Sed non Satiata

A Story by Surrealist

(But not satisfied)

Paranoia crawled beneath her skin at the speed of her heartbeat, writhing through her blood like madness in the silence between her breaths. It was probably because she didn’t want to be standing in the dew-begotten grass, listening for the sounds of discovery in the empty hall behind the door. Her phone hummed like a battle cry among sleeping infants in her sweaty palm, and she was blinded and deaf to her immediate surroundings when she noticed he’d texted back ‘k.’

As in ‘okay,’ as in ‘yes,’ as in ‘I want to see you,’ as in ‘I like you.’

Step-stumbling her blind feet over the wild ground crunched a gritty pine-cone, and the rich sap of it rose into the air and bubbled into the sole of her right foot. She halted and shut the phone away, preparing an excuse or burble of apology to keep out the woman who so desperately wanted in. Luckily, her Lisa was sleeping or pretending to sleep and the worries of a broken marriage drew lines on her face in the darkness. It didn’t take much to forget.

She approached the gathering of pine trees, slinky in the half-moon glow, nightshirt barely at the thighs, and pretended they were her ex-lovers lined up to gawk and beg. A breeze swept the sweaty air from her mouth and the lowest branch reached for her arm as she passed, more hurried and concentrated now that there was no going back. Not until she did it, not until she talked to someone, not until she felt validated. The silent house full of old conversations and stale love on her parent’s sheets … could wait. She felt that it would wait forever, for sale and unwanted, looked at but never bought and loved, until even the good memories turned sour with the passage of time.

Now, the road.

Asphalt and gravel at about 30 miles an hour there was a certain deathlike feel to it; a finality and a completeness not found in nature. There are no dead ends in nature. She let the still-warm spring heat of it be her focus, and then practicality took over. It wouldn’t do if the neighbors saw a ghost, late at night or after work or to the bar, and found a familiar face in the darkness.

Headlights down the perpendicular drive, very alive, this one, the light slicing through any hope of concealment, although her paranoia-blood was still speaking, she winced and ducked into the ditch. Brambles. Her legs were full of summer scars anyways, no one would notice, she thought of her other scar, the one that meant something, and how nobody noticed, deep and lasting on her wrist where self-hatred met desperation.

The car was gone like a diesel cat purring and purring as it ran home. There were no yowls tonight, only the heady air, but she shivered through the skinny shirt and checked her blinding alarm. Everything relied on that digital clock, residual vision glow in the night, over the trees and the field across from her, 11:50, and she was scanning for a car without headlights, and maybe a prince.

Brights! They drove her mad, and she fluttered with the anticipation or tension of hiding her head behind her hands, and the brambles, little leaves just sprouting in the spring by her feet, and the tall grass by the road. Hidden, but paralyzed to the point that her breath was an agony, which the drunken neighbors in their trucks could notice from the cab, riding like kings in the night, and could stop for to investigate. One after another passed and the wheels of cars had never brought such relief. Silence and darkness, the pale computerized 12:15.

No heartbeat, no wild blood, only coldness in her fingers and numb, curled toes, abandonment in the red lines on her wrists and legs, hysteria through her skin at the prospect of the lonely defeat-march back, without speaking with another soul. But something was moving in the distance, down her dead, beat, road with purpose and she stood up and ran towards the motion, realizing too late that her assumption could have been wrong… and the hysteria returned, every movie, every book, every show about rape and murder, CSI and SVU, in an instant that made her stumble and walk with eyes widened and throbbing.

He spoke.

“Evelyn?”

Unsure but reassuring, the chills left her lanky frame and she ran again, on the asphalt-blistering her feet and colliding with the boy who said he’d listen to her spite and sadness, her disloyalty and hate, and wouldn’t even blink.

He held her close, in the only physical contact that would ever breach their words, all masculinity and rebellion in the darkness, hoping that someday, they could both survive the suicide and the mundane, and hold a funeral in the forest for their fantasy. When words and meetings didn’t satisfy, and her mind was made up to move on, he would move on, too.