Triggar Me
Story
by Morgan Clevenger
Tuesday afternoons are always slow in the fall. The skies are cool and
cloudy, like you have permanent sunglasses on. From inside her room I
can see leafless trees that cast shadows through her bedroom window.
The only time I see the outside is when she's gone. Her mother opens
her curtains when she leaves for school and as soon as she gets back she
closes them, like clockwork.
I take a look around the room, to see what
it looks like in her absence. The walls are covered with magazine
cutouts of beautiful models, so now the original wall is veiled; I think it
used to be yellow. Her bed is unmade. Teen People, Seventeen,
Cosmopolitan, and Vogue spill out from underneath it. Basketball and tennis
trophies filled the shelves. Picture frames of friends and family were
placed strategically around the room, some of them I have met some of
them I haven't.
This is what everybody sees but I know the room as she
does. I know that she keeps a tape measure behind the largest tennis
trophy. I know she stashes diet pills in the pink jewelry box her mother gave her when she was eleven.
I know that she hides a scale in the closet because her mother won't
let her have one. She trusts me.
She'll be home soon.
Pretty. That is a word I would use to describe her. Not beautiful
just pretty. She has long, shiny, thick brown hair. She is a good
height, not too tall but not short either. By no means was she ever
overweight. Her body had always been soft, healthy. An average girl, but with
exceptional eyes. They hold all the emotion her body releases. The way
the light reflects off of them when she's happy, sad, or excited can
make you want to stare at her forever.
She has had a lot of boyfriends, only one has ever been in her room.
He broke her heart a week later. She never cried she just took off the
cross she always wore around her neck and threw it away.
It's 2:45. School is out at 3:00.
Our relationship changed after that, we became progressively closer.
She will sit with me all day and sometimes all night. I can even
remember times when she has fallen asleep in front of me. She doesn't just
smile at me and walk out the door, she stays with me. We will stare at each other for hours. We have a special bond that nobody else
understands. I'm there for her always whenever she needs me. She
rarely sees her friends anymore; she would rather be with me. Some say she
has an obsession with me that has reached an unhealthy level. I think
that it could be true but I don't understand how what's happening to
her is because of me. Why not blame her parents, her peers, the shows
she watches on TV, fashion magazines? I just tell her the truth.
She's home.
I feel the door swing open as a brush of cool air sweeps over my face.
She flung her books down on her bed and closed the curtains. I wait
for her everyday. Like always she comes over too me. I can count on her.
I can feel her fingers slide down my cool glass surface. I see her
face clearly now. Her eyes are glassy; it's like looking into the empty
eyes of someone who has just died. Not like the illuminating force they
were before. He gaze is unrelenting now, no longer peaceful; it
threatens to shatter me into a million pieces. She is so close to me I can
see the imperfections of her pale and lifeless skin. I trace the top if
her cheekbones then fall down the cliff into her sunken cheeks. Her
lips are thin and drooping, she's barely seventeen but already her hair is thinning, I can see
empty patches where her hair used to fall. The sacks of clothing that once
hugged her beautiful curves just hang on her, threatening to devour
her. Still each day she tugs at the skin that barely covers her bones.
She'll never be satisfied with what I show her.
Six hours have passed and she's still here, wilting before me.
Sometimes she looks desperate or maybe even hopeful, like if she wants it
enough I can show her what she wants to see.
Today she's angry, frustrated. She takes the tape measure out from
behind the trophy and glides it around her waist. She began to cry. She
is crying and screaming and no one is there to stop her. I can't
comfort her. She's loosing it. I don't know what to do, I can't stop her.
She's out of control. Her bony fingers are tearing at the picture
covered walls. Pieces of magazine pictures and dried wall paint surrender
to her fingernails. She runs to the jewelry box and with bleeding
fingernails she opens the pills and swallows as many as she could between
sobs.
I can't do anything I'm just here in the corner of her room
watching everything unfold. She stops. Walks over to me. Stares at me for a
second. Her tear streaks look like
dried up waterfalls. I read her lips. I hate you. Takes a step back
and throws the empty pill jar as hard as she can.
Pieces of me are scattered over the carpet. She's bent over my remains
and crying harder than ever, this time with tears of sadness or
hopelessness. A part of me is lifted up to her and everything is black.
Triggar Me© COPYRIGHT 2005 Morgan Clevenger. Reproduction prohibited without permission from the author. 05/17/05
