Three years had passed since she had became Evaline. Three years had passed since she had reached her most crucial hour, realized her defeat, and secured her death. Three years had passed and yet she was still about, growing more and more miserable as she attended each perverted social event, looming about in the shadows as she listened to poets and novelists exchange hypocritical and crude remarks about their current works.
Three years: and she prayed a fourth would not come.
Each Saturday night she played the part of a reluctant, sad presence at a formal event hosted by authors of some terribly boring novel or anthology. She would, typically, polish off her fifth and final glass of wine a full two hours before the event was scheduled to end, take one last terribly depressing look at the vast, bustling, and doomed city, and exit the building with a heart full of well-deserved hurt and disappointment. All without uttering a single word to one person, and without even the smallest of hint of recognition from any being in the building. She hated these people for being so indifferent, yet took comfort in the fact that they at least did not take pity on her and attempt to make awkward small talk with the miserable body sitting on the red velvet love seat. She admired the show that they all put on and grew so accustomed to that their entire personalities now reflected the deceitful, hypocritical characteristics so dear to many accomplished writers.
Why she even attended these social gatherings still, she could not conclude. She had not had the desire or inspiration to write in months. She had never tried to actually converse with the other writers who frequented the parties, for she knew that to do so would be such a pathetic attempt at reversing her indisputable fate. So ,to fill up the paralyzing time that passed each week, which was interrupted only by the dreaded parties, Evaline, if ever bothered, would have been found to be sleeping most of the day. If anyone would have asked, and if Evaline would have told, you would find that she would be dreaming of gazing off the lonely balconies into the city she had prayed to avoid years ago. The city that was the constant reminder to Evaline that her aspirations, her wretched, horrible, haunting dreams, could never be fulfilled. And what was left of the good in her would not let her forget that. But every once in a while, her most dreaded memories would creep from her subconscious mind and come alive in her dreams. A vision of what her life used to be, and could be, if not for her difficult personality and depression making her this monstrosity. She dreamt of her mom and dad, dead by now for all Evaline knew, her brother, driving his mustang far too fast with her in the back seat, struggling with the two sides of herself, her friends who knew nothing of her whereabouts and likely did not care to discover them, and if she was particularly unlucky, she saw what may have been: her with ten children, beaming and sweet in front of a beautiful country home with twelve dogs underfoot, and most importantly, a charming, loving husband with one hand around a smiling daughter and the other around his wife...
When she had first came here, she was nineteen. Her parents thought she would return in two week’s time. They never would have guessed that she’d leave all her possessions behind in the room she’d inhabited since she was a child. They didn’t realize how little she cared about the junk that cluttered her room. They never thought she’d skip out on college, but they didn’t know that there was no point her going through all the misery and money of college to get out and face her fate any how. They never thought she’d change her name and live a solitary life hidden in plain view of over eight million people. They never dreamed they’d never see their “perfect angel” again. But then again, they never dreamed that she was in such great turmoil, and she had learned from the start to keep her terrifying conflicts to herself.
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