Intruded

For some reason, I had a hard time with this assignment and really thinking of what to write. Do I focus on the fear? the descriptions? the vulnerability? Focusing on a lot of things at once kinda makes my head explode. So here's the result of my brainsplosion.

POV 1:

She was dicing the carrots at two in the morning when she heard it. She stopped mid-dice and cocked her head to one side, one hand on the knife, held up in the air above the chopping board, the other resting on the edge of the board and holding down a half-chopped carrot that was screaming bloody orange.

Silence. She set the knife down and scratched her head, itchy from the red hair dye that was setting and drying against her scalp. It was probably nothing, she reasoned, but her pounding heart told her otherwise. Still, her mind prevailed. Get the onions. She turned slowly, mechanically, forcing herself to swallow away the sense of vulnerability that was choking her. Once she had the onions in hand she whipped back around towards the sink.

Thunk, thunk, thunk. Her knife kept time with her sinking heart. Suddenly--a slip! and she whirled around, back towards the fridge, checking to see if anyone was watching, as her quivering mouth nursed her bleeding finger. Really, she resembled a little kid trying not to wet her pants during a scary movie. Just take away the hair dye and the smeared mascara, and she looked about five-years-old, at the moment, complete with the runny nose. Ugh. She blew her nose and used the glossy refrigerator door as a mirror while she rubbed away the mascara. All the tears were making it run. Probably, it was the onions. But she kept the knife close while she rubbed, just in case the tears were the result of legitimate fear, and not the onions.

She loosened up a bit as the stubborn mascara came off. But suddenly--there it was again! A squeaky swish-swish sound. She almost jabbed her eye out when she heard it, and before she knew it, she'd grabbed the knife, and her ridiculous legs were throwing her forward, heart in mouth, past the corner, and into the hallway that led to her violated house door.

POV 2:

His teeth were....itching. So he'd good-naturedly gotten up, up from the soft spot on the floor where the carpet hadn't been flattened and matted yet. He'd go out to the front yard and grab a stick fallen from the tree in the yard, perhaps. It was a simple enough goal, the kind that you don't plan for. Like how Mommy got up from bed in the middle of the night to make vegetable soup because she was hungry all of a sudden and dyed her hair at the same time, because she wanted it to be nice in the morning.

But he had to belly-crawl his way through the small kitty door. It was growing a bit tight, grabbing his middle a bit on all sides. Eventually he pulled his way through. But again, his feet were still too big for him, and his tail too heavy, and he stumbled down the short cement steps. Before he knew it, he was stuck in the brambles. His breath wheezed and squealed in pain. Forget the stick. He wanted Mommy now. Cowed, he bobbed and staggered back to the kitty door.

Desperately, he nosed the door open a little and began to inch forward a little. It was easy enough, at first. But the thorns and burrs were starting to hurt, and the kitty door made a terrible protesting sound every time he moved, and the middle was impossible, sticking the pointies even deeper into his fur. He was stuck on all sides, uncertain of how to back out or move forward. Not even the smell of vegetable soup was enough.

No-Name.

This next post is what I wrote for the character-yearning assignment. To be honest, I didn't really want to post this. Something about it isn't right...but I can't figure out which part to fix. I've been tinkering here and there, and the wrong-ness just gets worse and worse.

So why did I post it?

I think I feel a certain responsibility to post everything I write for this course onto my writing blog.....Cause not everyone's checking this blog right?!? 0.0....anyways, it's like, I owe it to the blog to not let the flow of posts stutter and stop...so here it is.

No-Name

Janie’s mother wants her to scrap her college essay. She says it’s too dark, uncreative, and untruthful. It is not the Janie she knows, she is sure.

But who is Janie? She is certainly not the same person as Jane Doe, who goes to school and has friends (she hopes), and laughs, and jokes, and fools around. Jane Doe lives outside and doesn’t know how to frown. She has the depth of a paper plate and the contentedness of an ignorant child.

Janie spends her time at home. Sometimes she is laughing with her mother and smiling with a wordless happiness, other times not. Other times she is fighting and saying cruel things. But Janie’s mother sees no reason for Janie to be truly unhappy. She has had unbelievable luck in life. This consists of plenty to eat, a warm home, and a robust moral education. And Jane Doe, of whom Janie’s mother is also aware, has also had unbelievable luck, this time consisting of a busy social life, abundant resources, and robust academics. Between Janie and Jane Doe, Janie’s mother asserts, nothing is amiss.

But there is also She. Janie’s mother doesn’t know who this is.

She. As in, “She who knows not what her name is,” or “She who answers to Janie and Jane Doe, but feels strange in both names, when She takes the time to think about it.” So let us refer to She as No-Name, for the time being.

No-Name is always confused and never knows what to do. She has much too many dreams, and each dream is a much-too-big dream. No-Name sits up late at night, criss-cross-apple-sauced and straight-backed in her bed, thinking. Listening, to the ticking of her clock and her own breathing. She listens steadily as Time circles her, very close, but never near enough for her to catch in her clumsy hands, so the hours always slip-slide-slip and tick-tock-tick away. No-Name dreams even when she’s awake, and she can be ridiculously foolish. She cries and laughs at the same time. She is all feeling and intuition, so there are no order to her thoughts, yet she continues to think and think, until she slips into a deep, dreamless sleep—which annoys her because she likes dreaming, regardless of whether it’s nightmare or fairytale. Perhaps No-Name doesn’t dream in her sleep because she dreams too much when she’s awake. Because she is already a shadow, insubstantial and invisible, when she is awake.

So when No-Name is asleep, she is gone. Non-existent. She returns in the morning when her body wakes up. But she doesn’t stay for long. If people saw No-Name, they would laugh, which is why she never leaves her room. Her captivity is an inevitable phenomenon, she thinks. She is a blundering, illogical, emotional mess. While her mind is quick, her heart lacks defenses. Her heart is an egg with no shell. There’s just that thin, clear membrane surrounding the core—the yolk—and when you poke it, if you dare poke it, it will surely pop, and the yellow will flood out, into the whites, utterly vulnerable and lost.

When No-Name finds herself looking at the Name blanks on her assignments and school forms, she doesn’t know how to sign them. She doesn’t know how to sign the cards and letters that she writes. Janie? Jane Doe? She feels like not signing, or signing as someone else, though she doesn’t yet know who that “someone else” is.

No-Name is rewriting her college essay. She goes through the trouble of scrapping the first because Janie’s mother is right. Her essay is too dark, uncreative, untruthful. But No-Name does not want to write as the Janie her mother knows. She wants to write an essay about herself, truly. An essay that will place her securely on the paper. But how does one truthfully write about oneself? How can one form words when one is a chaotic splatter of ink on a Rorschach test? How does one grab one’s dreams and lay them bare on so fragile a medium?—A medium that can be water-logged, ripped, shredded, burned.

In the end, the name at the top of the paper will be Jane Doe, and the person written into the essay will be Janie. As she writes, No-Name suspects she will fail to leave the confines of her room yet again. Yet again, she sits safe and unhappy in the quiet.