A Pleasant Fiction

A Pleasant Fiction By: Sarah Williams


I sat on the toilet; my bare feet arched as if i were wearing invisible heels. i was long done with my business in the bathroom, but still, i remained stationary. Lost in my thoughts and starring at the once off white carpet that c arrest the bathroom floor. I could never understand the reasoning behind carpet in restrooms, It was pointless to me. Pointless as it was, sitting there doing nothing, But in a very strange sense, it was incredibly relaxing to just sit there. Behind it all im sure it all comes down to laziness. Eventually i would get up and continue about the day.
I looked down at my hands resting dead like on my Nobie knees. Taking a brief moment to focus and correct my vision, soon after realizing my pale skin and the deformity of it all. Scars ran up and down my body like a bouncing bunny zigzagging right and left down a dirt road in attempts to dodge a car trailing it. All of it perfectly unnoticed by the unknown driver behind the wheel. I signed, too much thought.
How much standing did I actually accomplish throughout the day. Not just today, but any and every day. I had since moved back home with my parents. That was a dull image for anyone who had parents resembled mine. Not many parents resembled mine though. I had never met a a couple like them in my life. My dad had recently celebrated his sixty-first birthday. My mother the same. Both of them slowly with time looking older and older right in front of my eyes. Dad spent his days at work at a library in town. My mother never went to college so she would work awkward little jobs here and there at fast food places or retail stores in our local mall. Currently she remained unemployed, much like myself.
Weekends felt no different from a week day. the only reason i realized it was the weekend was because my dad was always home. His religion of Seventh Day Adventist required him to be home and do nothing on Saturdays. There was no real reason why he did not work on Sunday. And my mother would laze about with my father on Sabbath and maybe do the dishes on Sunday. My brother had recently resigned from the Navy and had been living at home with us for the past few months. He now had a job making more than my father made to support the family.
Educated as my father was, he was not what one would call the brightest bulb in the socket. His vocabulary was far well developed more so than anyone else I ever knew. But this knowledge of words was wasted on the general public. I for one was lost on half the things he said. When he spoke, you could hear the self pride boasting out of him like skunk with rabies ready to attack the first living thing with its foamed mouth.
He would speak slowly and with more thought than most. His dialect precise, and every time he would come to a word he found impressive to speak with, he would elongate it and pronounce it slower than the rest of the sentence spoken. I never knew what to do, laugh or ignore him. I always answered best i could, but his mid-sentence interruptions always made this harder.
"Do you know what that word means?" he would ask. As if he couldn't wait to tell me.
"What douse it mean oh great elder of knowledge?" I would return with a smart ass remark. Always leaving the end of a sentence open for someone to slap me across the face. I never was however, but If I had been, would have deserved the sharp pain presented by my parents.
People always say that life seemed so simple once upon a time. I guess I always assumed my life was not necessarily hard, but still to this day consider it was difficult. Growing up I was extremely happy. Now looking back I don't even know what I was so happy about. Growing up in a fame house 45 minutes from where I resided now. My brother was two years older than me, and would frequently receive the upper hand from that fact. My father had two other sons from a previous marriage. He clearly favored boys, but I got over that idea as fast as possible because I didn't see how it could be my fault at all that I possessed a vagina. Nearly five years old my grandmother from my fathers side was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease. My lovely English grandmothers mind melted away in front of us all.
At the beginning of my grandmothers loss of mind; she was no longer allowed to drive. She slowly forgot her friends faces. No longer able to recognize them when they came to visit her. She forgot who my mother was and that she had ever married my grandmas son. She forgot me and my brother, and eventually he husband of late that had a few years before passed away. The day she forgot who my father was I think silently tore us all apart inside. We had moved out of the farm house and in with my grandmother, no longer trusting her on her own. She soon forgot that we lived their with her, and forgot where it was she herself lived. Many times she would go in the bathroom and talk to the mirror as if it were a complete stranger in the same room as her. Leaving the door wide open I would sometimes watch her do this for the longest of time. She claimed that she was being held their against her will. That she was being starved and thought as if she had to steal the food from the kitchen to be allowed to eat anything. Her figuring dolls once for decor only were now the thing she constantly would carry throughout the house claiming that they were her kids.
Before all the crazy bathroom mirror talk and eating jam straight from the jar with her fingers, there was obviously a sane woman. What little I remembered of her was a sweet old thin lady with impeccable posture and gifts always laying out for me and my brother when we came to visit.
Severely spoiled by her as a little girl and baby, she always made it a point to smile around everyone. Her sweet English accent was soft and soothing and beyond kind. Now that this disease had taken hold of her, the voice we all once recognized had since then turned into vulgar language. Cuss words spilled out of her mouth like one would never believe she had even herd once in her life. She would turn violent in a heartbeat, and i don't even think she knew why herself. She just seemed sad and so confused about everything anymore. She had forgotten herself along with forgetting my father, her only child.