Fiction

fiction |ˈfik sh ən|
noun
literature in the form of prose, esp. short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people.

She was the type of girl who regarded herself as exceptionally beautiful or exceptionally ghastly, depending on the amount of time she spent thinking of her real or perceived sins of the past or present. Her dress sense imitated the practical style of her father, a factory worker whom she idolized, making her appear at once unaffected, sensual and a little butch. Her character, to those who didn't know her, was mostly dependent on the physical image she held of herself on any particular day. She would as often be completely overlooked in conversations as she would be the very magical source from which a bright, warm light radiated. Similarly, her ability to converse with strangers could never be predicted, making her a dangerous option at the type of party that relies on the geniality of its guests. She favoured theoretical discussions on a number of social issues over everyday chitchat, which she regarded as beneath her. Even in her brightest moments she seemed oppressed, even at her most content she gave the impression of constant movement. She was difficult to be around, and she knew it. Most of all she understood the pedestrian quality of her own existence, which is why she killed herself on a Saturday in July.

By the following Tuesday the disorganized efforts of a variety of those who tried to love her finally yielded results. Her employer, an amiable man of forty whom she secretly loved, managed to convince her landlord to crack the stubborn skull of her humble home to reveal its blue-faced, alcohol-soaked treasure. A very impersonal autopsy report on crisp government paper revealed that she swallowed a number of pills that she presumably stole when house-sitting for friends with a bottle of vodka before hanging herself with a thin, black faux leather belt. A lack of oxygen finally did the trick.

The funeral was a simple affair that she would have hated. The preacher read from the Book of Psalms, tried to console the handful of attendees who stared back at him blankly and wondered whether they remembered to switch off the stove and worried about their unusual lack of sexual appetite in recent days.

Her distraught parents started packing up her belongings a day after the funeral. Her mother, ever practical, wanted to waste no time in finalising the affairs surrounding the death of her only child. To her surprise, she found a packet of King Size Rizzla rolling papers (drugs?) and a pink dildo with a vibrating attachment for clitoral stimulation, an expired condom and a tube of flavoured lubricant (a failed relationship? venereal disease?) among the meagre belongings of her saintly daughter. A number of diaries could have shed light on the events leading up to her darling's horrid act of self-destruction, but a belated sense of respect for her privacy prevented the grieving mother from reading them. 

A day after the moving truck removed the last traces of the swinger, as her landlords jokingly called her, an overweight and slightly superstitious cleaning lady with respiratory problems industriously dusted and swept and soaked and dried until the last particles of her existence were removed from the dwelling in which she experienced not so much unhappiness as a complete lack of emotion.

With a final, audible pull, the door was closed on the life, the love, the fear, the hope, the borderline insanity of an average 25-year-old.