Lisa's Last Few Days

The only thing that nabbed public attention was how Lisa died.

Lisa’s Last Few Days

�"�砾卡夫卡

It was 1 in the morning when Lisa had found him on the internet. His profile picture was his character’s warm, smiling face, he wrote posts about the makings of his bombs, his preferred food was curry, he like to ride fast on his heavy motorcycle. Of course, the character was fictional, but someone online was kind enough to allow this fiction to possess themselves and interact with people of this world. In courtesy, Lisa decided to ignore the fact that she had merely stumbled upon a very adept role-player. With a surprising fuel of compassion, Lisa drank in all of his details. She wrote notes with her one free hand, her other hand peeling off the skins off her feet.

Minutes ago, Lisa had just finished an animated series about two young terrorists, who were revealed to be just pleading for attention to their presence. She wanted to extend the show and the presence of the characters. There should be more details about their mind�"how do they think, what do they like, why would they do that�"that she has yet to discover; as their best friend, she was determined to know more. There was one character who had nabbed her attention since the beginning, because while all characters were very lively, only this one was actually really smiling at her during the course of the series. He’d winked, he’d laughed, he’d read Lisa’s mind, and while there was at least a difference of dimension, he managed to somehow acknowledge Lisa’s attention and was indirectly inviting her to join them in the destruction of Tokyo.

The floor was already starting to be littered by shreds of dead skin. Lisa’s fingers expertly, without her conscious execution, peeled off the outermost layer of her toes and the sole of her feet, then very briskly, tore it off. These scraps made no sound as they fell, a quality that Lisa envies. They also often disappear without a trace, her failure of finding them the next day always make the girl smile longingly.

He likes dreampop and chillwave. He actually draws very well. He is sensitive to colors and sounds. He was annoyed at his cohabitant two days ago (according to the date of this post), because he cooked something and that person didn’t like it, and had thrown them into the drain while reprimanding him. He never posted any actual picture of himself, just his character’s. “I never believed in those things! Why did you drag me in? Why wouldn’t you ever listened to me?�"Then you act as if you’re surprised that I am not interested in you, nor the world you inhabit.” He wrote, yesterday. Lisa liked it, and had copied the words into her notebook while still peeling the skin off her toes, some of the debris stuck in between pages.

You too? You too, disinterested in this world? You too? Suffocated by this world, by how you’re forced to live despite the worthlessness of your existence (how did I know I was worthless? Because nobody ever showed me I was wrong about this�"showed, not mere motivational told)? You’re from this other dimension, this different world, where people like you would all fade into non-existence peacefully and happily when the credit song started playing�"does it frustrate you to live in this dimension that I’m living in right now? You knew you should be gone by now and yet here you are! You are overstaying your welcome and yet here you are!

I agree with you wholeheartedly! Her fingers rested on the keyboards. I agree with you, let’s destroy the world together, I don’t care if I would be blasted into dust, I want to, I have always wanted to, I want to vanish (not die, dying is different)! I am suffocating, always, and I want so much to run away and fade, with you and him and her and them, let me in, let me into your world where everybody will fade when the credit song plays, so nobody exists longer than they should!

“I agreed!” Her fingers typed weakly. She pressed Enter, her comment appeared, and she regretted it immediately. Of course she wouldn’t be replied, he is a really profound roleplayer, with thousands of followers always flooding to reply his comment. The realization broke off her attention at the screen, and somehow, a sharp pain coursed through her. She turned to the source of pain, and saw her toe bleeding.

Lisa went to her cabinet to pull out an empty jar. Scooping up the skins, she gently poured them into it. Normally, she sweeps them off, but she had been peeling off her skin since discovering Senpai (Japanese for “senior”, a respectful way to address him, Lisa reasoned), and so she thought of the debris as the manifestation of all these seconds. Staring at the whiteness of the jar, Lisa wondered if the dead skins will still disappear if you watch them closely, even if they remain idle.

She should have vanish by now, starting, perhaps, from her fingers, dissolving�"simultaneously with the memory of her fingers being erased from her mother’s mind, her father’s mind, Ethan’s mind, her friends’ mind, her own mind (“Has Lisa ever had fingers? I don’t think so. I mean, now that you mention it, it is kinda weird, but I have always felt like she never had fingers.”)�"then her palms, her feet and her hair and her neck (“C’mon, Lisa has always been just a headless torso!”), they will slowly ascend and descend to her breasts, and then finally, everyone would be wondering, who’s Lisa? Or maybe they won’t, seeing as Lisa never existed at all…

There was a tight grip on her fingers, she imagined, someone else in her room gripping the first thing that had disappeared. She opened her eyes, and there Senpai was, smiling at her. “I am glad you agreed with me!” He said, rustling her hair. “But you agreeing actually worries me.”

Lisa smiled at how realistic her imagination has always been. No one else in this world could craft fantasies in such vividness as masterfully as she, so skillfully that reality becomes artificial in comparison. There was not a single reminisce of her room in what appears to be outside, in a garden she had never actually been to (Lisa had unintentionally lied to herself on this one. She have been here, once, when her family was still well-off. She forgot about this as a result of the habit to never talk about old times nowadays). Senpai was hanging upside down on the monkey bars, his dark brown hair (a bit of the curly variety) was sweeping back and forth, his one hand extended to grip Lisa’s.

“Because that means you’re lonely. Maybe it’s because it’s something my brother and I had been through for so long�"I just don’t want anyone to ever have the thought of ‘it would have been better if I have never existed’.”

There was a sting in her chest upon hearing someone else said the words out of her mind. How lonely, no one said, but who talks about how to breathe, who talks about how to walk, who talks about how to see, who talks about obvious knowledge that everyone is already equipped with? That’s why he lowered his face toward Lisa’s, smiled, and said: “Let’s run away together? �"I know, it’s probably the most cowardly thing to do, everyone would tell you, and it is. The nuance, however, is the kind of cowardice running away would be. Really, staying alive and living despite being afraid of everything else in this world?”

She was stunned, then her face lit, a firm nod. “I have always wanted to!” She exclaimed. “I have always wanted to! Yes! Thank you!” And the boy laughed, and pulled her, and her feet clamped clumsily before they righted themselves and they sprinted, their feet touching the ground less and less, summer air beneath them.

A cry shredded through the blackness right in front of Lisa’s eyes. It ripped off the blessed blurriness she has unknowingly permitted to cloud around her for hours. The cry�"it was actually a blare of car horn from the streets�"had faded, but it had succeeded in kicking Lisa into a heightened mode of anxiety as she instinctively cupped her ears. Light blinded her, suddenly the quietness between Senpai and her vanished, and what filled the seat were more blares of car horn: “Are you looking to die, b***h? I almost knocked you off, and everyone would say it’s my fault! And�"“

“Can you shut up, you drunk moron?” Lisa put her hands on her hips, shouting back at him. She’s escaping, so she didn’t have to care if she was offending anyone�"she’d smugly decided. And why was she imagining a drunkard in her adventure in the first place? This wasn’t part of the plot: she was supposed to have escaped with Senpai and they would reach the city and she will meet his brother…

But Senpai was not holding her hand anymore. Frantic, she called out his name, ignoring the drunkard’s increasingly aggravating threats (he was exiting from his car). She looked at the halted car, horror settling in, then bent down and crouched on all four, sighed in relief when he wasn’t found under his wheels (she guessed she could forgive this man a bit more now)…

The drunkard choked her down to the pavement. Agony coursed through her head and she yelped. Streetlights illuminated the drunkard’s face enough to see a monkey, yelling all sorts of profanities and somehow bursting into tears, his alcoholic scent suffocating her. Lisa struggled, she kicked, she bit her tongue, and yet she couldn’t return to her room. She couldn’t escape her own fantasy. What is going on? Why? Why? Her face was wetted with tears, both hers and of the drunkard, and his saliva. She screamed, calling out Senpai’s character name, and a strong hand smacked itself onto her mouth and clutched on her cheeks, squeezing the voice out of her. Lisa saw her mother in the drunkard, and immediately couldn’t move.

And voices appeared. New shadows formed, one of them holding a bat, his request thundered: “STOP OR WE WILL HIT YOU LIKE AN ANIMAL YOU ARE, YOU RAPIST!” When the man was too late to bulge, the bat rained down, arms came and yanked his limbs away, and Lisa found herself freed yet too frozen to run immediately. She didn’t have to, granted�"a hoarse shriek of “Lisa!” and she found herself in a tight cage made out of her mother, whose hairs stung her face.

The man was crying and begging for forgiveness, sobriety finally settling in. What happened to him next was unknown�"because in a flash, Lisa was home. Her father�"she didn’t know he was there�"locked the door, while her mother threw Lisa onto the floor. Her wild hair did nothing to hide her bulging eyes as she howled:

“Why were you outside?!? Why were you outside in the middle of the night?!” “I don’t know! (I don’t know, why is my Wonderland corrupted? Am I still in my fantasy or am I in reality?)” “Were you actually trying to run away from home? Have you thought about how hard it is for us to raise you? How could you dare!” “I didn’t! I didn’t!” The truth was right in front of you, Lisa! You were outside! What, thinking that you could finally leave home? You’re old enough now?! Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror?” “Let her leave, then! Let her enjoy her last few days!” “I didn’t! I didn’t!”

It was 4 in the morning when Lisa managed to crawled back to her room, slumped down onto the floor, hardened dead skins (must be the newer ones that weren’t placed in a jar yet) scratched her bruised skin. It was futile, telling the truth. Fighting back. Trying to fake the importance of her being. Everything was futile, and she came back to her room by crawling instead of, say, opening her eyes. That was how she realized she has been in the reality that she had hated so much this whole time.

A sharp shock woke Lisa up. The sky was bright, there was scent of food from her neighbors, and the white noises of the city she lived in disregarded her as they went about. Everything was moving on their own, nothing actually waited for her, or looked at her, that she wondered if she had finally vanished.

Reality has a scathing way of crushing that hope, Lisa quickly learnt, as a jolt of pain permeated itself into her again. She raised her torso�"wincing at the bruises and blue-black spots protesting since last night (Why couldn’t Lisa, the owner of this body, with full responsibility, retaliate?). She tore her eyes away from her body to prevent herself from crying.

She burst into tears immediately either way, for there were two or three large brown cockroaches glued to her feet.

Her tears were so forceful it choked her scream away. Another batch of pain, now that Lisa was being aware, shocked her into terrified actions, kicking and screaming and dashing towards a corner, howling at the hostile pests. The cockroaches came loose from her feet�"they were bleeding�"but none of them were moving. They were chewing, Lisa realized in horror, at the skin of her feet that these disgusting beings had torn off, blood still coloring those debris.

Only corpses become food for the pests, Lisa suddenly remembered. This inkling, given to most people, may have caused fits of paranoia, or fits of screams, or a cry for help, loud enough for people. But Lisa was suddenly overwhelmed with a fit of rage�"curses at the turn of events, fury at everyone looking down at her, fury at last night, fury at Senpai�"and she grabbed a book from her table and rained rage into the roaches.

A sticky smell permeated her room, her book no longer wanted as brown wings stuck themselves onto the cover. Bits of antenna were so far removed from the flattened carcasses that someone may mistake them as hair.

When the rage left all Lisa had was weariness. She sobbed silently�"you see, even cockroaches thought I should be dead, and when I kept being alive and not dead, they got tired of waiting, and just came to eat me. A human with absolutely no worth and life will not be treated as human, even by animals and insects. There is a kind of realization that only her herself could make, just by being her, just by living as her: She never belonged to this world, she felt this in her bone, she has suspected it and now the cockroaches died to tell her she was right.

Last night, if she analyzed it, was a veiled message to her complete unsuitability of this world, wasn’t it? She should have died being ran over by the car, or being beaten to death by a confused�"no, probably not confused, but divinely instructed to erase her existence�"drunk man. She was incapable of functioning like other human, she never got the techniques, and the world and reality and her parents and Ethan could only tolerated her stupidity this much. Step up, Lisa, wake up and please, please learn, please stop being so useless, please. You’re still stuck in a fantasy, you need to grow up, Lisa, you are 20 now, you are still slumping on the floors of your parents’ house neither working nor going to college, watching cartoons no less, and you are not even helping your estranged parents keeping things in good terms or solving those real-world problems, like money, and house mortgage (it’s been three months due, the bank is going to leave all of you homeless), it’s time to stand up and see what can you do as a proper adult, Lisa, step up, Lisa, step up, step up, Lisa!

The girl cleaned the room. She wiped the floor, threw the book (she was not even checking if she still needed the book or not), and buried the cockroaches in her dustbin. She reached into her cabinet, found hordes of ants inside it, and more inside her jar of dead feet skin, their black contorting bodies burying the white. Angered at the ants and Senpai, Lisa squashed them all flat and threw them into the dustbin. Her jar was once again empty, sitting at the bottom of her chair.

She booted up her laptop. She wanted to personally message Senpai, but she was scared, she was afraid that nothing really happened, after all she is very exceptionally good at imagining, anyway. Maybe Senpai was a figment of the Message, too. Let’s run away! He had said. And then I was almost hit by a car. And he vanished.

Her hand found its way to her feet, and then, from where they left, peeled again, ignoring the wounds made by the cockroaches. She scrolled down Senpai’s page, reading, and when her initial melancholy has died down, she started smiling at his amusing ramblings and interactions with other roleplayers. And the comments!�"the comments stimulated Lisa, because Senpai replied every comment with the cleverest wit and, if wits were not supplied, the most adorable blunder. There was a commenter who kept being replied, despite her lines being tasteless and unhelpful for continuation, and Lisa really didn’t understand why. She could do better, Lisa was sure, she could supply more pleasure into any conversation with Senpai than this Joan�"look, she’s talking about buying jeans one size larger! Does she even know how to talk? Lisa marveled at his patience for such uninteresting banters.

Before Lisa knew it, she had commented on their tread, telling Senpai about cockroaches nibbling her feet. And it worked. Senpai worried about her (“Okay that was weird. Then?” Then! He asked for a then!), meanwhile Joan couldn’t even interject at their more interesting topic. She didn’t reply, completely defeated. All of this couldn’t helped but make Lisa feel accomplished�"which surprised her on how pleasant that felt. She scrolled down, finding more posts to comment on, to litter her presence on, just like her dead skin once again littering into a mound on the floor. Senpai said he found himself gravely misunderstood by his cohabitant again, and Lisa commented: I understand loneliness, and so I don’t want anyone to ever have the thought of ‘it would have been better if I have never existed’.

She giggled at her comment, her best one yet, she believed. How clever of you, a codename from our meeting, a reminder of our secret! Senpai would say out loud, even though he wouldn’t be able to just reply so because of its secretive quality…

There was a rustling from her dustbin.

Before Lisa’s eyes, brown sticks rose, and then those weren’t sticks, but legs, then those weren’t just legs, but also a brown body, then quivering above was one cautious antenna, and then there were more, all of them, their sticky stench reaching Lisa. She screamed and fell off her chair, her fall scattering the cockroaches. One of them couldn’t run as fast as the others, who didn’t even pretend to pause and look at their abandoned friend with fake regrets. Lisa noticed that this one had only two feet, its wings were inexistent, and its antennae were completely gone. The cockroach, in desperation, maybe confusion, maybe hopelessness, instead of running away, charged towards her�"her feet, Lisa’s instinct said. She screamed and ran and fell and got up, and its lack of speed made it died once again by the smack of her book.

She grabbed a plastic container, removed its innards, and peeled the twice-flattened roach into it. Then, using toothpicks, she ripped it into pieces, the sensation of its sticky hide gagging her. She sealed the container, and watched it from far. “Let’s see if you come back alive in this state!” She said, her voice still shaking. The others’ whereabouts are unknown.

Her door slammed open. Her mother’s face, thick with make-up (she wasn’t going anywhere, she was just staying at home; but her mother remembered how well-off the family was. Ethan was coming, so she had to resemble their past glory), peered into her room without reservation: “What was that yelling about, huh?” Behind her, a voice stink of friendliness overflowed in: “Hello, Lisa!”

Ethan is his father’s “partner”�"in words, no doubt, but in actuality, their relationship’s complexity exceeds mere words. Ethan pays for their mortgage, their car; gives them allowances, provides them money in the form of “payroll”, as if her father was his subordinate instead; but most importantly, Ethan gives advices, tons and tons of advices, none of them asked but not entirely useless. Lisa resented his meddling and caustic advices, always finding herself retreating into a corner whenever he arrives. Each time she sees him, the lust for her death skyrockets into such amount that propels her to vomit. Which she was doing again, this time aided by her roach incident.

Ethan’s face drooped so fast he was almost like the drunken man last night. “Gods Lisa, you sure need high-maintenance. What is it with you? Can’t I ever see you in some more dignified state? Look at you again! What’s with that putrid smell? See, Mrs. R, you shouldn’t have pampered your girl like this!”

Her mother bit her lips as she bent down and picked up Lisa’s hair from the floor, while in a low and suppressed voice, ordered Lisa to clean herself and her vomit.

“I will just be really quick, Lisa, seeing as how sick you are again …Now, Lisa, I have found you a job down there in the bookstore. You like reading, don’t you?�"Come on, look at me please, just look at me, I’m talking to you here!”

Lisa wouldn’t. In her mind, the floor beneath them was shaking, pulling apart, a rift so thin like hair, and yet completely impossible to cross. She couldn’t bring her eyes up to look at this vital man before her, just as a sinned man cannot bring himself to look at God; even if he absolutely had to, he cannot speak, that is simply not what he is entitled to. God could objurgate him for all the sins he had committed, and the sinner could secretly resent Him for His lack of understanding and His questionable decisions�"but his role is to look down and His role is to look on.

Her mother, without fail, intervened: “I told you many times that Lisa need not to go to work!”

“Really, again?” Ethan has been through this so many times that he stopped replenishing his lost patience. “Ma’am, with all due respect, Lisa is 20! Any self-respecting, purposeful youth would be working already, earning money for themselves, and their family!” He eyed Lisa, who never raised her head once since their intrusion. What an unsightly distraction, seeing her hand kept peeling off the skin of her feet. “She needs to be let out! She needs to live for herself, take up responsibilities, and prove herself useful instead of leeching off her parents who are, no offense, barely capable!”

“She is going to college!” Her mother announced, still trying to pretend that she was announcing it for the first time.

“Really now? And who’s paying, might I ask?”

“Once her father could get his business back on track, there will be money, Ethan, and then�"“

“I’ve heard of that for years, ma’am. Believe me, I dream of my mentor’s comeback as well, sincerely. He is a great man with a lofty vision. But let us turn to the present�"the vision stays as a vision, and Lisa is wasting away, without a skill nor a degree, vomiting each time I see her. Honestly, please reconsider your situation, ma’am. There is nothing shameful for your daughter to work, because you really aren’t�"“

“Ethan, you’re sick of us, aren’t you? You are sick of helping us, your mentor’s family, your mentor who taught you all the deals and ways of business and helped launched you to the height that you are so comfortably standing at, aren’t you?”

There was a flash of malice on his face. “Ma’am, I help enough. Don’t you dare say otherwise, please. Would you like me to remind you that your mortgage and car are months due? You are not exactly in a position to throw tantrums nor untrue accusations of my character. I am merely asking you to reconsider reality and maximize all assets that you have, including Lisa!”

But her mother had built up the necessary momentum. She pointed her finger at Ethan, words squeezing out of her teeth: “If you found yourself so agonized over your own compassion and generosity so much, I suggest you leave us alone, starting from today.” She pulled out Lisa’s door. “We don’t need you. In fact, I rather die than eat anything bought using that money of yours, if it means you getting to condescendingly watch me eat as if I am a dog!”

He threw his hands in the air. “Stop overreacting, Ma’am! I urge you not to look down on my kindness�"I am not helping you by hundreds of dollars, I am helping you by thousands and ten thousands. I will up an ante and say you would never find a person like me even among your own siblings and kin!” He turned to Lisa. “Come on, Lisa! I know that deep down, you want to be your own person too. Step up and fight!” “Don’t you dare, Lisa! You will heed your mother�"you know what’s best for you and us. I know you! I gave birth to you!�"“

Suddenly, the dustbin overturned. Black waves poured out of it, swarming towards the floor. The ants went everywhere, without a uniform direction, scattering and sending Mrs. R into fits while Ethan stomped on them desperately. Lisa would have screamed as well, but she was bursting with gratefulness for their intervention; she noticed that they crowded around her mounds of dead skin, every single one of it lifted and carried away. They ignored her�"in fact, she had a feeling that the ants were nodding at her in acknowledgement, before scampering back to where ants call a quiet home.

At the back of her mind, she was reminded that she had squashed all of these ants dead.

The discussion ended for Ethan, and so was the extortion for her mother and the judgment for Lisa. If a passerby with good hearing were to walk past their double-story house, her skin would rise in goosebumps at the furious howling of a woman in one of the rooms, while a car impatiently reversed out of the garage, knocking down a lone trash can before speeding off the pavement.

Their words circled around in her room when Lisa was done collecting the rest of her dead skin into the jar. She booted up her laptop in an almost trance-like state�"searching. It’s an instinctive thing to try to look for relief after a burn, at least a soft, wet cotton pressed against the wound like a slight nod of sympathy.

“Okay, what happened?” “I don’t know, lol.” “That was kinda disgusting lol. I would be screaming!” “I know right, me too lol.” “I wish she didn’t hijack our tread though, that was a bit disrespectful imo.”

But to an open wound, even cotton hurts.

Lisa’s finger moved faster, peeling harder, even going after freshly-paved layer of epidermis. Every tread was opened, especially ones made by Joan. She made so much she drowned Lisa’s�"it’s possible that Senpai could never see them again. It’s an act of personal vindication, Lisa understood. She moved her hand to her head, two different ideas conflicting each other: Shall she be angry that Senpai is being selfishly claimed by this despicable woman, who even started a series of actions to drown out Lisa’s existence? But there was never the right to assert claim of property for people who are waiting to disappear. Ghosts cannot lay claim to bodies�"those belong to men.

I understand loneliness, and so I don’t want anyone to ever have the thought of ‘it would have been better if I have never existed. Whoa, Lisa, that’s kinda… deep? Lol. I hope you’re okay though. Don’t worry, you can talk to me anytime, off character.

She blinked. He still saw her.

Discarding any form of reservation, Lisa poured out her story: her wish to vanish, last night, even the resurrection of cockroaches and the ants. How is it that, in such a concrete world where everybody possesses the vitality of life except for her, someone actually wanted to reach out to her and possibly share a bit of that vitality with her? She was happy, she was never happier. She typed with her both hands, her every attention directed towards holding this one hand that has been extended to her in kindness and grace.

He replied surprisingly fast: Oh my god, I’m sorry that you have to go through this. Please be okay.

I am, knowing that someone like you exist and care about me. I still think that I shouldn’t exist, but you�"you of all people have gotta’ keep existing, alright? This may sound odd, but I … I have never felt like this before. I never felt like anyone ever matters this much!

You matter, Lisa. I need to apologize. I left you last night when the drunk man almost crashed onto us because I saw your parents miles away. I vowed to come back for you, and I will, tonight. Let’s run away to a place where people treat everyone justly.

He remembers! He remembers, it happened! I wasn’t dreaming! It happened! It’s not like he didn’t, he just couldn’t say it out loud, maybe not in front of Joan, maybe not as his character. I don’t resent you at all for leaving�"I know what my parents are. Don’t worry, I will be ready this time. I will get ready now, let’s run away together. Let’s destroy the world and rebuild one, in fact!

I will knock on your window, okay? Wait for me, don’t sleep too soundly!

I will be waiting for you by my window. I never felt so alive before.

Her finger paused for a while, then slowly but firmly, she added: Thank you. I love you.

The sun set as she resumed to peel the skin off her sole and adding them into a quarter-filled jar, smiling, waiting for the reply of her lover. When he didn’t reply in words, she waited for him to reply in presence.

III

There was a knock on her window that night. Then there were quiet yet hurried movements of feet, a sound of something heavy being lifted, and a push of her windows.

But Senpai was not outside. Nobody was.

Lisa’s anxiety started catching up to her hope. Did he forget? �"No, let’s trust him. She sat back down onto the floor, and automatically, though her thumbs hurt from the constant motion, peeled off the skin of her feet again and placed them into the jar. She noticed absent-mindedly that it was half-filled.

Another knock sounded off her window, and Lisa quickly jumped up, caught up to the last echo of the knock, and peered out of the window.

She dashed towards her laptop, booted it up, and went to Senpai’s page. There was one message left for her, and after inspecting the content, she had to re-read the name of the sender to make sure it was Senpai:

I’m sorry, but really, I think I am the wrong person to get help from. You should tell your parents about this, and try to get professional help. It will do you a lot good.

There was a loud thump of books and a chair falling down heavily onto the floor. Lisa was almost slamming her keyboards: Why did you knock on my window and didn’t show up? You can’t just promise me that we will leave together, promise me that you would love me, and yet suddenly act like I’m crazy! How could you?

She never trusted anyone so implicitly before. It was her first, and it already stung. He wasn’t like this! This couldn’t be Senpai�"maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was Joan. Of course it would be her. “You’re being threatened by Joan, is it?” She panicked, not knowing if she should write that down and send it to him. She could be wrong, she could be wrong, but what if?

Flakes of dead skin floated down onto the jar, each of them a part of Lisa’s thoughts.

She could see Ethan across her room.

Senpai may really be threatened by Joan, and Lisa needs to show him solidarity. There was never anything resembling conviction, perhaps that was why she clung to this. If she couldn’t help him by disappearing, then Lisa could help by materializing. She wouldn’t mind outstaying her welcome, because there’s someone who now needs help.

Lisa, listen. I’m serious about running away. I’m also trapped!

The first knock was me!

Lisa paced in her room, her mind battled on various strategies and consequences that might follow. She was so engrossed in her thinking that she didn’t even notice the cockroaches coming out of their nadir, their antennae quivering at the air, before dashing towards the unlidded jar.

She pulled her curtains, barring the windows panes and her balcony, and as she looked down, and saw a dead bird, probably by butting onto the panes. There had been two knocks. Two. She turned mindlessly, and caught the cockroaches diving into her jar of dead skins again.

There was an opening, then slowly, it expanded, spreading wider and wider across her consciousness�"the jar was lifted, in a flash, two tablespoons or so of dead feet skin were poured onto the dead birds, the cockroaches following. They stood mindlessly on top of the carcasses, exploring, while Lisa dashed towards her laptop and sent her concern, telling him that she would be coming to save him, she just needed a bit time to figure how, better if you just give me your home address…

Leave Joan out of this! I don’t know what’s going on but you rlly need serious help! Don’t message me anymore. And pls, pls pls pls unfollow me!

Why are you harassing my friend AND me? Please stop okay. My friend is gonna report you fyi.

Lisa, they are trapping me, I can’t get out! My body… I don’t feel well… Something is wrong with my body, they are over me! I can’t stretch out my arms�"Lisa, watch out for your parents!

There was a heavy thud as a bag pulled taut on Lisa’s shoulder, then a sliding sound of wood as she pulled out a baseball bat her dad had stored in her half-empty dresser. She held her unlidded jar of dead skins and with eyes Ethan would be surprised to have found on her, reached for the doorknob.

--Except that the door was never closed. There was a creak and eyes were peering in, and now the same pair of eyes cocked back only for a while before slamming into the door hard, the force knocking Lisa backwards, giving her mother a head start to block her passage. The bat rolled under her bed, never to be found again.

“Running away, Lisa? Are you running away from us now? We raised you despite our hardship, we never once starve you, never once left you to death while you were sick, and I did everything for you! We had to even lick the sole of Ethan’s boots, the stink, the shame, the utter destruction of our dignity, have you got any idea?!” She screamed. Lisa backed away from her, tears streaming down, hugging her jar tightly, finding exactly nothing to refute what appears to be loud truth.

Her mother’s voice was so loud, the dead bird’s legs twitched, and the wings seemed to flap as a gust of wind laughed.

“All of those pain�"we never told you anything! I just hide it from you because I don’t want you to feel stressed and unhappy! But in the end you still want to run away. You act as if we owe you so much, but we don’t owe you anything!” Her mother grabbed anything her hand could reached, then hurled it at Lisa�"the conditioned animal she was, she ducked, was hit, she fell onto the floor. There was an explosion of objects, hurling at the girl in her fetal position, as her mother closed in: “You ungrateful waste, I bore you tirelessly for 9 months and this is the daughter I get? What could be even more disappointing than you, Lisa? I wish you weren’t like this!” Mrs. R burst into tears, a sight that pained Lisa even more than the things she hurled at her, as Mrs. R slumped onto the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

“It would have been better if I have never existed,” Lisa found her voice and said. “I’m so sorry, mom.”

Her mother looked up, her eyes unusually sharp with rage, and lunged at Lisa, slapping her and clawing her back to position when she struggled�"“How dare you say something like that! How dare you say something like that!”�"and as Lisa’s animal instinct to survive usurped her mind, she kicked her mom away and stomped her way to the balcony, the only place leading towards outside, her eyes blurry from tears and motions and adrenaline.

The cockroaches scampered in fear as the bird stirred�"maybe it was the women’s footsteps.

Then, there was another voice, crying in alarm, ringing from the opened door before being joined with a deranged cry of a mother as Lisa plummeted from the balcony, head first, all the way down to the pavement below. Her jar of hardened dead skins smashed onto her body as the content covered her like a blanket for a good, long night sleep.

Above, the man pulled a howling woman from falling, both too distracted to notice a black bird stretching its wings and taking off into the night.

Ethan stared at the lifeless girl sitting before him, his eyes unconsciously turned away from her whenever his mindfulness waned. It was not an unkind act of him, as it was a justifiable action any human would do: averting your gaze from something unsightly and so impossible to be explained. Maybe it’s the habitual thinking of a businessman�"he couldn’t shake off the conclusion that Lisa is perhaps, one of the most wasted assets his mentor had, or, he was half-sure, the world has. She was a bright student, she had many friends, she wasn’t overtly obnoxious, she was gentle and if her parents were better�"his eyes narrowed�"if her parents knew better to utilize her, none of this would have happened.

How very pitiful indeed. He felt deeply sorry for not being to save the girl.

He cleared his throat. “Your father sold the house to pay your hospital bills, at least. Your mother was screaming about the house, especially your room, being cursed since your father’s business went down. If I knew that was the way to convince her, I would have used it, so you didn’t have to go through all of this.” He sighed. “You suffered a lot, haven’t you? You might turn out better than I ever am, you know. Get well soon, alright? Then I think I will take temporary care of you, let you live in a more normal and relaxed environment, alright?�"Come on, don’t cry now. Everything is alright. You are tough, see, you should have died, the doctors all said, and yet you lived! What a miracle!”

When he left, Lisa summoned the nurse, and requested for a walk outside. The sky was blue and bright, the hospital was white and blinding, and a young man was excitedly talking on the phone about the birth of his first daughter. There was a feeling of childish earnest at everything her senses picked up�"the smell of the flowers, the buzz of the bees, the light caress of the grass on her hands. She walked up to a young man sitting on a bench nearby, his dark-brown hair covered by white bandages, some curls unhidden, a piece of cotton on his cheeks. His eyes were glassy, as if they belonged to a mannequin instead of a man.

Lisa laid her head on his lap and closed her eyes. Her face crumbled immediately as her eyes sank inside her skull, cracking and breaking apart her forehead, then her nose lumped inside into something akin to powder as her lips cracked opened into red debris, dirtying the man’s pants.

The nurses forgot where and who they were, and shouted, and doctors rushed, bystanders backed away, one patient vomited onto the floor, and the man, who has been catatonic for a year, blinked, looked down, before shoving the crumbling humanoid off his shivering legs. As it fell, the head cracked open from the neck and the entire face slumped into its hollow inside, dust flying.