TheBanyanTree: Magda - Fiction

[auntiesash]

That was amazing and chilling.  Well done, Neeky.

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Monique Colver
<monique.colver at gmail.com>wrote:

> Magda
>
>
> I hear the crickets outside, scads of them from the sounds of it. The cats
> used to care, always wanting out so they could catch them, but now they
> just
> sleep right through it, as if they can’t hear them at all. Just two weeks
> ago there weren’t any crickets at all, at least not that I could hear, but
> time isn’t standing still, even when it feels like it is, and before long
> the crickets will fade away too, like everything does, and I’ll still be
> here, with the cats, listening.
>
>
> Or maybe it’s frogs I hear. Frogs, crickets, things that make noises in the
> night when the rest of the world is asleep. I used to think it was peaceful
> out here, miles from the nearest town, but now I just think it’s dead out
> here, with nothing alive for miles in any direction, nothing but me and the
> cats and the crickets and the frogs. During the day it’s even quieter, not
> so much as an airplane overhead or the mail truck passing by on the road.
> There used to be all kinds of traffic on this road, everyone in a hurry to
> get from one place to another, and it bothered me, all the noise, and I
> wished for peace.
>
>
> Now I have it and I don’t like it, not one bit. I’m not sure when the
> traffic stopped. Maybe it was when the bypass was built, a better smoother
> road that takes the people away from this area, as if we’ve ceased to
> exist.
> Maybe we have. I can’t really tell anymore.
>
>
> I used to keep in touch with people out there, people out in the world, but
> that was when the telephone was still working. Somewhere along the line,
> perhaps a couple of years ago, the phone stopped working. Maybe I stopped
> paying the bill, I’m not really sure. I picked it up one day, after months
> of not picking it up at all, and there wasn’t so much as a dial tone on it.
> Nothing at all. I would have called to find out, but I had no phone.
> Inertia
> took over from there.
>
> I stopped driving after I had the accident, the one that banged me up
> pretty
> bad last year. It was so bad for awhile there I didn’t want to keep going
> on, especially when they had me in the rehab place. But eventually they
> sent
> me back home with my crutches, had a taxi drop me off right at my house,
> and
> I just stayed here after that. I had nowhere to go, after all, and no one
> to
> see.
>
>
> It wasn’t always like this, just me and the cats. Used to be we had
> ourselves a regular life, but that was when Alan was still here, before he
> run off on me. He said he was tired of me just moping around, never trying
> to get better, but I did try, I know I did.
>
>
> Just seemed like no matter what I did things wouldn’t get better, and I
> never could get myself back into a rhythm.
>
>
> He left on a Tuesday morning in the middle of April. Things were starting
> to
> bloom, spring was coming, and usually that helped, usually I could rouse
> myself into caring just a little bit, but before that could happen Alan
> said
> he’d had enough, that no one should have to live like this forever. I
> didn’t
> understand what he meant, though I knew I hadn’t been myself for quite
> awhile.
>
>
> “You have to get over it,” he’d tell me, and I’d wonder how he could expect
> that. How could I get over it as if I didn’t even care? Are men that
> different that they can just move on so quickly?
>
>
> And then, “I can’t live like this, Magda, I just can’t.” I didn’t even try
> to stop him. I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? If he really
> loved me he’d stay, he’d understand, he’d make me better, but I guess he
> just didn’t love me enough.
>
>
> I’m not sure anyone has ever loved me enough, not for me anyway. Not even
> the cats. They only care for me because I feed them, and I feed them
> because
> I love them. But they don’t love me back, not like I want them to.
>
>
> It’s lonely out here, that’s the truth, but what am I to do? I don’t know
> anyone out there in the world anymore. All that ignoring people and hiding
> out got me the exact result I thought I wanted, and now no one knows of me
> at all. Knowing of me is the most basic of knowing, and what I really want
> is for someone to know me. But no one knows of me anymore, much less knows
> me.
>
>
> I was never the most sociable of women anyway, always waiting for others to
> come to me. But I made myself agreeable. I laughed at their jokes, I
> listened to their stories, I put on a face that I thought said to them,
> “please be my friend.” And it worked, for a while, or at least it seemed
> to.
>
>
>
> Until I turned them all away when they came out, all so concerned and
> sympathetic. I hated the sympathy, I hated the way they looked at me as if
> they pitied me. And so I hid, and I sent them away, and they went away and
> forgot all about me. Just like I wanted. And then there was only Alan, and
> now there’s no Alan either.
>
>
> There’s nothing but me and the cats, and the frogs and the crickets. I
> can’t
> even remember how long ago it was that Alan left, how long I’ve been here
> alone. I’ve got my garden, but over the winter I finished off all the
> canned
> goods. Not sure how long I can go on like this, but I can’t go back out to
> the world now. I don’t know how anymore. I lost my way.
>
>
> I sleep a lot now. It’s something to do, and when I sleep I dream of the
> beach, and the boardwalk where Alan and I used to go in the summer,
> sometimes in the winter too, when no one else was there and the sky was
> dark
> and the wind would put a chill right through us. We didn’t care, we loved
> it
> when we were together. I don’t even know if the beach is still there, if
> the
> boardwalk is right where we left it, but in my dreams it’s all the same, so
> I’ll keep that. I wouldn’t like to go there and find out it was gone, or
> that it had changed. I want it just like it was, and so I’ll keep it in my
> dreams where it won’t ever change.
>
>
> That’s why I like the past. It doesn’t change, it just is. There’s nothing
> scary there, for I’ve already been there. I’d live there all the time, if I
> could, but sometimes I have to wake up and feed the cats, feed myself, take
> care of what little life I have left.
>
>
> It’s not so bad, I tell myself. At least the worst has already happened,
> and
> nothing can ever be that bad again.
>
>
> It helps me sleep, that little bit of knowing that nothing else can ever
> hurt like that again. If it weren’t for that, I think I might go insane.
>
> --
> Monique Colver
>



-- 
Everyone is from somewhere
Even if you've never been there.
So take a minute to remember
The part of you that might be the Old Man calling me.
- *Jethro Tull*