Entropy's Girl

~ entropy- Noun. the disorder or randomness in a closed system.~
“Entropy’s Girl”


                Like a lion’s extended claw dragging down a curtain, the air beside me split into a deep, black gash. I tripped backward, nearly landing on the brown lawn next to the sidewalk. As I gaped into the shimmering, absolute black of the divide, something came hurtling out of its inky darkness.

         A thud reached my ears as it hit Earth. I glanced, amazed, back up at the air’s midnight wound.

         Gone. Soundlessly, the gash had healed.

         The thing sat up. Immediately my senses knew something wasn’t right about her. It was a disturbing, unrealistic quality, and I couldn’t place it.

         The gash’s girl was gazing quickly and unbelievingly about. You’d think she had just reached Heaven, without dying. Asymmetrical lips were forming soundless syllables of wonder, while unmatched eyes were absorbing every detail of my suburban street.

         “Where-are’re you?” I queried breathlessly. Immediately I felt stupid for articulating such a muddled sentence. Subconsciously, I plunged my hands into the safety of my pockets.

                She fixed her eyes on me. “Ere you heppy here?”

         I just nodded absentmindedly my head as my mind tried to place her accent and just what was so wrong about her.

                “Em I really here?” She twitched in a million minute motions as her senses darted around, checking if she was really where she and everyone she knew had always longed to be.

         My left hand twirled some pocket lint. What to say?

         She grabbed my arms and started to jump around in chaotic bliss. “HEHEE!”

         She looked so unreal.

         “I’m here!” she informed.

         As an answer: “Uh. Ta…” Words are such traitors to me.

         “Here, here, here!” She smiled broadly at me, happy tears appearing. Her strange, dirty-blonde hair fanned out as she continued twirling.

                “You don’t have shadows!” I exclaimed. My mind was reeling; her form cast no shadows onto itself.

         Her ecstasy stumbled on my unfitting comment. “…Yes. Common enchentment meks things easier in Entropieh. Shedows er so compliceted, things ere simpler—better, without them.”

         “Where’re you from?”

         She blinked. “Entropieh. But now I’m HERE!” Her insane-with-joy laughter bounced down my street.

                A distant U.S. postman turned to inspect the goings-on, but then continued on his way.

                “Oh, this is wonderful!” She was just prancing away, as though her Nirvana was achieved. “Entropieh is ewful,” she called to me. “Everything chenges, elweys, never stops, end the worst is not knowing when it will stert egen. But I’ve esceped!”

         She laughed. Her sincere joy was contagious, even though I was still utterly confused.

         Sometimes, once you start something, it doesn’t make sense to stop, even though ‘sense’ in that moment matters very little. I guess that’s why I followed her blissful, aimless skipping for more than a mile.

         After a while of blissful sojourning, I noticed a subtle shift in the gash’s girl’s sparkling mood. Her elated, thrilled emotions began to hesitate. But still, onward she danced, thrilled at achieving every Entropian’s impossible dream: reaching the place where things were definite.

                I was surprised when she halted.

         She wrapped her arms around her chest, and looked around her new world. She was searching for something, and she couldn’t seem to find it in the autumn air, nor in the emotionless man raking his lawn, nor in the mild beauty of dying leaves.

          “It’s… isn’t there?… Daah.” She tried to shrug the confusion off. She loosed her arms and began jogging. Traces of carefree jubilance were evaporating, leaving a surrounding mist but nothing remotely solid. She was searching for something, looking for it left and right, up into trees, into overgrown grass blades. She wasn’t finding it.

         All lingering mists of merriness had left. Her jogging became tinged by desperation.

         Was something wrong with my world?

         Was it not the Heaven she’d thought she’d landed on?

         Now the jogging was a flat-out run; despairing, desperate. She tore down several street lengths, and I followed. My thighs burned, and my mouth was parched. I glistened with sweat.

                At last, we emerged into a deserted suburban park. She stopped. Her forehead was wrinkled in the jungle of her worry.

                I jogged lightly up to her disoriented figure. Only a few feet separated us. I tried, futilely, to thin my panting.

                Desperation cast shadows on her tone. There was no lightheartedness left. “…Ere you heppy here?” she asked.

                My hands strained for my pockets’ fortress. I wouldn’t let them hide; her question wasn’t one I could run from.

                But I had no answer.

         She hesitated, then spoke to the wide world. “…I’ve lived my life believing that if problems were solveble, then I would elweys be heppy.” Her hands became fists, softly beating the air. “…Problems need solutions! Solutions mek heppiness!”  Her voice waned into meekness. “But, no…

         “Everyone, everyone hesn’t found heppiness here either, hev they?” I heard the tears in her voice, but none slipped into view. Not yet.

                She gazed into the twilight September sky. “The sky is different here.” A wry smile, then, “Everything is solveble here, except for heppiness. Some people have found heppiness in Entropieh, and some people have found it here, too.”

         Now the gash’s girl, Entropia’s girl, looked me in the eyes.

         “…All things I love, and everyone who loves me, are beck home. Heppiness is where the love is. Problems don’t keep you from heppiness, do they?…it’s believing problems keep you from heppiness.

         “…I, I must go home.”

                And now the shadowless tears were streaming down her cheeks.

         She reached into her pocket and pulled out the black vile she had treasured as Utopia only an hour ago. She uncorked it, and flung the last of its inky plasma to the air.

                It was the gash.

                In a moment, Entropia’s girl was gone.

                                                                ~

              Sometimes, when the world is quiet, I stand by my window. And when the world is quiet, I ponder her question.
...Am I happy here?