Lioness: An Interpretation of Bones

Written for lit. class, reviews please?

Lioness: An Interpretation of Bones

 

 

 Rugged. She was rugged and beautiful, accelerated and intense, even raw and corrupted. Nameless and wild, she was a contradiction in herself. She didn’t speak often, though when she did, it was like floral dreams. Her sleep was always fleeting, but she dreamt in color, and she dreamt frequently. Her favorite season was winter, because it made her feel like a snow angel. I was the only person to see her smile. She was rugged, beautiful; her name was Jevee.

 

 

 

 I met Jevee a while after I knew her, or even about her. That wouldn’t have even happened, except for my curiosity. The whole affair was accidental, though I can’t expect anything less from Jevee, who preferred accidents.

 Moving into my dorm, there were notes; scraps of paper, really. Paper, with only one word, one name- her name. “Jevee”. Inexplicably, I thought of France. One name, marked in red, and lain about. I found sixteen notes, all the same, all over the place.

 

That was when I started to have the dreams.

 

~

 

  They didn’t make sense when I began to have the dreams, and they still don’t. I don’t need them to, because it wouldn’t resolve what happened. I refuse to hope for sense or resolution, (of either the dreams or what happened), because some things simply shouldn’t make sense.

  I dreamt I was Persian, I dreamt I was Alaskan; I dreamt I was Indonesian, Egyptian. I dreamt I was everything and nothing, nowhere and missing. In the dream, I looked to nobody for answers, because I already held them. I was an archeologist, digging through sands in Antarctica, while infants wailed the name “Jevee”. Bones, my effort. In my dream, my eyes never once opened, because an image was constantly played, like a movie reel, behind my eyes.

  The image was this: a square box, of plexiglass and wood, with forests of colors underneath the glass, and images of the Virgin Mary & Christ. On a raised section of the box, there was a turn knob; click it to the right six times, and a light flashed on. An image appeared in front of the light, and x-ray of a large right hand.

  In my dream, there was this image, and wailing infants, and sand. But after the light went off, after the turn knob retreated back left six times, my eyes would suddenly fly open, and there I was: upright & beside a roaring train, with “Jevee” still raising its’ way to my ears, even over the roar of the train. In my dream, there was the fakest blue sky, & knowing there to never be any other dream or fake blue sky again.

 

  As I said, the dreams didn’t make any sense. Before I was content with that, with the reality of it, I was restless- to say the least. Hyperactivity transcended into mania, and it didn’t lessen. I was constantly in motion, my world never slowed down, and colors didn’t separate themselves from one another. Food was unnecessary, because I already was moving and unable to stop. Besides, with the whole core of my being a modest bundle of nerves, swallowing food was near impossible.

  I didn’t sleep for six nights. The sixth day was a Tuesday, and there was a speech to be presented in my class. Present? What an image: the ball or nerves that I was, incoherent & senseless, presenting a decent speech. A decent speech I hadn’t even written, mind you.

  My professor called students up to present, while I sat and fidgeted. He asked for me, calling “Aurora? Aurora?” several times, until I only looked at him sadly, and he carried on. I spaced out, until I heard him call the name Jevee. Startled, my eyes flew around, looking for her, this person haunting me. The auditorium doors slammed shut, and I knew this person, Jevee, had left.

  I decided to follow; actually, this was something I did without thinking. I forget why, or what I thought, only that I had. So I followed, in a rush of nerves and hunger and mania, trying to find her. Once I made my way into the courtyard, I called the name “Jevee”. Only loneliness echoed back to me, and I figured I chased the ghost that she really seemed to me.

  I sat down, with the impending winter and the smoky smelling air. And then I noticed a woman, standing directly across from me, leaning against the stone wall of the university’s structure. “Why did you follow me?” she asked, coyly. Then I knew- this ghost of a person was the ghost of my dreams, that this was Jevee. She was beautiful and startling. Her hair was naturally black, and thin. Her skin gray looking, cheeks angular, she appeared to me as a paper doll, ready to blow away with her lack of existence. This was Jevee.

  Answering, I simply questioned her back also. “Why did you leave those notes? Why have you haunted me like this?” I fumed. The senselessness I had processed for days came out now, with spitefulness. She grinned, lopsided and obscene looking. Then, she responded: “To see if I was still here.”

 

 

 

   So there she was; Jevee had made herself known to me, and nothing made sense yet. Sleep still didn’t come, but the mania did begin to lessen. Only slightly, but I wasn’t walking around the campus, lost, repeating medical terms back to myself, for the sake of memorization. This stopped, and I could do more than just study all the time.

   Now, I learned. Learned whatever it was that Jevee was trying to explain, and still didn’t sleep. We sat on the campus grounds, while the air got increasingly colder, smoking the foreign menthol cigarettes she always had. Never had I smoked, though now, it was my vice.

   I sat, listening to her talk about energy- how it is never created or destroyed- and rolled the cigarettes between my fingers, watching the smoke curl. Jevee was brilliant. Brilliant in both the aspect of intensity and intellect, and I was hypnotized.

  Her argument with energy was that, if it is never created or destroyed, then we never ended. We never died. Something about us simply moved, changed, she argued. All I could say was “That’s comforting, to think that something about me will never have to die.” For the first and the last time, she fully smiled. Then, like always, she didn’t make any sense except to herself and told me- “Only if you want to stick around.”

 

 

  My grades slipped. Almost immediately, they fell, and my professors only looked at me, disappointed. I chose to spend time with Jevee over my classes, usually. I preferred to watch her nervous self, thin and wasted, worry. Worry and think; that was all she ever did. Curiously, I never saw her eat. I saw her stand over food, staring and disembodied, looking brave.

  Jevee’s lack of sustenance worried me. The way her bones created shadows of themselves to parade; the way she weakly pulled herself up stairs, using the handrail; the way her eyes flitted weakly- these things all worried me. But when I offered her something to eat, she only scoffed, and drank whatever alcohol, or inhaled whatever cancer she had recently bought. So I only watched, and learned.

 

 

 

  Winter came, while Jevee began to leave. I saw it, and we both knew it. The little space she had occupied began to lessen even more, and her emaciation grew insanely. When we were out, I saw her watch the reflection she cast on storefront windows and look displeased.

  I pleaded, I argued; nothing changed. Her frame lessened more than I could imagine possible, and the beautiful words she wrote and spoke began to dull. Along with her eyes, any shine than her words, actions, and life processed only dulled with the days passing. Shine left and Jevee began to stay cold.

  One day, walking across the grounds, Jevee posed no questions, offered no theories, entertained no arguments. Instead, she stumbled silently. When Jevee’s movements seemed to become struggled, I held her arm and led her. When she dropped her cigarette, she fell back down on her way back up to retrieve it.

  Jevee had sought me out, as she claimed, to be reassured that she was still there. She didn’t quit trying to lessen it, but only seemed to accelerate her own destruction. Elimination. All the while, I sat- worried, smoking her cigarettes, holding her to steady her, fingering the red beads on her tiny wrist, and listen to her repeat the phrase “No thank you; I’m not hungry.” I was a fool to actually believe her.

 

 

  Jevee came to my room on a Friday evening, while the snow was at its heaviest. She was wearing a while cotton dress, without any shoes, looking ethereal and un-tethered to the earth. Thirty degree weather, snow three feet thick, and she acted as if it were summer.

  Without knocking, she opened my door and started talking, rapidly. She was telling me about a homeless woman she had seen, crying and carrying about. The homeless woman simply yelled and repeated that, when a butterfly is pinned down, a stream of time ends. And then Jevee cried, softly, uncharacteristically.

  I went to her, hands on her bony shoulders, and wondered. I wondered about Jevee and her stream of time, and why she fought so hard to stop it, and pin herself down. Mostly, I wondered when it would actually stop, and what I would do- without her.

  Jevee batted her eyelashes, and looked at her reflection, while we listened to the silence that seemed like angels telling secrets.

 

  Jevee had left. Just left- gone, without and goodbye or reason. I woke up, and saw her empty coffee cup, and knew. Worrying, I sprinted to her dorm room, sure that maybe I had just waken up startled from a bad dream.

  Everything was there, nothing disturbed. Music played, the same sad piano song she had had on repeat for weeks, and her computer hummed. Then I noticed: the white cotton dress, lying on her bed, strangely. It looked like in the cartoons, who just disappear in their outfits, which then just lay there, rumpled. Like Jevee had just inhaled and disappeared, left the dress there.

 

 

  Her classes weren’t attended, and somebody ended up calling the police. Nobody knew where she was, but everybody worried. All her clothes were there, all her notebooks and writing. Here words were still there, and they still didn’t mean s**t.

 

Jevee was gone, and I had only seen her smile once.

 

 

Author's Note

please,please,please!!! review. :]

Reviews

[Ravenskald]

Stunning , well written, held my attention all the way through. A good and interesting theme.
Almost a love story but not quite, which leaves it open and interesting .

and " Rugged. She was rugged and beautiful, accelerated and intense, even raw and corrupted. "

what an open !

~Raven

[thecoolone52]

it reminds me of a beauiful mind where the person is schizophrinc....... anyway thanks for entering my contest.......... good luck