Shell

Shelly walked down the hallway, linoleum lined the floors with sticky and slippery faults that caught her sneakers.

Fake. Fake. She muttered to herself. 

Turning sharply from the sharp light of the school, Shelly whipped down a stairwell, where gray, dull, dead, hopeless paint receded into vintage brick. Shelly could not believe that during heartbreak you still had to go to school, still had to work, still had to be still in class. Why couldn’t she just scream in the middle of the Iliad and go back to reading? She should be allowed a couple screams a day honestly. And like, truly, who fucking cares? 

They all do. Much. Too much.

Shelly’s light blonde hair refused to settle down that morning, which meant her day had immediately been destined for discomfort and frustration, not to mention her playlist in the car playing all the wrong music, which was indeed her music, but it was still wrong.

Down a few more floors, Shelly opened an old building entrance, heavyset and rusted. Escape. Shelly picked up pace, feeling exhausted in just a few brisk steps. She often wondered how much of a person’s psychological distress conveyed itself through a body’s inability to do jackshit. Through the outside hall, between multiple buildings, stuck between parts and pieces of old plays, lay her middle school theatre room--which had been abandoned a year ago. Treighton did not teach theatre anymore, and the relics outside the room reminded Shelly of Ozymandias. When she had been on stage, she was Queen of Queens, yet now look yonder to the remnants of cardboard and painted castle walls.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! What an absolute joke. The school is letting dreams pile up and rot away, how on the nose. Shelly snickered as she picked the lock quickly. Her lockpicking set was always in her bag, which would be a risk to take to school, but a girl like her has learned how to deflect and feign innocence well. 

Once inside, she refrained from touching the light switches, as thieves worked in the dark, and she fashioned herself a thief. But for this heist she would be merely stealing a moment away. She enjoyed the dark, the night, the blanket of it. Bad things happen there, true, but those who rob the world often do so with the world watching. Grifters grift, with big grifting smiles, with big stupid, grifted, adoring fans. A great joke, a big joke, but the only joke that had been written. 

Shelly sat in her old seat, in total darkness, with a chill surrounding her arms, goosebumping her limbs head to toe. Yet she was still. In her mind, a battle was fought; between what she knew and what she felt. This war had been inside her for an entire lifetime. She did not know which side would win, but she knew she would lose. Closing her eyes, she imagined the world not as it was, but as it could be. This may sound inspiring, but Shelly never could imagine the world as it was. Reality felt like such a cosmic blunder, with actors who couldn’t act, and players unaware of the game being played. It was easier to create new worlds inside of her. She could control those. 

The world I wish for is one of warmth and fire. I want a tender world. I want to care for the wood and worship flame, and I want everything about myself which contradicts to suddenly make sense. I wish to belong. 

And with that wish, she fell asleep, in a cold, forgotten room, but nonetheless hers.