are and what they strive for has already been achieved, so why bother? Her throat is sore in the same way that it is sore when you haven’t drunk water all day, then had one glass in hopes to alleviate the pain, but instead only muffled it a bit.
She opens the tap and sets the fresh, cold water flowing in a thick solid stream. She bends down to drink but the second her lips touch the water she recoils. It burns. The water was a pleasant cool temperature, and what little had managed to get into her mouth felt heavenly, but her lips stung like she’d just kissed a hot pan.
Disappointed she walks back to her room, too tired and numb to try drink again. She sits down at her desk, everything on it nearly glowing under the lamp: The gum because its so good for distraction, the coloured pens because it takes so long switching between them, the white plastic flowers in a plain glass vase with dull grey rocks at the bottom.
The notebook filled with the ever-flowing river of lies.
The creased, sun-bleached textbook below.
She had had 2 years. She now had 3 months. And she will drown.
