Falling Away With Ire/Chapter 2

Chapter 2-

Shattering Roughly

 

            [When Abast was gone, Lily was a bit confused. Slowly she fingered the pendulum resting upon her white chest. The small orb had been her mother's passed on to Lily when she died.

            "Mom," she whispered. "Right now I so badly miss you. Mom why did you have to leave me? I loved you. I'm always so alone now." Who would have purposed in their hearts, any change in which Lily could wish herself away from all of this?

            Rain started thrashing against her windows. If only there were some way for her to go back. It wasn't as though she were an orphan, so why should she complain? She still had a father.

            Some father he is! He won't even- look at me save for when he needs something, or perhaps- I don't know what his problem is. He won't even admit when he needs anything. Oh, Dad. Daddy- you can't go on in this way, never asking for any help. Her body tightened, causing her to wrap her arms around herself. Dad if there was, some way to demonstrate it to you. To show you that I still love you, that I do not blame you. Lily's hands shook, as she covered her face, wrapping herself in the most unlady-like position that she could ever have imagined in her most nightmarish dreams. After a minute she shook herself. That was- enough. There would be no more nonsense, because Lily was a woman. All of this was in the past. She quickly stifened her jaw, squaring her small shoulders. Lily stared at this emerald-eyed vision of herself in her mirror, thinking that her normally bright, tinted gems had pulled down some sort of shade. Then, she let out one long, heart-wrenching scream, throwing herself into the mirror as her voice tapered off, shattering it, and herself.

           

            When Lily opened her eyes blearily to the sounds of various voices, she quickly shut them again. In the blink of an instant, everything came rushing back. Immediately she knew where she was, and she had over one million regrets- exactly- about it. 'Please don't let him be here,' she prayed. When she opened her eyes once again with bravery, it was not her father who looked back at her, but a timid little boy with wide brown eyes. His hair stood up at one end, and he was staring at her as though he had never seen anything quite like her. Like she was an experiment gone wrong under a mircoscope. She could not withhold a small giggle.

            "What are you looking at?" she asked him. The boy blushed. He would not speak though.

            "Can't you talk?" He shook his head.

            "You are mute?" She sighed. "Guess you won't talk. No one wants to talk to me." She started when he began to climb up on her bed.

            "What- are you doing?" The boy scrambled onto Lily's bed. Then, to her great surprise, he sloughed his backpack from his shoulders that he had been sporting. Lily gasped when, slowly, he pulld out a furry black ball, which, in a minute, began animatedly moving. Little mewling noises coming from the animal made her smile gently.  "A kitten. When did you get him?" She took the little thing from his proferred hands, and held it up to her cheek. His eyes, to her surprise, were a pure gold-yellow. "Male?" she questioned. The boy nodded. "He's very well-behaved."

            "Yes, he is." The child hung his head. Yet again astounding her, a tear trickld down his face. Why, she didn't think he could talk, but apparently, he could. And what had she said to make him cry?

            "Child. Look," she bit her lip. She glanced around. She sighed. What a depressing scene of white surrounded her. She and the boy were alone in this room. She noticed that the bed beside her was empty- must belong to him. Sighing in a great heave she allowed the kitten to scamper back to the boy, before allowing her head to fall back down over her arms, now wrapped in bandages. Lily didn't want to dare think about her own consequences. "Ahhh," emitted from her. 'No, no, I won't cry. Well, yes, perhaps, I will- " Wrenching sobs moved her chest in waves, jerky ones that-

 

            she had to leave. Fleeing swiftly from the bed, yes, fleeing because she didn't want to assess herself, she, left; 'stupid boy and stupid cat,' she thought.

 

            "I hate this."

                                    Regroup. Energies. Sadness. Depression.]

 

                How exactly could those thoughts fit into her new book?

                How did the boy and the cat and mirror shattering work? How could any of it fit slowly into the pages? I need to think of something. The phone suddently rang. It was always ringing while she tried to write, but, she supposed . . . she would pick it up.

                "What?" The voice at the other end of her was apparently amused. 

                "This is how you answer?" She frowned.

                "Sir Drestle?"

                "Hmm." The gig was outrageous. Why would he call her?

                "Professor Abast left earlier. He wouldn't tell me why, and no, I don't know whether he will be back to teach in the fall, curse him," she said the last two words under her breath of course.

                "What? Pardon?" Two words for one. He surely is the most annoying Department Head.

                "Please don't bother me. I'm writing a fake memoir about myself."

                "Oh. Sorry?" He said it rather deliberately. She nodded.

                "That's quite alright. I don't know anything about Abast."

                "Well, I guess I can contact another one of his associates."

                "Which I am not," she retorted. "I'm just his student."

                "Now you know Professor Abast thinks that- "

                "Save it," Dolly told him harshly. "No one promoted me. I'm- just- his student," she repeated hollowly. . She thought she heard the man sigh. Nervvy kleptomaniac. I know he stole- well, no, he didn't. Oh, bother. Who cares anything about it either- I- hate- this-

                "Goodbye." She hung the phone on its line. That swimming had really helped her- yesterday. Now at least, she- could control her temper. But, did it have anything to do with swimming? She doubted it. There was a piece of popcorn on the table next to her, which Cottonbrush, her cat, was nudging around with his paw- with pink pads on it. Paw with the pink pads? She shook her head to herself. Something needed to be done with the quality of her poetic notions. She was clutched, by an urge to suddenly make a call.

                No, no, this can't be happening.

                Why not? said another voice sibilantly. Fighting against this with all her might, her thundering heart now making sense, foreboding smashing down, pressing its malevolent fingers to her eylids, so that desperate tears were squeezed, she lunged toward the phone.

                "Leave!" She shoved away all her paperwork for the second time. Dolly's hand was clutching the phone's handle. Inwardly she seethed, that this feverish quality had brought her to this-

                "There's no help for it," she whispered, before dialing a number.

                No.

                He would have to call. Her eyes swept with icicles around the room. She thought that chance happening for a poor soul who met her gaze would turn into the same, austere, green ice as her eyes. Which were beginning to melt. Delicately, she forced her right hand down, in order to place the phone back onto its cradle.

                Hearing the door opening softly, she pivoted as the sound of its telltale, creak, immediately painting with careful meticulation over every facial feature.

                "Dolly?"

                "Yes, Clarabelle?" The small girl looked a bit worried. She shut the door, then padded softlty to her older sister, looking at her- pinning her, Dolly thought-with enormous eyes of a teary, big-drop, blue. Clarabelle resembled, to Dolly's mind, some type of serene figurine, wrapped in a soft white nightgown, her blond hair cascading around her torso oddly- luxuriously- for one so young. Clarabelle, to Dolly's relieving sentiment, was gratifyingly unaware.

                "Dolly, can you sit down?"

                "Clarabelle, why?"

                "I want you to sing," she told her sister, in a slightly hushed, somehow endearing voice, although the last description, was to Dolly's chagrin, one that would not be admitted.

                "Not tonight, Clarabelle."

                "Claire." Dolly waved her hand, before pulling a wooden chair out from beneath the table to sit down. Her sister continued to watch, very perceptively. She was austute in the truest sense, but uncannily serious, for one who was only seven.

                "What's wrong?"

                "Nothing, Claire." Clarabelle, although content, unhampered, seemingly made out of porcelain, a bit unearthly, gazed upon Dolly's countenance, with heartbreaking understanding. In deep contemplation, Dolly didn't even protest when a heavy weight full of young life crawled up over her knees.

                "Dolly, the professor left, didn't he? Earlier? He had to go see his baby?" Dolly's face was nearly implacable, but she could not force her lips to suppress their quiver, completely form her own face, as she had for a practiced number of years, from her will-

                "Claire, I- " her sister placed one of her small hands over her own arm.

                "It's okay. Dolly, I know."

                "You- oh, Claire! Please, Claire, I just- " She took a vast, somewhat shaky breath, to steady and repress. She needed to-  "Claire, it isn't like that- " but as she looked into her steady, knowing sister's face she started to break.

                "Dolly, it's okay. I know," the little girl repeated. Her own tiny lips trembled.

                "I know Dolly. I know you loved him." She said it in a hushed voice. "You don't have to pretend with me," she gave this meager offereing, as Dolly's breathing grew faintly shallow, in such a grand way, that Dolly's glacier look melted, and her face crumpled. Tears, unwanted and loathed, began to spill out of her eyes, while her sternum shivered, her body quaking in an odd, jerky way. Simultaneously, Dolly's face turned a deep shade of puce, so upset was she by showing this lack of control. She took a few, slow, yet still, shaky, gulps of air, staring fixedly at a point beyond the two of them in a corner point of whitewash. Holding back hurt her so much.

                An odd, muffled kind of half-sob escaped her, completely making her mortified. But it was too late. The damage was already done.

                "Please, Dolly. You don't have to be embarrassed. Just cry if you want." Her sister's voice sounded a bit thready, but of her feelings, Dolly did not have the time to analyze, for she was breaking. She put her head down over her arms in total defeat in every way. Relieving, gratifying, sobs came out. Her sister's hand soothingly rubbed her trembling back.

                "Oh, Claire! Oh, Claire. Oh Claire. Oh . . . " She sobbed. "Oh, please." Hardly aware of her movements, but desperate to find a way to overcome this misery, she turned and grasped, the little body behind her, clutched her harder than she should have, with fervent pain and acute need, nearly drowning her. Clarabelle continued to pat her back, though, saying,

                "It's alright. It's alright, Dolly."

               

                After a few minutes of this . . . Dolly pieced herself slowly back together. She straightened herself, and for just a fleeting instant, gave Clarabelle one meaningful look of gratitude. Then she tossed caution to her savior.

                "Don't tell anyone anything," with a hard glare, a harsh look, and quick feet as they- clipped away. Clarabelle stood looking after her for a moment.

                "I won't Dolly," she whispered sadly.