Author’s Note: This unedited spew is the result of a 750words.com session – I’d like your opinions, good and bad, but understand if it’s just too much to read. I’ve got a second part to this, and it may actually be shaping up into a real story. Let me know if you would be interested in reading more! (Read the first excerpt here.)
The isolation was suffocating her.
Abigail had never really been alone. It had been her family, once. Mother, Father, and her. Then Father left and Steven and Ted came into the picture. Steven and Ted left, and her mother bought her a dog, Tracie. Tracie ran away after a few days, but there was always another boyfriend or husband of her mother’s just around the corner.
Abigail left for college, and there she had roommates. Girls who were friendly, but never quite her friends. And after college, she had work, and after a few years of dating, and spending any free time from dating with people from work, she met Bob.
Bob and Abigail. Abigail and Bob. They were the envy of everyone. And for five years they were the perfect couple, and then he turned out to be a piece of shit.
And now she had no one.
Abigail could hear the sounds of the party in the next room, muffled only by the solid oak of her door and the fantastic insulating job the person who had remodeled the building had done.
It sounded like everyone was having fun.
She could picture it, in her head, exactly what was happening on the other side of the wall. Even though she’d never gone out to experience one of Ted’s epic parties, she knew there were a few more girls than boys out there. She knew everyone would have either one of the beer’s she’d stocked the refrigerator with, or a plastic cup filled with whatever liquor the guests had hauled in themselves.
Teddy was too cheap for the good stuff.
She heard a girl giggle just outside the door, and the knob rattled.
Before cleaning, before stocking the fridge, the first thing Abigail had done was install a new lock on that door. A good one, too.
So they were drunk enough to be fucking, and still sober enough to play video games with a small degree of competence.
Abigail could also hear the sound of animated gunfire coming from the living area where the enormous television was.
She was surrounded by people, but still very, very alone.
She also desperately hoped that the guests would figure out that the best places to get sick were the very large “decorative” vases she’d sprinkled around Ted’s loft.
“What the fuck are those,” he’d said when he’d seen them. “They’re ugly. Get them out.”
“The last time you had people over they got sick all over your furniture. In fact, where you’re sitting now took several hours to clean. You can still smell it, if you get close.”
She watched her step brother jump up from the couch and wipe at the back of his jeans, as if he had gotten soiled just being in the same area as where someone had vomited. He smelled his hands, then made a face.
“Whatever. They’re ugly.”
“Paint them, then. Cover them with duct tape, hide them with a screen, I don’t care. But they’re staying. If someone needs to get sick, they’re more likely to do it in something that looks like a bucket. Then I just have to spray it out, and you don’t have to replace your couch every six months.”
“I got it used,” he defended himself, looking at the couch that had most definitely been used for something.
Sex. Toilet. Who knew.
“Well now, you can buy one new.”
He hadn’t yet, but he’d been shopping.
She’d caught him with an IKEA catalog.
Abigail couldn’t stand it another minute. She had to get out of there. It was too many parties, too many strange people, too much time left with her own thoughts. If she didn’t leave, she was going to explode.
So she did both.
She got up out of bed and grabbed her small purse and a jacket. It was California, but it was still chilly in San Francisco at this time of the year.
She opened her door and was stunned for a moment at the sheer quantity of people in the house.
Someone fell into her. Someone tiny and cute and young and perky.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
Abigail screamed.
At the top of her lungs, for as long as she could manage. She screamed as if she was being chased by a rapist, as if her cat was on fire and she had no telephone to call for help.
Sixty-three seconds later, she stopped.
And opened her eyes.
About sixty-three pairs of eyes stopped back at her.
And then cheered.
The new riot of noise was worse than the old. Instead of having fun without her, now they were having fun because of her.
The collective drunken attention of the room quickly went back to whatever they were doing before, but as she locked her door and walked through the crowd, she could overhear shout-whispers asking who she was, what was her story, and was she invited to the after party?
Abigail smiled and left the loft.
It was the best she’d felt since Before Bob.
She was going to see a movie.
She never went to see movies, but she loved them. Abigail and Bob had gone a couple of times, but he felt it was a waste of money, when you spent as much on the popcorn and soda, if not more, than on the tickets.
Who the hell cared?
She had to tell herself twice. She had to convince herself that even though she hadn’t found a job yet – after a month of searching – and even though her money was starting to run out, that she deserved this night of freedom. To lose herself in the fictional account of someone else’s problems.
Abigail arrived at the theater about forty minutes before anything she wanted to see was scheduled to start. She bullied past her anxiety and lack of self-confidence to buy a ticket – just one, please – to see War Horse.
A tear-jerker. Perfect.
And deciding it was too early to stand in line for popcorn – she was going to get the biggest one there was, and damned the consequences to her jeans and how they fit – she sat at a quiet corner in the theater’s atrium, and watched the people go by.
“Abigail, right?”
She spun at the voice from behind her. There stood a young woman who looked vaguely familiar and her date.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“You see? I told you she wouldn’t remember,” the young woman said as she slapped the shoulder of the guy she was with. “Nobody ever remembers the bartender. We’re invisible, and anyone who says differently is a liar.”
“Elise.”
The man chuckled. “She does remember you. Give her some credit, Elsie. She was distraught.”
Abigail gave the guy a look, then smiled at the girl who had helped her with such a rough night so long ago.
Well, okay. It had only been a month.
“Hi, Elise. Funny running into you here.”
Elise bent down to give Abigail a hug. “How are you doing? I was so worried about you!”
Well, that was interesting. “You were?”
Elise nodded furiously. “I had to drop you off at your apartment, and I put my number in your phone and set a reminder for you to call me so I would know you were alive. And then when I never heard from you, well,” she waved her arms dramatically, “I panicked. And then I went to your apartment like two days later to make sure the hall didn’t smell of vomit and rat-bitten Abigail carcass, but the landlord said you’d left, and did I have a number for you or Bob so he could collect his rent?”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t, because you weren’t there! But you’re here, so now you have to tell me everything.” Elise plopped down in the chair to Abigal’s left, and grabbed her hand. “What happened with Bob?”
Abigail looked at Elise’s date, who was lowering himself a tad more gracefully into the empty chair next to Elise.
He shrugged. “I guess you were either too drunk or not around her enough to learn about this part of her.”
It was sort of an apology.
Abigail smiled, and turned to Elise.
“Well.”
