I'm a Grown Woman

This is how my world will end. The sun starts to move backwards and the moon rises in the daytime. Colours will invert themselves and all speech will play itself backwards. My feet will stop touching the ground and the air will be endlessly light. Light. Leaking into my mind, staining the images forming on the backs of my eyelids. Beautiful, swirling patterns, carving themselves into flesh. Swirling. Whirling. 

At least this is how it always happens in my dreams. My subconscious mind leads me into a lovely restaurant: dim lighting and a 50th floor view of the city. The lights flicker out and I, with my seafood risotto and glass of expensive wine, watch everyone around me die. Soft jazz music is playing in the background. The screams harmonize. 

I’ve always been told that I have a knack for making things up. 

 I sit up in bed and shudder. I’m a grown woman, I should be living life, falling in love, figuring out how to pay my taxes, not fantasizing about the apocalypse. 

On my way to work, I gulp down a boiled egg, get on the train and decide I’m still hungry so I run out again and purchase a steamed dumpling from the street vendors before cramming myself back into a corner of the carriage. Faces in close proximity to me of disgust reveal themselves to me as I shove the Asian delicacy into my mouth, chewing loudly, face distorted as I swallow. I look around and smile innocently. Daintily patting at my lips with the complimentary napkin, I lean against the door and pull out a book. 

A man is gazing at me from across the train. His face is bearded and his eyebrows are thick. 

“How exotic,” he mumbles, barely audible. I’m a bit disturbed to be completely honest, but I smile back coyly before returning to my novel. It’s always important to treat strangers with respect. In his heart, he will decide that I am approving of this and his excessive facial hair. He will pride himself on it for the next three days, until eventually an overly honest friend will tell him the truth, or spikes his beard-oil with nair. 

“That’s an interesting book you’re reading.” He says, distorting his mouth to let out each word as slowly as possible. 

“Thanks.” 

“What’s your name? I’m Mark.” 

“My office is having a party tonight, wanna come?” I assert myself in fluent English. 

He looks at me quizzically for a second. Then,as if remembering that one of his goals for this year was to ‘be more spontaneous’, he said: “Sure.”

Later today, he will look in the mirror, analysing his facial features. He will carefully brush all his facial hair and slick back his head-hair. He will squint in his smudged mirror and grin. The scent of his loathsome confidence will be overpowering. 

“You coming to the Anniversary Dinner tonight?” Jane the secretary yells across her desk at me, her mouth full of kale and white bean salad. The tendons in her neck perk up and glance dubiously at me, pilates trained and beat into submission, observing my own mildly pudgy neck. Two effortlessly bushy, yet neat caterpillars push their way up her forehead, creasing into the thin skin stretched across her skull. 

“Uh, yeah.” Shit, stop staring. I scuttle off to my cubicle and spend the rest of the workday regretting the purchase of my medical insurance 2 years ago. I could be dead right now. Click. Tap. Smile. Pretend to type. Drink water. Piss. Hover in the bathrooms for too long. Repeat. At some point in the day, I hover for too long and catch a glimpse of Jane, giggling at a well-dressed man in the corridors before leaving him a peck on the cheek and disappearing back into her organic meth lab of an office.

I know that man. All too well. 

Tugging at the duvet late at night, the sea of traffic and twinkling city lights lay far below our haven. A mumbled complaint, well-meaning kick in the arm. Moonlight spilling like milk through the curtains, illuminating two grinning faces. Very much happy and very much in love. Late night adventures down to the convenience store, buying boxes of oily noodles and sushi to eat on the sidewalks, sitting amongst the vagrant pigeons, leaning against oversized rubbish bags. Thrift shopping on the weekends. Scaring the children in the jungle gym of our favourite park. The one with the nice view and the squirrels. One entire fucking year of my life ,wasted. 

Night has fallen, and I walk into the restaurant, accosted by a man twice my height. It’s the hairy, bigoted one. Mark. I laugh loudly at all of his comments and stand very close to him, clinging onto his arm, never once making eye contact. We politely chuckle through the boss’ address, then a few unintelligent attempts at entertainment by my fellow co-workers, before we are free to mingle. 

“It’s a bit loud in here, wanna go somewhere more peaceful? I think I found somewhere with a nice view.” My date’s beard rubs against my earlobe; it tickles. 

We stand up and sneak off into the bathrooms. Mark lifts the window and gestures towards it:” “Ladies first.” I look down. We are very, very high up, and an old anxiety starts to creep back up my throat. He snickers at my bewildered face, and climbs out, landing on the fire escape just a few feet underneath the ledge. He reaches up and I slink through the gap, one high heel encased foot after another. Grasping my hand in his meaty palm, he carries me down. With a massive thud, he appears next to me, carefully disengaging a wine bottle, then two paper cups, from the inside of his suit jacket. He sets up a minibar on the neighbouring windowsill and pours me a glass, tending to it lovingly and taking his time to swill the alcohol. He hands it to me and we sit there sipping from our paper cups, dangling our feet from the edge of the roof. Oblivion seems dreadfully near. If you look down, down through the darkness, through the nothingness that hovers just beneath us, you can see the people, as small and insignificant as toys, going about their silly little lives. Here, high above, I sit regarding them, watching as they laugh, kiss, get drunk. Fumble over each other in their attempts to preserve each others’ mundane existences. How silly of us. 

“What are you thinking?” I can see the pores on his nose. Oil spurting from every single crevice, glistening over the mountainous terrain of his textured skin. The sound of two fully grown adults slamming into a wall echoes from the window above me, and I catch sight of Jane’s veiny neck, an attractive man wrapped around her. Tipping my cup upside down and swallowing the final mouthful of wine, I open my mouth to answer.

“I-”, my tongue feels too large for my mouth, and the building shifts uncomfortably beneath me. I focus my gaze on the strange man’s nose and try again. The gleam of his skin grows blindingly bright, and light leaks into my mind. Disoriented, I try to stand, try to steady myself against the onset of nausea. 

“Buh-buh buh?” The hairy man’s face becomes blurry and I can feel the overpowering heat of his skin radiating onto the back of my neck, my shoulders, my face. He fades back into the light and all of a sudden he is up and rising away from me, his figure getting smaller and smaller as he disappears into the sky, merging into the moon. I am weightless. The sun is rising. Screams envelop me as I close my eyes and feel relief.