i.
Sometimes Evelyn thinks the world would be better off without humans. She pictures cities gone to ruins, ivy twisting like arabesques on crumbling walls, the gentle twittering of robins echoing through empty, forgotten streets. She likes the thought of deer dancing their way through the boulevards, where grass breaks through ever-widening cracks in the concrete and where flowers spread liked spilled watercolours over the sidewalks. At night fireflies swirl where lamplights once shone and the chirp of crickets is a whisper in the clear atmosphere. Wolves’ eyes shine bright in the dark, and all is quiet and indifferent and beautiful.
ii.
Evelyn does not talk much, and she does not mind lingering when everyone else is gone. She likes the quiet, the tranquil moments when the others’ voices retreat and fade into a steady, soothing murmur and when the world suddenly shrinks so that it is only her in this cocoon that smells like old books and dust.
Sometimes she is not completely alone, and plays chess with Cassandra, who is wary and quiet also. There is safety in the black and white, a shared understanding that grows with every game. It is still solitude, but of a gentler, softer kind.
iii.
Evelyn tries to be happy. Sometimes she stands on the balcony, in the shadows cast by the ivy-threaded wall, and there is only the breeze there. Perhaps also there is her shadow, which is silent, and the faint aftertaste of rain in the air. Her eyes wander, lose themselves in the wind’s labyrinths, which are ephemeral and carved in the clouds strewn like a child’s marbles across the sky. She wants to fly up, to run, hope, live, feel. The puddle at her feet catches the light, and at its bottom humanity glitters, sparkles like laughter and like fool’s gold.
iv.
And she watches the light-footed cat prowling over the rooftops, its silhouette brought out in stark relief by the setting sun. A lone bird circles overhead, and there is no one there but them. If the world ended now, Evelyn ponders, would it really make a difference?
(This is how it happens, in the drifting meanders of her mind: for a fleeting eternity of a moment there is a silence deeper than any sea-bound abyss, and then all is awash in white light, and in this absence of bangs, in this absence of whimpers the world suddenly is no more.)
v.
She is not scared of the dark, really, but rather of what lurks within its writhing arms. She turns her back to the silhouettes lingering on its edges, closes her heart and ears to the whispers thrumming in its midst. The candles she surrounds herself with tremble and waver, and the tiny lights are like fireflies lost in ancient, forgotten cities. Her hands on the windows are pale and fragile as a bird’s wings, and the rain outside pitter-patters against the glass, singing songs she can never learn. Stars shine in the distance, dying slowly, brightly. Evelyn’s fingers are cold.
vi.
Cassandra has haunted eyes and restless hands. Her voice is always lowered, and when she speaks she is honest and blunt as ink on paper.
I never lie, Cassandra says once, a simple statement of fact, and her eyes are lowered to the chessboard.
Not even to yourself? Evelyn asks, and there is no answer but silence.
She does not know how to comfort others; but Cassandra is tired all the time and startles easily. Evelyn asks, uncertainly, uneasily, if anything is wrong.
I always lose, Cassandra says, and checkmates her.
There is not much she can answer to that.
vii.
Evelyn wishes her life was worth remembering, but it’s not. It is but a succession of hollow dreams and melancholy thoughts, and sometimes also aimless scribbles curling erratically around the spirals of her notebook. She would like to be noticed, she hopes people will remember her name and the stories she writes, and perhaps feel something like regret once she is gone.
In the end, though, there is only a lonely girl staring back from the mirror, and this is just who Evelyn is (when she writes the shadows on the wall linger, and ink bleeds shapeless onto blank pages.)
viii.
She doesn’t know herself, doesn’t know what makes her her. She likes silence and solitude, but she doesn’t want to be alone, so she makes people up and sets their lives onto paper, and makes them walk along shadow-painted walls too. When she writes she can forget the darkness is reading from over her shoulder and that no one, anywhere, is waiting for her. At night fireflies dance for themselves, the wind whispers in languages she does not speak and winter slowly glitters over her windows, indifferent and quiet and beautiful.
She writes for herself, and hopes it is enough.
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An exercise in snapshots. Fun fact: every part is exactly 100 words long.
