The Last Day of A New Tomorrow

If given the choice would you give up everything in order to forget the bad? How far would you go?

Emily woke up that morning knowing it was her last day to choose. Instead of slamming her hand down on her alarm clock to get more rest, she wanted to take that day out to remember everything she would be giving up. She still hadn't told her family, but that wouldn't matter much come tomorrow morning. She could hear the quietness of today eerily sweeping in and out of the rooms. An empty house as always. One.

She made her way across her floor, stopping only to pick up her neatly stacked clothes before drifting into the shower. As the hot water trickled down her skin she closed her eyes and remembered as much as she could. The beautiful house her family lived in, the room designed to her every fantasy, endless nights of pillow fights and toe nail polish with her best friends. There was so much good. Zero.

The hallways to the kitchen were all filled with pictures of her parents, her sister and her self at various stages of life. The fun before kids life of her newlywed parents, the hospital announcements and baby frames of herself, tiny tots of the four years she had before Meghan was born and then nothing but sisterly love from then on out. She paused three pictures from the end. Her and Meghan standing barefoot in knee high water at Lake Living last summer holding up their mini catfish they had just caught. Was it just her imagination or could she make out the distinct outline of a red hat? One.

After breakfast Emily walked from room to room one last time with flashbacks of memories before reaching into the closet to grab her jacket. As she pulled it out, something shimmery caught her eye. She moved a box to reveal her old sleeping bag that had been passed down to Meghan when she had outgrown it and then shoved into this storage closet. A flash of a memory long suppressed comes to mind. She can hear the long exaggerated drag of the zipper of the sleeping bag being drawn open with long fingers and cool air rushing against her legs. Two.

Releasing the memory from her mind, Emily now notices that she has already walked a few blocks and is headed for the park. She pulls the sleeves down on her jacket and quickens her pace. Just on the other side of the field she can see the team practicing and her eyes fall onto number 07. His blond hair is spiked up straight as he is waiting in the huddle for the next call. She pulls out her phone and next to his picture is a text "See you at 6." Emily smiles as she again silently counts to herself. Zero.

As the morning ticks by, her number continuously fluctuates. She doesn't want to make the wrong choice. Noon comes all too soon and she is outside of the plain white building with her notebook open adding items to each side of a page. At the top, she has written the words "To Remember" with numerous items written down on the pages. Without recounting she already knew the end result. At the bottom of the page she wrote the number 22. She could find 22 things this week that would be reason enough to stay, but none of them could erase the dark side, the reasons for leaving. Even if the numbers zeroed each other out, the pain was still there. She raised her sleeve and counted the marks. The decision was made. She walked into the great white building where she would no longer have to live with the constant reminder of the pain, the dark side of the human world.

Author's Note

To be continued, or to leave the rest to the mind of the reader?

Reviews

[David Jae]

Compelling, in it's own way. Not exactly clear what is going on though. It would have been nice to have some internal dialogue, perhaps in the form of a diary or blog. This would let you set up what was going on. Some nice touches of back story add depth to her character, though. Worth another draft, in my opinion...

[SilvAine]

That is a wonderful idea, I was wanting to put some internal dialog in there but it just didn't add in correctly, though a in her journal would turn out quite nicely. This piece is definitely not finished, I will be adding more and tweaking bits and pieces.

[David Jae]

I should. This has a lot of potential...

[Ellie Qtz]

I loved the most part of it. I think the mystery is great, and the fact you don't exactly know what had been going on or will be going on is fab too (although I am one of those people that needs to know EVERTHING that is going on haha) but I think it definetly deserves a second draft