This is my favorite flash fiction I've ever written. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did!
It had been one of those days where I wonder why I bothered to get out of bed. Scratch that, it had been one of those months.
I looked up as there was an extra loud thump directly over my head. The yelling continued, and I tried to tune it out and focus on my homework. Freshman year of college was hard enough already, and now I could barely study. I looked at the paper my professor had returned to me with a D written in red ink across the top. I was failing.
I swallowed back the tears that threatened to overwhelm me and pushed my long hair out of my face. It was probably time I admitted that I didn't have time to deal with my hair and just chop it off. But some things I choose to push through for my sanity's sake. I pulled it back with one hand and slipped the hair tie off of my wrist and around my hair. There was a yell upstairs and stomping so loud I could feel it in the wall.
I felt like screaming myself.
Jumping up off the bed, I grabbed my earbuds and jammed them into my iPod. I hit play, not caring what song was playing. It would do.
The first notes were perky, and I almost cringed at how 1990’s they sounded. It was a song I had listened to almost constantly as a kid.
I wanted to be annoyed at how perky was it was, but somehow the happy, nonsensical lyrics were contagious. A smile grew on my lips as I turned up the volume, drowning the sound around me.
Taking a deep breath, I leaned against my wall, closed my eyes, and tried to remember how I had felt the first time I heard that song. It must have been when I was about eleven, mom had put this song on for me to listen to while I was coloring. I had liked the light airy tone and had listened to it for hours on repeat that day.
It was something happy in the middle of everything that was around me.
My eyes flew open as a sense of urgency came over me to just do something happy. I scrambled to my desk, grabbing the first pen I found, and jerked open the drawers looking for a sketch pad, or at least a blank notebook. There were a few boxes of protein bars, some crumpled-up paper, and a thing of lip balm that I didn’t even remember getting.
I growled in frustration as I pushed the drawer back in. An unexpected tear slipped down my cheek. I needed that notebook. I needed to do something, anything to relieve the feeling that I was going to burst.
I took a step away from the drawer and bumped into my bed. I just sank to the floor, using the bed to support my back.
The music swelled, bringing my favorite line about wishing the world would just turn slower. I had loved that, now I wished the world would turn a little faster and get this day over with. I took in a deep breath, trying to calm all the emotions building inside me. No paper suddenly felt like the greatest travesty that had ever occurred to me.
I blinked tears back, trying to focus instead on the blank wall in front of me. My mom had painted it a pale yellow. Teal had always been my favorite color, and the yellow had grated on my nerves since the day I had gotten the room.
My gaze dropped to the pen I still gripped, and an idea sparked inside me. I couldn’t help but feel it was wrong, but I pushed it back and went to the wall.
Uncapping the pen, I made a single line on the wall and blinked at it. I probably shouldn’t. It felt like I was being a toddler all over again. Setting my teeth, I closed my eyes, letting the happy music just wash over my mind. It was happy. I needed happy.
Opening my eyes, I didn’t hesitate again. I started drawing on that wall. It started with a girl standing in a field, surrounded by fireflies, the trees dark and forbidding overhead. A big moon was added, imperfectly lopsided, and a little kitten was added at the girl's feet.
A boy sitting in a library was next, with his back propped against a bookshelf, and a little girl peeking around the corner at him. Escape. Happiness. It was all so easy to draw.
My arm ached, but I couldn’t stop, I kept drawing, working my way all over the wall with little sketches. The song looped over and over, I don’t know how many times. The pen ran out of ink and I had to grab another. I had to stand on my desk chair to reach further up on the wall. So many pent-up ideas flowed out onto the wall, and nothing else in the world seemed to matter.
My music stopped suddenly. I jerked, pulling my iPod out of my pocket. It flashed the low battery sign and died. I blinked. There was no noise. The house was perfectly quiet. I pulled the headphones off, letting them hang from my hand for a minute. The gentle swish of the AC going was the only sound in the house.
I took the headphones over to my bed, meaning to just set them down, but I sat down, suddenly feeling completely drained. I stared at the wall, now covered in drawings from floor to ceiling. Every last emotion in me was on that wall. It looked better on that wall than I had ever thought it could.
My eyes closed involuntarily as I leaned against the pillow, the words from the song repeating in my head. If only the world would turn a little slower. I needed more time to fill the other walls with drawings.
Drop a comment below if you want to know what song she's listening to!
