Penny

A penny for your thoughts.

This was a recurrent thought of hers. And it wasn’t alone. She would never know how she differed from others. That ship had sailed and she hadn’t bothered to wave it off. Saw no utility in such things. Her thoughts patrolled a space where she should have resided. Where she had once been. A place of abandonment. A sacred space. A memorial to her rejection. Yet another mirror facing the mirror of the generations before her. Infinite reflections. Lost in the forever and ever. Amen.

To look at Penny you would not know this about her. Penny was fine. More than fine. Nothing to see here. Literally nothing to see. And that was the point. That was what she was and how she operated. A void of nothingness that ceaselessly appropriated the meaning of others. A walking hoover. An invitation to give and give until there was nothing left. A self-perpetuating machine with no intact sense of self. Controlling and out of control.

From where she had retreated, she could only feel the baleful presence of reality. She could no more look upon it than a person could stare the sun in the face. She had wilfully blinded herself to appease her fear of going blind. Penny had met her rejection with a rejection of her own. Retreating into a dream that she must defend at all costs. For the dream was all she had. An escape from reality. A defence against any consequences to her actions.

And her defences were legion. She remained in a state of high alert at all times. Fighting. Always fighting. But in the void between her and reality there was a remarkable transformation. She watched dispassionately as people strayed into her sphere. Sleepwalking away from reality and into the dreamworld in which she dwelt. People naturally afraid of the dark overriding their survival instinct. Muttering a false mantra to placate themselves; it’s OK. It’ll be OK. A mantra that they convince themselves has somehow worked for them throughout their lives. But here they are. Stepping over the chain link fence with ample warning signs. Here be dragons. Heading where angels fear to tread. Smiling, always smiling at the prospect of their own painful demise.

She hated them all of course. These trespassers of her dream were of the world and all she had learnt of that place was that it hurt and kept on hurting come what may. There was nothing there for her. She had everything she needed right here. And yet…

Never would she admit that she needed them. Those who were attracted to the fool’s gold that she polished and set out before them. The closest she ever came to feeling any need was the boredom following an ending. These encounters with the loathsome straying sheep kept her busy and in her industry she could escape the sharp edges of a dream she did not entirely control. There were gaps and leaks, and try as she might, she could not plug them. There was a sense of loss and pain in a far off land. The distance to that faraway place was closing though and that placed upon her an increasing weight of desperation that would never let up.

Revenge was the dish she served over and over again. Her signature dish was all the more sweet as she hid her intent throughout. It was all in the presentation. The sucker punches her chosen ones suffered entertained her and sent her into a bliss of delirium. This was her gift. She had been bestowed this gift of hers from the very outset of her life. And she had soon become the gift itself.

Her son was like her. She had made sure of that. Hollowed him out to make room for the gift. And the gift grew until there was nothing else. Ridding him of that which she loathed had been necessary. Crushing his reality and driving him inward. Always inward. Deeper and deeper into the darkness until something else could emerge. Something pure. Something superior to all those sheeple with the shit-kicker smiles. Limited beings who craved a love that would only hurt and break them. She knew the truth of it. Understood the lies of that world of pain.

He was tied to her, that son of hers. He owed her everything. She hated him for that bitter obligation. Hated him more than anything in this tortured land she was forced to live upon. And she held him close in that hate. There was no other way. He was hers. Would always be hers. To do with as she pleased.

Hiding in plain sight was what she did. No one ever saw her for what she really was. Their silence and agreeableness was their downfall. Even as the pain came to take them. Began consuming them. They never saw the truth of it. She gave the lie to this world. That was all she ever gave.

When Isaac drifted towards her, she smiled and drew him closer. Intriguing him and playing back to him everything he broadcast. A perfect feedback loop that entrapped him from the very start. He never saw it coming. Because all he ever saw was himself clothed in a disguise of greedy and lustful wants.

He’d tossed his coin into the well and made a wish with no care for what he was wishing for. Mistakenly believing that Penny was his wish-fulfilment. His golden ticket. The elixir of life that would right all the wrongs that had befallen him as he drank and drank her empty promise. He was freefalling in his own dream. A dream that Penny adeptly co-opted and made her own. Dreams were her domain. Here she had absolute control. Led him by the nose.

Before Isaac, Penny had been bored and listless. Now there was the thrill of a new game. She sugar coated the too-good-to-be-true chance meeting of two halves of a family unit. A natural alliance that made so much sense. On the face of it. Isaac glowing with the opportunity to make things right for himself and his little daughter. Entering the carefully crafted simulation. Making love to an avatar that took him beyond his wildest dreams. A succession of petite morts consuming his will and quickly moving deeper inside of him. Swallowing the blue pill willingly and stepping forth into the darkness of Penny’s dream world. Entering the void of her. The allure of her darkness was always too compelling to resist. Penny took a morbid fascination in Isaac’s ever so gradual demise. Smiling sweetly and never allowing him to see beyond her carefully constructed fantasy, even as she swallowed him whole and began crushing him.

Always there was the gap. The hungry void. The trench she’d dug to keep her from ever revisiting the pain and hate of a world that had rejected her from birth. An open grave that she lured the living towards, divesting them of the life that she so hatefully envied.

And she wooed Isaac publicly. Brought him to the stage and enacted more drama, so that her last project, John, fell further into his own grave. She had easily enmeshed herself in his friendship group so she had a ringside seat to his suffering. Those so called friends who suspected that she was trouble, those astute enough to see that something was wrong, they remained silent for fear of the mess they may cause by speaking up. Eschewing their integrity in favour of her living dream. Accommodating her abuse of their so-called friend. The power she exerted over them sometimes dizzied her. She experienced a thrill as she sat amongst them and smiled her assured smile. Made small talk and made them all squirm in her presence.

Most of all, she gloried in the anguish that John experienced as he misinterpreted her hollow promises to Isaac for the change that he had always dreamed of. His belief in her transformation was delightful sustenance for her. The kick she got from seeing John collapsing in on himself was delightful. Even now, John gave more of himself. Gave his hopes and his dreams. His very meaning. He kept giving to her in an act of self-annihilation which was her brand of love. This she could understand. After all, she’d been there at the very start. Her start. Which was a constant ending. And the theft of her worth.

She was more trapped than anyone. Born with the burning need for connection, she had never connected with anyone in her life. A life that had been forged into a tortured hidden existence. Cast adrift in a dream. A trap of her own making. Growing weaker and more fearful as she starved to death within a smiling, mirrored shell that had become her prison. Addicted to pain. Hurting others so she could add to the ever hungry pain within her.

Penny. Her name was a joke. She wasn’t even worth a single, solitary penny. She was a bad penny. A bad debt. And that debt grew with every vengeful breath that she took in this poisonous world.