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31_days2011-02-12 12:27 am
treeflamingo.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2011-02-12 12:27 am
[Feb 11] [Original] Exhalation
Title: Exhalation
Day/Theme: Feb 11/It's simple: just breathe through my lungs
Series: Original, one-shot
Characters: Cassandra, Kim
Rating: K+
Her mother died the year she turned eighteen, in September. The hospice nurse had been on a smoke break; her grandmother had been bathing her with a cloth, wiping away the stench of sweat and genetic decay. One heavy exhalation and the titan that had held up her childhood globe dissipated into nothing.
Her sister got home a few hours later; they told her that she didn’t cry at first. But Cassandra was gone already. She needed to be convinced to come home; her sister and her father stood with her at the foot of the stairs outside the apartment building, telling her that Mom was gone (she couldn’t be in the house with the shell, the husk still there), that they needed her, that they were family and they needed her, telling her to come tonight, at the very least, to come back home for the night. Her sister didn’t cry then either, but held Cassandra while she did.
And she did go home that night. But she didn’t stay. It was two o’clock in the morning when she slipped out the door like a ghost. (In truth her feet made a horrible noise on the floor, the soft sliding sound of socks being exaggerated to heinous proportions now that the oxygen machine was silent – but her sister was unwakeable – she had finally cried, and cried herself dreamless; Cassandra envied her.) She walked a mile down the road to the gas station with the eerie green glow. It was closed. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t brought her wallet anyway.
There was a young man sitting on the low curb by the gas station, blowing nicotine smoke into the cool, wet air. Cassandra sat down beside him. Because, she thought, he can’t possibly hurt me.
He offered her a cigarette after a few minutes, but she turned it down. She didn’t smoke.
And after a few more minutes he ground the butt into the asphalt and turned to look at her, cheek propped on a fist. She had her knees pointed at each other, and her toes pigeoned, and her eyes trained on her toes.
“My mother died this morning,” she said. “I don’t want to be there.”
And he replied with, “Gotcha,” as if that just explained everything. He lit another cigarette, sat silently with her until she started to cry, put an arm around her and puffed at the night while she dropped all her pretenses.
His name was Kim. He was twenty-three. His mother was Korean and his father was a bastard. He was a bastard too, in the technical sense. Probably in the popular sense as well. Both of his parents were around, somewhere, but he hadn’t had much to do with them for years. He didn’t understand what it was like to lose a loved one, a pillar, but he did understand what it was like to want to be anywhere but home, and he never pretended to understand what he didn’t. He worked at the bar across the street; it closed at one thirty in the morning; he only ever smoked right after a shift. These were the things that she learned about him as the fall hardened into winter, over the course of many irregular wee-hours meetings on that same gas station curb.
Her sister returned to China in January (that was whither she had been called, whence she yearned to return, because she didn’t want to be in that house either, and neither sister begrudged the other her desire to escape). After that, Cassandra started spending nights with him. Her father wouldn’t notice, he never noticed anything; her grandmother left to live with her other daughter, the living one, the one who wouldn’t break her old heart with implacable silence and malleable memories; only her sister would have seen through her, only her sister would have disapproved.
So it was Kim who learned her nervous ticks, the eensy little physical acts of grief that both validated and betrayed the nonchalance with which she colored her daily life. She picked at her cuticles until they bled; she ate nothing but apples and cupcakes; she would watch a mother and her child cross the street and hold her breath until they made it. She held her breath during commercial breaks, and while chopping apples, and while driving. She held her breath until her vision blurred. Kim never asked her why, and she desperately wanted him to, so that she could deny that she was doing it. He never asked, only broke her concentration, squeezed her hand to startle her alive.
Her father remarried the summer before she turned nineteen, in June. Her sister came back from China for two weeks; she said little about Kim, and even less to him. But she eyed him with a certain cold analysis, and she watched Cassandra when they were together, watched the way she touched him. The same way she watched their father. And so Cassandra knew how she felt about it.
The wedding was tiny. There were no groomsmen, no bridal party. Cassandra sat in a hard-backed chair with her sister to her left and Kim to her right and watched the woman in the bone-colored dress walk down a thin corridor between rows of like chairs. Towards her father, dressed in a fine suit, standing beside a man who would help them violate all the promises Cassandra had believed in as a child.
Her head was pounding and she knew she had stopped breathing.
She could feel her sister to her left, closing her eyes. Felt the burning above her heart and imagined it was the same for her sister. Felt Kim’s hand close around hers, felt him pull it to himself, felt the rise and steady fall of his chest, felt it firmly, because he had pressed her hand to his heart.
“Cass,” he said, and he took a deep breath.
And oxygen flooded her lungs.
Day/Theme: Feb 11/It's simple: just breathe through my lungs
Series: Original, one-shot
Characters: Cassandra, Kim
Rating: K+
Her mother died the year she turned eighteen, in September. The hospice nurse had been on a smoke break; her grandmother had been bathing her with a cloth, wiping away the stench of sweat and genetic decay. One heavy exhalation and the titan that had held up her childhood globe dissipated into nothing.
Her sister got home a few hours later; they told her that she didn’t cry at first. But Cassandra was gone already. She needed to be convinced to come home; her sister and her father stood with her at the foot of the stairs outside the apartment building, telling her that Mom was gone (she couldn’t be in the house with the shell, the husk still there), that they needed her, that they were family and they needed her, telling her to come tonight, at the very least, to come back home for the night. Her sister didn’t cry then either, but held Cassandra while she did.
And she did go home that night. But she didn’t stay. It was two o’clock in the morning when she slipped out the door like a ghost. (In truth her feet made a horrible noise on the floor, the soft sliding sound of socks being exaggerated to heinous proportions now that the oxygen machine was silent – but her sister was unwakeable – she had finally cried, and cried herself dreamless; Cassandra envied her.) She walked a mile down the road to the gas station with the eerie green glow. It was closed. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t brought her wallet anyway.
There was a young man sitting on the low curb by the gas station, blowing nicotine smoke into the cool, wet air. Cassandra sat down beside him. Because, she thought, he can’t possibly hurt me.
He offered her a cigarette after a few minutes, but she turned it down. She didn’t smoke.
And after a few more minutes he ground the butt into the asphalt and turned to look at her, cheek propped on a fist. She had her knees pointed at each other, and her toes pigeoned, and her eyes trained on her toes.
“My mother died this morning,” she said. “I don’t want to be there.”
And he replied with, “Gotcha,” as if that just explained everything. He lit another cigarette, sat silently with her until she started to cry, put an arm around her and puffed at the night while she dropped all her pretenses.
His name was Kim. He was twenty-three. His mother was Korean and his father was a bastard. He was a bastard too, in the technical sense. Probably in the popular sense as well. Both of his parents were around, somewhere, but he hadn’t had much to do with them for years. He didn’t understand what it was like to lose a loved one, a pillar, but he did understand what it was like to want to be anywhere but home, and he never pretended to understand what he didn’t. He worked at the bar across the street; it closed at one thirty in the morning; he only ever smoked right after a shift. These were the things that she learned about him as the fall hardened into winter, over the course of many irregular wee-hours meetings on that same gas station curb.
Her sister returned to China in January (that was whither she had been called, whence she yearned to return, because she didn’t want to be in that house either, and neither sister begrudged the other her desire to escape). After that, Cassandra started spending nights with him. Her father wouldn’t notice, he never noticed anything; her grandmother left to live with her other daughter, the living one, the one who wouldn’t break her old heart with implacable silence and malleable memories; only her sister would have seen through her, only her sister would have disapproved.
So it was Kim who learned her nervous ticks, the eensy little physical acts of grief that both validated and betrayed the nonchalance with which she colored her daily life. She picked at her cuticles until they bled; she ate nothing but apples and cupcakes; she would watch a mother and her child cross the street and hold her breath until they made it. She held her breath during commercial breaks, and while chopping apples, and while driving. She held her breath until her vision blurred. Kim never asked her why, and she desperately wanted him to, so that she could deny that she was doing it. He never asked, only broke her concentration, squeezed her hand to startle her alive.
Her father remarried the summer before she turned nineteen, in June. Her sister came back from China for two weeks; she said little about Kim, and even less to him. But she eyed him with a certain cold analysis, and she watched Cassandra when they were together, watched the way she touched him. The same way she watched their father. And so Cassandra knew how she felt about it.
The wedding was tiny. There were no groomsmen, no bridal party. Cassandra sat in a hard-backed chair with her sister to her left and Kim to her right and watched the woman in the bone-colored dress walk down a thin corridor between rows of like chairs. Towards her father, dressed in a fine suit, standing beside a man who would help them violate all the promises Cassandra had believed in as a child.
Her head was pounding and she knew she had stopped breathing.
She could feel her sister to her left, closing her eyes. Felt the burning above her heart and imagined it was the same for her sister. Felt Kim’s hand close around hers, felt him pull it to himself, felt the rise and steady fall of his chest, felt it firmly, because he had pressed her hand to his heart.
“Cass,” he said, and he took a deep breath.
And oxygen flooded her lungs.