The price she pays

TW: supernatural themes, possession, allusions to mental health

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Judith's alarm goes off at 6:30am. She rises from bed easily, like she was waiting for it, and turns it off. Her morning routine requires little thought, it's so well-worn and familiar. She eats a light breakfast consisting of a lightly buttered slice of toast, a yogurt cup, and 8oz of filtered water. She brushes her teeth, gets dressed, and goes to the gym.

She warms up with a short yoga session, jogs a 10-minute mile, and cools down with 2 laps around the pool. Then she showers, dries her hair, and goes to work. Her boss visits her right before lunch to ask how she is and subtly comment on her decreased workload over the past year. He seems concerned, but that thought touches her mind fleetingly before disappearing.

Judith smiles and deflects.

It's the price she pays.

She got to the café down the block for her lunch; the employee greets her by name and chatters about his college classes. Judith had expressed interest over a year ago and the employee had taken that to heart. He hasn't seemed to notice that Judith hasn't expressed any interest since.

She can't even hold onto his name.

She drinks a cappuccino and eats a cobb salad with extra avocado, followed by a chocolate chip scone. They have the order prepared for her every weekday before she walks in. They've given up on suggesting new things.

She goes back to work with 10 minutes left on her break.

She's lived the same day 245 times.

Ever since her grandmother died. Ever since she visited the house her grandmother had lived in, the house her sister had inherited, to the confusion of everyone who had known that Judith had been her grandmother's favorite.

But she can't think about it.

She would've been easier, the wind whispers in her ear. She looks around and dismisses it when she doesn't see anyone who could be talking to her.

She clocks out of work at exactly 5pm.

Her dinner is a single serving of spaghetti with a piece of garlic bread. (It had reminded her of her grandmother, once upon a time. There was enough for an entire week's worth of food, but she threw the extra away every night. She had done that once 246 days ago and every day since.) She stares at the TV while she's eating. Something is happening on the screen, but she can't quite grasp it. It disappears from her mind as soon as her eyes see it, leaving her hollow and bereft, a shell scraped clean of any content.

She washes the bowl, pot, and fork she used and puts them in the dishwasher on the bottom rack alongside a butter knife and glass from that morning. It fills half the bottom of the dishwasher and she runs it anyway.

250 days ago, her grandmother died. 250 days ago, Judith hadn't cared about wasting water; she'd been deep in the throes of grief. Now, she couldn't care.

Distantly, she knew that she had loved her grandmother, but it was hard to recall any type of feeling through the fog of apathy. She can't directly look at them (or if she does, it doesn't stick), but sometimes she notices photos in her peripherals, something that touches ever-so-slightly on the surface of her mind, and maybe that's why it escapes censorship. They're striking images, of her and her grandmother skiing, her and her grandmother visiting the Grand Canyon, her and her grandmother laughing with their arms slung over each other's shoulders...

She thinks they were close, but she can't remember.

She stares at the screen or another hour before turning it off and staring at the pages of a book until 9:30pm. She started the book 247 days ago and hasn't read a single page since. Her nightly routine is just as rote; she drinks 8oz of water, brushes her teeth, does some skincare, and puts on pajamas. Her cellphone sits on its charger by her bed. There's dust on the screen. It lights up as she slides into bed.

111 missed calls

273 unread messages

A photo of her sister appears on the screen and her ringtone sings out: "My name is no, my sign is no, my number is no, uh, you need to let it go. You need to let it go."

She tries to reach for it but her finger doesn't even twitch. She can't pick it up.

She wants-

She's not allowed to want anything.

It falls quiet and she can't remember why it wasn't.

There's pressure built up behind her eyes, but she can't know what it means. It goes away when she falls asleep.

It's the price she pays.

She's lived the same day 245 times.

She lives the same day 97 more times.

On the 342nd day, she snoozes her alarm and is half an hour late to work. When she comes in smiling and greets her manager by name, he's relieved rather than angry. The coffee shop employee's name is Scott- she doesn't know how she forgot, he's a pre-law student and the sweetest kid she's ever met- and she veritably lights up when she engages with him genuinely. She gives him the lunch they've already made for her and orders a BLT sandwich and a blended chai latte. It's the best thing she's ever eaten.

She wonders why she waited so long to give in.

"I'm not so bad," her mouth says as she meets her own eyes in the rearview mirror. "Your grandma had me as long as you knew her, and she was your favorite person."

Her mother had warned her for years about spending too much time with her grandmother, but she had ignored it. She wonders if she would have given in a little earlier if her mother had been less cryptic, less scared. She'll never know; she doesn't care.

The world feels bright again and she doesn't care about the cost, as long as she can feel the sun on her face and smile, and mean it.

The next time her sister calls, she answers.