The Hollow Soul

She was sitting with her head in her hands, waiting for a sign, or a prince, or some mythical shining star that would ease the pain and quiet the torment. A few contemptuous sorts had invaded her soul many years ago, and how she longed to break free from their control: their grasping, groping hands that squeezed her heart and fingered the recesses of her mind. She found herself confused and lost once again, as if attempting to find her way through the Roman catacombs without a torch; feeling the walls as she meandered down their winding corridors.

Some memories lingered: a few brought smiles and happiness, but most triggered tears and discontent. And even those memories that initially did parade in smiles soon changed costume and became frowns; for what is more disheartening than fond memories that can neither be recaptured, nor re-enacted in the downward spiral of life?

Still, the larger tragedy was that these sporadic memories were so few in number. Time had stolen most of the past, throwing down its paintbrush and refusing to create any more scenes for the gallery. She could barely remember last week, let alone five years ago. Everything seemed to be in a haze, as if her mind were enshrouded in some kind of dense fog. Or like some old mansion where the belongings of the last residents have been left undisturbed, covered by white sheets.

She delighted in using these types of metaphors oftens and likened each of them to a sort of homage to classic Vincent Price movies. Always making such comments with a slight smile, as if the listener were lucky enough to have glimpsed the variety of her intellect, she knew the truth was that she could not invent a clever idea of her own. These were the futile masks she wore and inane games she played, showing her continual diminishment of imagination and creativity.

Life is a cruel hostess, where the trick is not to be happy, but to survive. She had learned this as a child, and now, as an adult, she found it increasingly more difficult to face each coming day. Every night she wondered if she would be lucky enough to not wake with the rising sun: if she would instead be floating around the universe, looking down on all the misery known as planet Earth. Each morning, however, she awoke from her nightly slumber, realizing the previous night had not been her twilight of salvation, and with the grand disappointment of this reality, crawled out of bed to commence another undesired day.

She wanted to claim it hadn’t always been like this, that she hadn’t always felt such despair, but she couldn’t. For as long as she could remember, this lingering sadness had torn at her soul with jagged claws and gnashing teeth. There had always been a cacophony of voices, all yelling and screaming simultaneously in her head, accompanied by an echo of maniacal laughter. And she had learned over the years how to conduct them, like some type of grotesque symphony: assembling the voices and even quieting them from time to time. As the years mounted, though, the screams became louder; the claws became sharper; the despair became more unmanageable. She was no longer focused on feigning happiness for outsiders. She was, in fact, fighting to keep her sanity, as she felt her mind being shredded by remarkable anguish.

It had, indeed, been five years since the incident, but she could not place the exact time. Horrific scenes melded with brief shots of joy, so the ending equation was anticlimactic numbness to infinity. What had he said that day? She couldn’t remember, and yet the whole conversation scrolled verbatim in her mind. There were mentions of the glistening snowfall, of romantic nights shared, but then the conversation seemed to warp and unravel with a twinge of confusion and a dash of breathlessness. For a very brief moment, just before the memory blackened from the edges to the center, like a burning photograph, she glimpsed an image of him walking away. This, the image she most wished she could grasp from her mental demons in an effort to stop their continual presentation of the sadistic film.

All irrelevant, though, really, for whether she could remember the minutiae of that event or not, the present remained unchanged. The one thing of which she was certain was that the inner torment had increased in the last five years, and showed no signs of relenting. Loneliness and Misery regularly came to dine: she, both their ever-tantalizing meal and always-gracious hostess. Yet, she wondered how much longer they could actually feed on her hollow soul… and drowning in an emptiness of limitless depth, she placed her head in her hands once more and breathed a sigh of hopelessness.