Soda Cans

The eyes of my dead dog stared into mine. I didn't react though. I hovered on top of the dead creature, staring back with all my strength, as if I were playing a game with him. I didn't stop staring until my mother came home, screaming at the sight of the dog. She ran towards me and her hands clung onto my shoulders, shielding my eyes away from the sight of the dog. Her tears fell onto my cheeks, and I sat there, cradled in her arms. The words that came out of her that day still linger in my head. "It's going to be okay! Ralphie's in a better place now. He's in animal heaven, where he can chew on as many shoes as he wants." That was the last time that I had ever been in the presence of something that was dead. Until a month ago.

The sound of my mother's wails rung through my ears as I looked at my father's limp body on the cushiony armchair. Now that I think about it, I don't think anyone's ever sat on that armchair. It was an unspoken rule in the house that the armchair was designated for my father, and my father only. The flashing lights of the television illuminated my father's expressionless face. Football. He was watching football. I looked down at my father's bare feet, and noticed a soda can on the ground, toppled over. There was soda oozing out of it, slowly ruining the decades old carpet that had been there for years and years. My eyes shifted away from my father and onto my mother, who was sprawled on the ground, her face buried in her arms. She looked up, and chills ran down my spine when I saw the manic expression on her face. She spotted the can of soda, and her trembling hands grabbed onto it. "Your father always referred to soda as "pop", didn't he?" I stood there awkwardly, not knowing if I should reply or not. "Pop," she whispered again. She continued repeating the word, her voice getting louder and louder each time she said it. "POP!" she screamed one last time before throwing the soda can at me. I quickly shifted to the side, just barely dodging it, and it hit the wall right next to me. My mother fell onto the ground, rolling around on the drenched carpet, wailing and kicking her legs, looking like a child throwing a tantrum. "Look at your father, Bea. Look at him on that little chair of his. He's dead...he's dead." I stood in the same position for twenty minutes until the ambulance arrived, and I didn't move a muscle as they dragged my mother away and heaved my father off his favorite chair.

"Beatrice Jenson, right?" The tall woman in front of me holds out her hand, waiting for me to shake it. I stare at her hand for a few seconds, and then slowly grab onto it. "Thank you so much for being here. You're such a brave young woman," the woman says.

"What's so brave about seeing a therapist," I ask.

"Well, it takes a lot of courage to be able to open up and tell someone about your problems."

"Oh. I didn't voluntarily come here." I say. The therapist continues smiling.

"So you were forced?" she asks.

"Yeah, by my aunt," I reply. "I never really found this therapy stuff helpful. She said it would help heal my emotional wounds."

"Well, you have gone through a lot in the past month," the woman says. I ignore her and continue talking.

"I don't have any wounds to heal. I know that death is inevitable, and that one day, everyone around me is going to die. I've trained myself to be okay with the people I love passing away one day." I wait for the woman to say something, but she continues sitting there, fiddling with her pen. The silence in the room aggravates me even more. "I don't get why everyone is expecting me to cry about his death. I'm perfectly fine, but sometimes it feels like everyone wants me to not be fine. Like, it's been a month. Why can't everyone just get over it?" The woman finally opens her mouth.

"It seems like you're referring to yourself instead of everyone else." Her voice is soothing, almost like a whisper. It caresses my ears and embraces me. But it also makes me angry.

"You're acting like you know everything, woman. This is why therapy's a waste of money." I get up off the chair and turn my back on her, not wanting to see her facial expression, knowing that it would immediately make me feel guilty. I walk out of the room and make sure to slam the door behind me. Sighing, I walk out of the building and pull out my phone to call an Uber. The car drives up, and I open the door, getting into the passenger seat. "Western Hill Psychiatric Hospital please," I say.

"What do you want?" my disheveled looking mother asks. She sit across from me, pawing at her hair with one hand, shoving her hand in a bag of potato chips with the other. "And why didn't you bring me anything? Didn't I tell you to bring me my favorite hairbrush from the house? They've got nothing good here!"

"I came to see you," I say. "I went to go see a therapist today. It didn't really go as planned thou-"

"What do you need a therapist for?" my mother interrupts. "That night your father died, you seemed perfectly fine to me. You didn't shed one tear. In fact, I think his death seemed to make you happy. I swear I saw a grin on your face when you saw his dead body on that chair," my mother says with a vicious tone as spit flies out of her mouth.

"You know that's not true," I say. My mother leans in and grabs my hair, her grip growing stronger and stronger.

"I'm your mother! I always know what's true and what's not true!" she screams. The noise grabs the attention of a nearby worker and they quickly pull my mother away, and I grimace as strands of my hair are pulled away in the process. The world around me starts to shake and I run out of the hospital, quickly heading over to the grocery store nearby. I walk through the aisles, boxes of cereal and packages of Oreos blinding me as I make my way through them. Unsure of what I'm looking for, I continue walking around the store until my legs start to throb.

Finally, I reach an aisle in the very corner of the grocery store and as I look up, my heart stops. Soda cans everywhere. They're all surrounding me, whispering words of burning ridicule into my ears. All the difference flavours, all the different brands. Packages toppling over other packages. My head starts to spin, and it feels as if the last bit of strength in me is starting to break. The soda cans around me stop me from moving, cornering me into a wall. Images of the soda can being thrown at me that night flash through my mind, and I fall onto the ground, staring up at the ceiling and screaming, "Hey lady, are you okay? Hello!" Blurry faces look down at me, and I feel someone tapping on my shoulder. Pure darkness fills my vision, and all the noise stops.

"Beatrice. I'm glad to have you back here," the woman in front of me says.

"Well, there was an incident a few days ago at the grocery store, and I figured that maybe I really did need someone to talk to," I reply. I wait for the woman to make fun of me, telling me that she told me so, but instead she says nothing and smiles.

"You can tell me anything," she says in that soft, soothing voice of hers.

"I'm really sorry for how I acted last time. I was worried that it was probably too late to come back here to you. I promise it won't happen again," I say quickly. The woman smiles again and rests her hand on my shoulder.

"It's better late than never, sweetie."