APPARENTLY, THAT GIRL WAS not kidding. elliot texted me earlier today to ask about some blonde girl that had knocked on his dorm door at eight this morning asking about french tutoring.
she was fairly annoying, he had said, tutoring her ought to be fun.
i was left only laughing until i had to resume in my writings for the hour preceding my first class of this wednesday.
it's really easy to forget how hard it is to let pages and pages of mla-formatted words about me stay undeleted. i've written the tales of a winter past before, but every time, the writings were scrapped, burned, tossed into the garbage of my memory, a routine meant to just keep the dirty paws from entering my mind even sooner.
write, scrap, wait, repeat. that therapist of mine said it would work, that every time i threw away the dismal tale, i would forget more of it. and slowly, pieces fly away from the puzzle, fly away from my mind, scatter on the ground for me to someday find and not know where to put them.
She saw him in the square, and as the orchestra of fear struck up in her, she felt his hands on her throat, felt her knees slam into the tile, felt him pull her head around by her hair. She darted away from the street, ducked into the nearest door. It belonged to a pub, but her eyes rebuilt it into the one where it had happened. Her stomach turned over, and she fainted right there.
i bite my lip til it bleeds. i've forgotten where the pub was, what it looked like. i'm afraid i'll remember, afraid that forgetting will make things worse. no matter how much i know i need to forget it, forget the hands that groped at me, forget it all so much that i don't own a remnant of the girl who lived in my skin a year ago.
i slam my laptop shut. my heart races as i stand and pull the strap of my bag over my shoulder.
as i come up to the door of our dorm, lisa opens it and her face grows confused rather quickly.
"you okay, mate?" she tilts her head to the side, not in the sweet way elliot does. "you look a bit pale."
"that's just my skin," i say through gritted teeth. i feel tears burn behind my eyes.
"no, you look sick."
i push past her. sick of these thoughts.
"anna, what's wrong with you?" she calls after me.
"nothing," i whisper to myself.
YOU ARE READING
Hearing Anna
Short Storyin which a girl named anna is swept up in a firestorm that burns her down and the aftermath leaves her reeling, because flames leave nothing but a despondent frown filled with a lack of feeling. i. the field ii. the flame iii. the br...
