The sun made its routine journey slower than usual, lingering in the sky at various locations chosen at whim, and thus the atmosphere in many cities that day was hot and humid, only made bearable by the gentle wind that came scarcely, but still managed to elicit sighs of relief from everyone upon its arrival. Citizens of Alexandria, Virginia were used to such climate and so they walked to and fro, from their jobs to their schools to their welcoming home, living their normal lives.
School was about to end its year long journey and the atmosphere was filled with elated laughter, good-humored teasing, and cheery smiles. Students, of all ages, from young children to adolescents, were generally excited to end the school year on a good note and were anxious to move on to the more exciting part of the year - summer vacation.
It was expected for these kids to look forward to the two months of relaxation and fun after a year filled with hard work and many of them had brilliant plans for the summer. Nothing could have drained their energy and no life on earth could have taken their joy away from them. However as the school bell rang, signaling the end of the period and the school year, and as the swarm of students ran home, to pack for their vacation and to dream of their future, not one person on the ground noticed the black clouds inching towards them, ready to destroy happiness and life itself.
Ethel, a girl of twelve years, with an exceptionally bright smile and an affable nature, ran on the sidewalks, dogging the other pedestrians, eliciting both smiles and groans from them, and with a burst of energy, which only a young child unharmed by worldly problems could possess, jumped on the black, wrought iron gate that separated her house from the street.
She ran up the cobblestone walkway, ducking when the drooping branches, covered with vibrant green leaves, came in her path, and, without losing any of her energy, climbed the front steps, two at a time, and jumped onto the white porch.
To an outsider, she would seem as an overexcited child, who had one foot in the realm of childhood and the other in adolescence, but when one entered her thoughts, they knew that her mind was brimming with ideas and questions, which were neither black nor white, that were grey in nature.
Ethel was eager to prove Julian Tedder, a young boy of her age, wrong and was desperate to show the world that, despite her changing body, she still possessed vigorous energy that was untamable.
The bounce in her step and the smile on her face were not a false illusion created to deceive others, but was rather an exaggeration of the truth. She was happy with her life and seemed to have a bright future, but she wanted something better, something more. Such was the plight of the young and the carefree; they always wanted more than what they already possessed and had an insatiable appetite for new things.
Taking off her necklace, one that she always wore and kept close to her heart, Ethel unlocked the door with the key.
"I'm home," she said, in a loud, boisterous voice, not losing her dazzling smile, but her infectious happiness dimmed and faltered when no one responded.
Her house was as silent as it had been when she left for school in the morning. The walls were blank, white, and freshly painted as if to hide scars and tears. The smell of the paint tickled her nose, Ethel made a face, and walked into her living room.
"Mom," she said, half whispering, half shouting, only a noise away from crumbling to the ground. No middle-aged woman responded back, but her mother's melodious voice still rung in her mind. Ethel could still hear her mother in the back of her mind, as if she was there in the same room as her, but it grew faint, like a whisper, only taunting her mind.
The empty walls, the plastic on top of the sofas and the chairs, the rug less floor, and the silence terrified her and a single tear fell from her brown eyes. Her pink, flowery, backpack fell to the ground with a thud and that one minuscule sound, which wouldn't have been heard if her house was filled with her family, bounced on the walls and entered her heart.
She hugged herself, rubbing her arms, as a chill like none other entered the house. The tiny hair on her arms stood up. Ethel was alone, or so she thought. Her family was gone, she was by herself, a lone soul in a world with billions of people, but even as she stood, still and quiet, borderline insane, she felt a strange presence.
There was someone in the house and as if to affirm this thought, a noise, like the shattering of a vase, came from the second floor. Her heart skipped a beat.
She placed her hand on her mouth, to keep herself from yelling, to stop herself from making a sound, and quietly, like a mouse, walked upstairs.
Her rapid breathing was uncontrollable, no matter how hard she tried, and her footsteps were shaky, slipping and sliding on the polished wooden floors. Her body trembled without her will, scared beyond imagination, and she almost tripped over her two feet.
Ethel held out her hand, placing it on the cold, hard wall, to steady herself and slowly crept towards her parent's room from where the noise seemed to have originated. She braced herself for the worst, not knowing what awaited her beyond the brown door, and placed her hand on the doorknob.
Silence was all she heard for a few minutes. The stillness of the air was so loud that when the sound of someone cursing came from the other side of the door, she became paralyzed. Her brain was on overdrive and was brimming with questions. Who was here and why? Where were her parents? The thought of her mother and father evoked sorrow from deep within her; tears fell, tracing her face first, and then dropping on the ground like rain.
Holding her breath, she turned the doorknob and opened the door slowly. Ethel's face was pale, her eyes were bloodshot, and her lips quivered, but she held in her sobs as the door creaked open.
The room was empty. The bed was void of pillows, bed sheets, and persons. The walls no longer held up smiling family portraits and the closet doors were thrown open, as if they were emptied a while ago.
She cautiously walked into the room and made her way to the bed. With shaking hands, Ethel touched the mattress and, as if that was the last push she needed, she choked on a sob before crying. She didn't cry hysterically or violently, Ethel was neither loud nor silent, she simply cried like a lost child would and she only wept as a broken person would.
In the midst of her tears and her gut-wrenching sobs, she didn't feel the presence in the corner of the room. Her perpetrator watched as she cried tears of blood, as her soul dripped from her eyes, and then slowly made his way to her. Her back was turned to him, she didn't hear his footsteps over the sound of her heart breaking, and he couldn't be happier with the situation.
He had come to rob the house, having found it empty in the morning, but there were no possessions left for him to take. The house had been cleaned before he arrived and as the clocked ticked, he grew angry. He needed to take something, he had to rob something, because he lived off of the adrenaline rush. He had almost given up, when he had heard the sound of a girl from down below. He had the chance to rob something and he was going to do it, even if it was the last thing he ever did.
With that thought in mind, he held out his hand and, with a quick movement, placed it on her mouth. Her muscles grew tense in his grasp and he almost began smiling at how easy it was, but as he grew lost in his thoughts, thinking of the ways he was going to torture Ethel, she opened her mouth and bit his hand.
"Shit," he said, trying to remove his hand from her mouth but Ethel latched on with all her might. It was her only defense against him.
"Let go you bitch," he yelled and, with a cry of pain, tore his hand from her mouth. Before she had a chance to run, enraged at her audacity, he raised his unharmed hand and slapped her with such blunt force that Ethel fell, her head banged against the bed frame, and her body slid down until she was lying prostrate on the floor.
She didn't have a chance to cry, she couldn't scream, and she stood no chance of escaping. She simply fell, smashed her head, and as she laid there, drifting in and out of consciousness, in a small pool of blood, she wondered yet again about her parent's whereabouts.
As he moved away from her, horrified by his own actions, and ran away from her body as fast as his legs could allow, she began closing her eyes. As Ethel fell into the dark abyss, her soul cried out.
"Don't forget me," her mind yelled but no one heard a sound.
Her eyelids closed, her long eyelashes fanned out on her cheeks, and her lips stopped trembling. At that moment, if anyone had walked in, they would have thought that she was a doll. A porcelain doll lying in her own blood. A doll with no beating heart, a doll that had stopped breathing, and a doll that lied still as if it had never walked before.
She was a forgotten doll, relinquished and abandoned by her own flesh and blood, erased from the memories of all those who knew her, and there she laid, in her parent's room, for thirty six hours before someone found her.
*******
Sixteen years later, on a spring morning, when the grass glistened with dew and the birds chirped with delight, looking forward to finding potential mates and nesting, Ethel stood in front of a bathroom mirror.
The reflection in the mirror never changed, showing her face, her flaws, and her fears clearly, but she still looked each and every day, hoping, wishing, and praying that one day the image would change and a virtue of hers would reveal itself in all its glory.
Today was not that day and so, with a heavy heart, she brushed her thick wavy brown hair back into a ponytail and after about ten tries, four frustrating screams, hundreds of sprays of hairspray, and one broken brush, her hair was tamed, sleek, and perfect.
It would've been easier for Ethel, and a whole lot less painful, to accept defeat, to go outside with less than perfect hair, but it was her insatiable need to be known by everyone and anyone that kept her trying till she reached perfection.
After all, she couldn't show her face to the world on television with unruly hair.
Applying two coats of Chap Stick to her already smooth, luscious, pink lips, she added two extra coats of shimmery rose colored lip gloss. Ethel took her handy dandy concealer and hid every blemish, acne scar, and pimple. She had to look perfect, not because she was conceited and definitely not because she was a model, but simply because she thought that anything less than the best would not be memorable.
After all, her parents left her because she was imperfect and it was due to her flaw that her attacker, the man who plagued her mind for sixteen years, was able to get away, unharmed and safe. It was up to her now to take away any and all flaws from her body, scrub free any damage and imperfection, until all that was left behind was a perfect, blemish free, doll.
Ethel patted down her jumpsuit fifteen times before it looked exactly the way she wanted and after taking a good long look in the mirror, to make sure that nothing got away from her analytical eyes, she finally smiled.
However, Ethel's smile was no longer carefree, dazzling, or true; her happiness and smile had run away with her parents. She touched the part of her forehead that was strategically covered with voluminous, silky, bangs. She winced when her hand made contact with the scar, which had stayed even after sixteen years, which never faded, and which reminded her of her past, and held back a sob.
Her eyes glossed over with tears as she remembered that day with such clarity that it seemed to her as if it had happened yesterday. She tried to blink, to hold back her tears, to stop herself from crying like she did every other day, but once her past began to unfold itself, there was little she could do to stop it.
Her breaths became jagged, her lungs began to constrict forcing her to take in big gulps of the air, but she still felt the familiar burning sensation in her chest. She bent over, her hands holding her trembling knees, and tried to steady her breathing, but every single time her heart began to beat normally, in a rhythmic fashion, and she began to breathe, another wave of nausea came over her that sent her running for the toilet.
Ethel could feel his hand on her mouth as she threw up the apple she had eaten in the morning. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck and she could taste the sweat on his hand. Ethel could even taste his metallic blood dripping into her mouth as she bit him.
Another round of nausea came over her, causing her to heave water and bits of fruit into the toilet bowl. When her stomach became empty, she stopped vomiting. However, the effect her past had on her was far from over.
She repeated the steps in her mind as she sat on the bathroom floor with her back against the bathtub.
Shortness of breath was the first step followed by erratic heartbeats, which was then followed by a few rounds of nausea and vomiting, and then came the tremors.
The tremors were one of the worst parts of her panic attacks. When the muscles on her hand began to oscillate and her hands and legs began to tremble, she felt as if she was no longer in control of her own body. She often watched her panic attacks disembodied from herself. She felt like an outsider watching from the sidelines.
Ten minutes later, her hands and legs stopped trembling and only shook every few minutes or so until they became quiet and still. However, the last part of her panic attacks was not the tremors. It was the head aches that were immediately followed by unconsciousness, which lasted anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the day.
She held her muscles taut and waited for the headaches to arrive but no matter how hard she prepped herself, the pounding in her skull was always ten times worse than she could endure.
Blackness began to creep into her vision and, even though it was a bright sunny morning, the world around her became dark. Just as she began to release the thin thread, which connected her to reality, from her hands and began to venture in the darkness, to which she had become accustomed, her cell phone rang and, as if she had been drenched with ice cold water, she jolted awake from her state.
Disorientated from the sudden sound and unable to keep her eyes open longer than five minutes, she crawled her way to the sink and picked up her cell phone that was continuously ringing and not showing any signs of stopping.
"Hello," she said, without even looking at the phone to see who she was talking to, her voice raw from vomiting.
"Ethel Anderson, where the hell are you?"
The voice of her friend, the only person to come close to knowing her, came loud and clear through the phone.
"Shit," Ethel cursed under her breath as she held on to the sink and tried to stand up, but fell back down.
"Shit is right, young lady, you have a race in about," she pictured him looking down at his old watch, which had no numbers, and trying to figure out the time, "fifteen minutes and you're nowhere to be seen."
"I'm sorry Jason," Ethel said, trying to come up with a good excuse, but failing miserably.
"I don't want to hear your apologies. Have you forgotten that this is a NASCAR race? This race will put you on the map, millions of people will know you by name and face, but you're stilling chilling at home?"
"I'm not chilling Jason," she said, anger simmering in her veins. She wasn't a violent person, but when her panic attacks destabilized her, anger was the only medium she had left to control.
"Then where the hell are you?"
"I'm heading out right now, so calm down."
"You mean to tell me that you haven't left your hotel yet," he exclaimed into the phone causing Ethel to move the phone away from her ear, "I hope you realize that the race is happening on the Loma Raceway, which, if I remember correctly, is thirty minutes away from your hotel."
"Don't worry, Jason. I'll be there on time."
"No, listen to me Ethel, you need to be here before the race begins."
"Breathe Jason and relax. I'll be there faster than you can blink."
"Are you a magician? Are you going to teleport here? Because unless you wave a magical wand, there's no way you're making a thirty minute trip in under ten minutes."
Ethel grabbed her purse, placed a few essentials in it, and grabbed her keys.
Locking her hotel room, she said, "Oh Jason, you should know me by now. If there's anyone who can do this, it's me."
She heard him sigh and she could vividly picture him running his hand through his hair.
"Seriously Ethel. One of these days you're going to give me a panic attack."
Ethel frowned at his choice of words. She didn't need another reminder of the experiences she dealt with every single day.
"I'm starting to think that you do this on purpose," he said after a brief pause.
"Oh," Ethel said, elongating the vowel, "and why do you think that?"
"I don't know. With all the crazy stunts you do for a living and the small things like being late, even when you know you can't afford to, just makes it seem like you're trying way too hard to be noticed."
"Well, you've known me for two years now," she said, walking out of her hotel, and getting into her normal car, which she used just for traveling.
"Yeah, but you haven't exactly spilled your guts out to me. Despite that, I have this crazy feeling that you are doing all of this nonsense, and putting your life in danger continuously, because you don't want me or anyone else to forget you."
His words hit a home run and temporarily, Ethel forgot how to breathe. She heard his voice, but her ears began tuning him out. She could feel another panic attack coming on and this time it wasn't because of her past - it was her present that was bothering her.
She knew that she had a problem. These panic attacks were a tell-tale sign that something was wrong in her brain, but she refused to get help. She didn't want to look weak because the faint and the feeble were never remembered.
Everyone had fears. Some were afraid of those tiny, crawling, insects and others were afraid of heights. No human alive could boast that he or she was fearless. So what if her fear was that she was going to be forgotten by everyone? She was sure that it was a normal fear that almost every individual faced in their life span.
It didn't matter to her that she went to extremes to garner attention and that when the spotlight faded, and the darkness took over, she became a wreck. She was positive that was a normal reaction too.
"Ethel, are you even listening to me?"
Ethel blinked furiously and sighed in relief as her oncoming panic attack decided to do a U-turn.
"Of course I'm listening to you, but if you want me to arrive at the Raceway before I'm fifty, you need to stop talking."
She placed her car key in the ignition and put on her seat belt with one hand.
"Just drive before these people kill me," he said and in the background, Ethel could hear hundreds of fans cheering.
"Bye," Ethel said and, without waiting for him to reply, ended the call.
Throwing her phone into her purse, she fixed the rear-view mirror and after glancing for any sight of pedestrians, she placed her foot on the accelerator and sped off towards the raceway.
*******
"How the hell did you manage to come here in eight minutes," Jason said, his mouth agape, standing in the parking lot.
Smiling at him, hiding the fact that her muscles were still sore and tense from the earlier panic attack, she said, "Magic."
"Very funny," he said, crossing his arms.
Ethel placed her hand on his shoulder and while looking at him, straight in the eye, she said, "You can relax now. We have about seven more minutes till the race begins and I'm here."
He opened his mouth to say something, but the cheers from the audience in the stadium became louder by the second.
Shaking his head, he said, "After the race is done, I need to talk to you."
As Ethel walked toward the stadium, the electrifying atmosphere pumping her blood at a fast rate, besides Jason, she said, "No. Tell me now."
He thought about it for a few seconds, weighing the pros and cons of his words with every footstep, and then said, "Okay, so I've been doing some research on you."
"On me," Ethel asked, arching her eyebrow, looking at him.
"Well, not exactly on you, but basically on the way you act."
Ethel frowned. She had done a similar research during her spare time and she had not liked the results.
"What did you find?"
He looked uncomfortable and Ethel prayed that he changed his mind and left the conversation, but as they entered the small tunnel, which would lead them into the stadium, he said, "The way you act is similar to how a person with Athazagoraphobia would act and I know that you're very stubborn and will refuse to go to a doctor, to get properly diagnose-."
"I don't have a phobia," Ethel said, crossing her arms, cutting him off.
"You probably don't, but I personally think that you should check out this support group called the F.F.I. They may be able to help you."
Ethel shook her head.
"They can't fix me if there is nothing to fix. I'm perfectly fine, Jason."
"But it won't hurt to give them a try."
Just as Ethel opened her mouth to refute his argument, the tunnel came to an end and they entered the Loma Raceway.
The noise of an enthusiastic audience magnified until it seemed to Ethel as if her heart beat at the same rhythm as the crowd.
"Promise me you'll go see the support group," Jason said, but Ethel was in a different dimension, basking in the glow of the loving supporters who had come from different parts of the world to watch her and the other drivers' race.
She had to give her best out there if she had any shot of being remembered by these people.
"Yeah, sure," Ethel said, not paying attention to exactly what or whom she was promising herself to.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, the crowd is going wild and the atmosphere is electric," a news reporter said into a microphone, looking into a camera, and -no doubt- was being watched by millions of fan around the globe.
"And here comes Ethel Anderson, looking as beautiful as ever. She's the newbie on the block and is up against the more experience racers. Do you think you will win," the reporter said, thrusting the microphone into Ethel's face, putting her on the spot.
"Ethel Anderson does not lose," Ethel said, trying to sound cocky and confident at the same time, making sure that the camera had her best angle at all times.
"Big words from the dashing woman," the reporter said, walking away from Ethel, moving onto another driver.
Sitting in her Lotus Super 7, a sports car, Ethel put on her helmet. Jason took his seat in the crowd and watched Ethel with growing anxiety.
One of the drivers, whose car was nearest to Ethel's, looked in her direction and smirked.
"Do you want something," Ethel shouted over the sound of the audience.
He walked towards her and, once he reached her car, said, "Just trying to watch a desperate nobody trying to gain attention. It'll be fun to watch you crash and burn."
With that, he winked, turned and went back to his own car. His words began to resonate in her skull, bouncing off her brain, and she did her best to keep her oncoming panic attack at bay. She could not let his words affect her - that would mean that he won. She had to focus on the race and win so that she could accomplish her goal of becoming widely famous.
If she failed in this race, she would not be spared another glance and the crowd that was enthusiastically cheering for her would forget about her. She could not cease to exist; these people, most of whom she didn't even know, could not forget her.
She felt her lungs constrict again and, in an attempt to avoid a panic attack, she held her breath and clenched her hands.
"On your mark," a brief pause was followed to increase the tension, "Get set - Go!"
Hearing the cue, Ethel pressed her foot on the accelerator, held onto the steering wheel, and sped off, while trying to deal with her panic attack that seemed to get worse by the second.
She didn't know the driver who had insulted her, but his words still had a powerful effect on her. She felt the waves of nausea coming from a mile away, like a tsunami, and her stomach churned, but she still held on to the steering wheel.
She prayed until she could no longer open her mouth without vomiting. Her head spun and her hands began to sweat. She firmly held onto the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, but no matter how hard she clenched her muscles, the tremor stage of her panic attack began.
She felt her soul leaving her body and watched, aghast, as her hands slipped from the wheel and her sports car drifted from the race course. She watched, separated from her body, as the car almost flew off the sidelines and into the mountain wall.
Whether it was her prayers or plain luck, she did not know and didn't care, but by the twist of fate, her foot hit the brakes and her car didn't get totaled in the crash.
She had been lucky to get out of the crash with only physical wounds, but she now had more scars on her body than before. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, she felt the sick feeling, which often associated with déjà vu, and with eyes half open, she watch Jason's worried face come into view.
One month later, on March 19th, she celebrated her twenty eight birthday sitting in the lobby of an office, in Richmond, Virginia, waiting for the rest of her support group members to arrive.
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This is a little different from the other short stories I have posted and it will be long (or longish). If you find any mistakes, be it spelling or sentence structure or plot holes, please leave me a comment or pm me.
I won't be doing a lot of A/Ns, so I just want to take the time here to thank all of you for giving this story a shot.
-Mandeline Bane