Estranged - Chapter 1; my everyday in a nutshell

2007-10-12T14:11:00.000+02:00

My Everyday In A Nutshell

Getting up, eating breakfast, work, lunch, everyday shopping, cleaning, dinner, bedtime.
If my day looked like that, I would probably go crazy.
Thankfully there are more things in my day than just that.

After yet another unpleasant morning, complete with the whole we-ignore-each-other part, I went to work feeling sad.

During the lunch break I had a talk with the new girl in the office kitchen.
Her name was Jane Doe, and that was almost all I knew about her.

“Aren‘t you a little young to work here?” she asked.

I shook my head.
“I don‘t really have a choice, school never worked for me.”

Jane nodded, her expression changed to a thoughtful one.
Silently I hoped that she wouldn’t ask any further about it; I didn’t want to talk about my past.

As I grabbed a glass and filled it with water, I could hear her mumbling something to herself.
“But what about your parents? They have jobs, right?”

If I hadn’t been expecting her to ask another question I would have dropped the glass.
“They aren‘t here at the moment.”
I brought the glass to my lips.

When I was done, I sat the glass on the counter.
“Oh…” Jane’s voice was softer than before.
“Are they… are they fighting in the war?”

What war was she talking about? Was she mental or something?
Couldn’t she just stop babbling to me; couldn’t she see that I really didn’t want to talk about my past?

But I didn’t yell or scream at her; I simply nodded and let a soft ‘yeah’ escape my lips.
She looked at my face, as if she was trying to find something.
I knew she would ask another question, I just knew it, but before she could do so a colleague walked into the kitchen.

“Everyone back to work, the boss can walk in any moment!”
He walked out the kitchen, Jane and me walking behind him.

I was thankful that he had chosen that moment to walk in, because now Jane didn’t get the chance to ask me any other questions.
The rest of the time I was at the office that day I tried to avoid her as much as possible.

But when I walked towards the door at the end of the day, Jane had found me again…
She started to talk about how great her first day had been, and how nice everyone had been to her.
It was very hard to pretend I was interested in her whole story, but somehow I managed to do that.

Sooner than I thought we were outside. I could feel the cold autumn air caressing my hands and face, playing with my hair.

The smell of trees and plants was everywhere, as were the sounds of children playing, animals and people talking.
A war, here? The thought was just too ridiculous to be true.

Jane was still walking with me, chatting happily about all kinds of unimportant things.
“Oh, do you live in this street too?”
I stopped my train of thoughts about the whole war thing and looked at the street.

“No, I live in the Front-Harbor Street.”
Wait a moment - did that mean I’d have to walk with her through this street, every single day?
That was when I thought the whole world had turned against me, even me myself.

Suddenly Jane looked into the other street, to my left.
“I just remembered, I have to go shopping for groceries. See you tomorrow!” she said, walking away from me slowly.

Well, as you can imagine, I didn’t really think all was against me - just about half the world now that Jane wasn‘t going to be around the rest of the day.
I was about to cross the street when I heard her voice.

“What was your name again?”
Without wasting another moment thinking about how much I wanted Jane to be gone, I answered.
“Lisanna Taylor,” I said, turning my head towards her.

She smiled, a warm smile that reminded me of the times when everything was the way it was supposed to be.
“My full name is Jane Doe, nice to meet you.”
To me it made no sense, her smiling like that, talking like that, when she had said there was a war going on.

“Anyway, see you tomorrow!”
This time she really walked away, without looking back.
I shook my head and crossed the street.

By the time I came home, the sky had turned an almost dark-blue color.
I was glad I got home in time, and quickly put the key into the keyhole.
Had I been a few minutes later it would have been completely dark already.
The temperature was getting colder rapidly, and you never know what is outside in the dark, especially in the area where I lived.

As I closed the door behind me I could hear laughter coming from the living room.
I froze.
There was only one person who could laugh like that, only one with a voice like that.
Only one.
Suddenly I was afraid to move, afraid that it was just an illusion.

Shaking my head slightly I opened the door to the living room and walked in; it was probably someone else anyway.

Emma and Dina were sitting on the couch.
On the chair was another person, sitting with her back towards me so I could only see her red hair.
At least, I thought it was a she; Emma didn’t have many friends and Dina knew better than to let a guy into our house.

"Welcome back, Lisanna! Guess who came back today," Dina said, moving her head slightly towards the person in the chair.

Emma, however, didn’t say a word, pretended I wasn’t there at all.

The person stood up and turned around, and as she did so everything seemed to happen slow-motion.

“A-ariel!”
I put my arms around her and hugged her, my chin resting on her shoulder.
She smelled a bit of sweat, like she hadn’t changed her clothes for a long time, grass, coffee and her shampoo.

“I‘ve… I‘ve missed you so much,” I said when I had let go of her.
Her hair had changed a lot, it was now some weird mass of braids, beads and a hair band.
The clothes she wore were different too; a purple black gothic-lolita dress and purple long boots.

She smiled at me and said, “I missed you too.”
And even though she looked different from what she used to look like before, she was still herself.
I remembered the time she had painted her brown hair a red color; it looked really good, and now she had red hair, not painted, real red hair.

“I made dinner, so how about we eat now, before it gets cold,” Dina said, making me stop thinking about what happened before we died.

As we all sat down at the table, I noticed that Emma’s clothes were lighter than normal.
White jeans, a white top and a blue jacket, very different from the black she had been wearing lately.
I frowned slightly, but instead of asking her why, I looked at my plate.

Or bowl, as I then noticed; it was macaroni and cheese.
“I hope you all like what I made, I was a little tired…”

That made me turn my head to the left, where Dina was sitting.
“No, it‘s lovely, thank you for cooking even though it was my turn,” I felt a bit ashamed that I hadn’t been able to cook. “You‘re an angel, Dina.”

She giggled softly and I could see her cheeks turn a little red.
“Y-you‘re welcome, Lisanna,” she stuttered a bit, and then quickly started eating.

It was almost - no, it was cute how she replied, just because I told her she did a good job at cooking and helping me by doing so.

I myself ate a little too, before a question popped up in my mind.
“How did your school project go? You were gone for a whole week…”

There was a moment of silence before Ariel replied.
“It went okay, I guess. Nothing bad happened, the studying…” she paused, “It was fun, we studied in groups, and mine was kind of the weird group.”

After that it was quiet again, as no one spoke, not wanting to disturb the silence for an unknown reason.
Dina, the sweetheart, told us all to go to bed, and she’d clean up the table.

My feet were aching and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.
As I entered the bedroom, I felt like something was missing.

I shook my head, turned around and made my way back downstairs.
Emma was still there, sitting on the couch, and for the first time today, looking at me.

“What are we doing, Emma?” I asked her.

“Being stupid, I guess.” she said with a small smile.
Her words weren’t cold as I had been expecting, they were actually the very opposite of cold.

“Are we back to normal then?”
She shook her head, when she looked at me again I could see that her expression had changed a little.

“Of course we‘re not,” the words I didn’t want to hear were spoken, and I was about to ask her why when she continued talking.
“Not yet. We didn‘t hug, so no, not yet.”

She stood up of the couch, walked towards me and we hugged for what felt like an eternity.

Then we went upstairs, together.

-To Be Continued-

Estranged - Prologue; do you like mornings?

2007-08-20T14:53:00.001+02:00

If you could have one wish come true, what would you wish for?

Hi, my name is Lisanna.
It hasn’t always been my name, I lost my first name when I died.
After I died I woke up in this strange world, in a body that wasn’t my own, with a name that wasn’t my name.
I was very surprised to see three of my friends here, because they had died too.

My wish is to find out how this happened, who is behind this and why.

Prologue; do you like mornings?

As I looked in the mirror, I felt like I was seeing a stranger.
I was looking at a 14 year old girl with black hair and red eyes, not a 13 year old girl with brown hair and brown eyes.

Even though I had been in that body for more than a month back then, it was still weird.
Because I couldn’t find my hairbrush I tried to get my hair normal with just my hand, and I came to the conclusion that no, I didn’t like mornings.
My eyes felt like they had glue in them, I was hungry but too tired to eat.

As I walked down the stairs I could hear voices coming from the kitchen.

I looked at the old grandfather clock that was standing proudly next to the bookcase; it was 8:34.
Had I really spent so much time getting dressed?

“What do you want for breakfast?” I could hear a voice asking.
It belonged to Dina; her voice reminded me of a bird, so happy and carefree.

“Cereal, bread or pancakes?” she asked, still talking to the other person.

Then I noticed I was still standing in the living room, doing nothing but listening to Dina talking.
Not wanting to be seen like that I walked into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” I said, trying not to sound tired though I knew I did.

Dina was washing her hands, someone else was sitting on a chair reading the newspaper at the table.

“Morning Lisanna,” Dina said.
“What do you want for breakfast?” she asked, walking towards the fridge.

I pretended to think for a moment, then said “Cereal” and sat down on the chair in front of the other person.

She mumbled something that sounded like ‘morning’ without looking up from the newspaper.

“Good morning to you too, Emma.” I sighed.
Emma was almost always like that, short answers, little words.

It was then that Emma looked up from the newspaper.
“You sound tired. Did you sleep enough?” she asked.

“It‘s just that I‘m not fully awake yet, don‘t worry.”

She put down the newspaper completely.
“Who said I am worried about you!?” she said, sounding a little angry.

Dina put down a bowl of cereal in front of me and looked me in the eye.
“Don‘t fight.”

And with those two simple words the conversation was over.

-To Be Continued-