Attention Seeker

Can teenager, Zoey, overcome her fears to form a friendship?

Attention Seeker

“Zoey”

The teenaged girls head twisted around at the sound of her name being called so unexpectedly, her expression a blend of fear and surprise, and inadvertently painted her left index finger a grotesque shade of orange.

“S**t!” she yelled, with all the conviction of a fifteen year old who is looking at themselves in a dressing table mirror.

“I wish you’d stop doing that!” Zoey scolded of the woman, her face now turned to the ceiling to relay her exasperation and annoyance. She suddenly remembered something her father had said and calmed enough to ask in a civil tongue,

“What is it that you want?” she asked, dreading the reply.

When none came she elaborated further and, part relieved, part agitated, asked,

“Well, what’s the point of shouting my name if you don’t say anything else?”

Still no satisfactory attempt in offering the girl any closure on the issue was forthcoming, so Zoey sought it for herself.

“In that case it’s probably best you don’t speak to me at all from now on. I’m sorry to say that I’ll be ignoring you in future, so don’t bother calling of me,” she said in the most adult manner she could muster.

Then, in contradiction to this maturity, Zoey sniffed indignantly, raised her eyebrows to signal the finality of her decision and busied herself by placing the varnish brush back into the bottle. Her demeanour fixed, she then took a tissue from its box and used it to remove the shocking amber blemish from below her finger nail, intent on a second attempt when she was interrupted once again.

“I’m lonely, please don’t ignore me Zoey. Everyone ignores me,’ the woman said, breaking the ensuing minute or so of silence.

Zoey stilled as if frozen by some state of the art, sci-fi weaponry at the dreaded words. Only her heart moved at all; its beat increased exponentially. Then, as if the ‘freeze ray’ effects were quickly wearing off, her mouth dropped open and her eyes expanded; the reflection of terror instantaneously self-perpetuating.

Her body began to tremble as adrenalin coursed through her veins and tears threatened to spill over from wide eyes over fear flushed cheeks. Zoey managed to swallow back the emerging lump at her throat, her first voluntary act of the last three seconds, and said to her mirror image,

“What…the…f**k?”

There was no pretence, whatsoever, in the use of the expletive. The offensive rhetorical questioning was genuinely spoken and did not pertain to the shock value of rebellious youth in the slightest.

She tried to focus her thoughts on her father’s advice, given for such a scenario, in order to follow it, by staying calm and engaging in conversation, but could not. She wanted too much to stand up and flee the bedroom, the house and into the street, but her legs refused to carry out such an intricate series of actions in the circumstances.

Zoey breathed out at last, more from necessity than desire as she was truly too frightened to move even the slightest fraction, and felt her bottom lip tremble as a consequence,

“What do you want?” she asked, with tearful desperation.

“I want us to be friends… that’s all,” the woman replied soothingly.

The continuation of the conversation was simply too much for Zoey to take and, incensed to action, she stood, midsentence, from the red velvet covered stool and made to make her escape. She took half a step, right, toward the bedroom door, but then stopped again in renewed horror as she saw that the woman was barring her way to freedom.

The elderly woman was smaller than she, slightly crooked with the rigours of trauma and time, but the fact of her presence was far more daunting than anything Zoey could have previously experienced or imagined; although the ethereal form of the ghost was precisely as she had envisioned. From the outdated clothing, headscarf, woollen cardigan and blue skirt, that covered her slight frame, to the jaundiced, wrinkled flesh on her kindly face she was every inch as Zoey had believed she would look.

“Please don’t go Zoey,” the spirit pleaded with a meek smile,

“I would never hurt you and I was so very glad when you came to stay in my home. All of the others ignored me and I faded away, but you listened and now you can see.”

Zoey sat down again, a sudden movement borne of the inability to stand any longer.

“I don’t think I want to see,” she whispered, her eyes falling to the carpet between them.

‘But if you won’t see I’ll go back to the darkness. That terrible, cold creeping darkness. Please don’t send me to the dark place Zoey. I’ll be ever so frightened,” the elderly woman begged.

Zoey looked at her again, fear fading to a growing sense of empathy, (every teenager knows what it’s like to feel alone and afraid, though, as adults, most refuse to remember), and tentatively asked,

“What’s your name?”

The old woman took a ghostly step toward the living, breathing girl,

“My name is Marianne and it’s ever so nice to meet you.”

 

To be continued?

Author's Note

Written for my eldest daughter, (Zoey), and based on her experiences of living in a strange new home.