The Diary of Vicky
I.Death became her. Like withered leaves in autumn or great drought in summer, she felt emptied and succumbed from bleakness. This Monday morning when Vicky woke up, she felt that everything was dry, docile, even bootless. She felt purposeless, laying sprawled under her sheets for couple of hours after dawn, watching how the earth changed from absolute blanket of darkness to stillness of gray, to hazy purple as morning approached. Death. Death. Death. The word kept on ringing as she was staring outside the window, her unblinking eyes straining and eventually made them limpid red. How she longed for the word to embrace her, to enter her lungs and suffocate her. How she yearned for the word to strangle her neck and take out all her breath, take her oxygen away. How she wished she could take its sharp edge against her wrist, watching jovially, how blood would pour from its slit, staining her body, intoxicating her waiting pores. But in the end, she would think this longing would just go in vain, she being the greatest coward who’d ever live. After all, she learned to live in great tumult everyday. It was running in her blood, circulating in her vein. Pain was not a new phenomenon to her. Consumed with so much existentialism, she got up from bed and headed to her bathroom. After a couple of minutes of banging under her shower, simply wasting water, she went out the bathroom, uncaring of dripping water messing the carpet and proceeded on ransacking her closet. After settling to pairs of pink trousers and black hooded shirt, paired with demonic anklets and tribal necklaces which her mother found eccentric and detested the most, she left her room firmed to call this day a day, despite the consumption of depression in her body. Downstairs, she knew her mother, with all her crowning glory, had already prepared her usual breakfast before heading to her office. Before leaving, she noticed a wooden bracelet sitting over her diary at her side table, a bracelet that was not her own, but decided to simply shrug it away. II. School for Vicky had always been doleful, having classmates that could be replaced with empty-handed Barbie dolls, or frat boys as stupid ogres. Her professors were far less stimulating— they were more of robots mechanically feeding instructions to students, totally unfeeling and void of emotions. They are just that. Bore. Bore. Bore. While listening to Paul Weller on her mp3 and feeling disgusted with classmates talking about stupid reality shows and cheesy girl magazines, the word death continued to reverberate in her ear. She didn’t know why it kept on ringing, it was starting to get on her nerves. She wondered where Brando was. He just told her last night that he would fetch her today and they would go for a night with his band in Dumaguete. Perhaps he wouldn’t come. Perhaps he’s flirting with other bitches again. That bullshit. He had always kept her hanging. She felt tired of his alibis. Just wait and see and she’d show him. III. Having fed-up with her classes, Vicky decided to go home early and stayed in confines of her room, perhaps she would continue reading Sophie’s world or gum her eras with mp3. Upon entering the house, she realized nobody was home. Mom should be here, perhaps she’s on her bedroom, she thought to herself, right after checking the empty kitchen. Vicky went straight to her bedroom, death swarming inside her head while listening to Fiona Apple, not minding the absence of her mother. Would it be nice to end her life by taking Aerosol or Baygon? But she thought of its taste and hastily dismissed the idea. She snatched her diary and started scribbling the list of possible ways of taking her life. Some, like hanging herself on the ceiling and slitting her wrist with blade or something, seemed too trite, too commonplace. Same thing goes with popping her mouth with pills, for she loathed the idea of gradual killing. She preferred drastic and undeterred death. It seemed to lessen the pain. After dismissing the idea of jumping over her window which definitely would not kill her because of the bushes on her possible landing, she hurled her diary at the corner most part of her room, feeling bloated. She hadn’t eaten anything since this morning. And why did she crave so much for death? The sudden swish of curtain in gush of wind interrupted her blankly staring in space. With narrowed eyebrows, Vicky closed the window, trying to remember if she really closed her window before leaving this morning. She really was sure she did… Wheeling around, her peripheral vision caught a shadow moving outside the door of her room. IV. Perhaps, Mom? Vicky thought to herself. That bitch, she muttered angrily. She was always like this, moving around the house without noticing her, without even checking that she’s already here, her only daughter. Could have at least tried to act like a mother. She must be preparing again for a date, Vicky thought. Since her Dad died years ago, her mother had been acting like a lady fresh in her youth, entertaining suitors younger than her age, sometimes even her daughter’s age, flirting with them openly in her coquettish manners and flaring dresses. That slut. Perhaps she would talk to her mother about this, about her disapproval in her mother’s unbecoming lifestyle and un-motherly actions. She knew she just had to do it. V. She furiously went outside her room and headed to the other side of the house, next to library where the Master’s bedroom was. It somehow disheveled Vicky that all the lamps along the hallway were still out, despite the fact that it’s already darkening outside. As light poured along the corridor after switching them on, a strange sight appeared to her. There lying innocently on the floor was a bracelet, a black tribal beads with black gothic cross as a pendant. She couldn’t remember having the same kind in her collection, it was not hers, but it seemed familiar to her. Somehow, this whole thing was familiar to her, like it already happened in her past life like a déjà vu. She curiously picked it up and checked. It suddenly dawned on her that it was the same bracelet she noticed in her bedside table this morning. But what was it doing in this hallway? Vicky continued pacing towards the Master’s bedroom. In each step, she noticed blood stains on the floor and spots on the wallpaper, all dried and darkened. Vicky gasped as the sight of a gun lying on the floor loomed on her. It was her father’s gun. Trembling, she picked it up and felt the coldness of its barrel crawling in her skin, to her spine, up to her skull. Her eyes flew to the door of her parents’ bedroom as it made a creaking sound, it slightly opened in mild sweep of wind. At the foot of the ajar door, Vicky saw something her eyes could not believe. There at the foot of the door lying was her diary. VI. Agape, Vicky picked it up, wondering how the hell her diary went here. She remembered hurling it to her room a while ago. There must be something wrong happening in here, she thought to herself, fighting not to scream in mild sweep of cold wind on her skin. She never believed in supernatural, all her life she believed that everything could be explained. But how could she explain this gun, this bracelet, those blood stains, much more her diary in this deserted hallway? She flicked the pages of her diary and found out, in disbelief, that her suicidal lists were gone. This is impossible! What she found out in her last entry was something she could not remember writing, though it was obviously hers because of the penmanship. Her mind didn’t want to read it, but she felt she could find something in her unknown entry that would explain everything to her. …I just arrived from school when I noticed that Mom’s still not around. Kind of new to me. She would always arrive as early as she could to fix herself for her usual date. I decided to check her room, just to check if she’s there. I know she’d get pissed finding me entering her room, she hated my presence so much, but what the hell. Along my path in hallway, I noticed a bracelet lying on the floor. As I picked it up, I realized it was Brando’s. But how did it go there? I went straight to my Mom’s bedroom but before I could knock, I heard someone moaning and mildly screeching. I knew it, I knew she’s having sex with someone again, with guys who could pass as her sons, desecrating my father’s memory in that bedroom. I decided to peep just to check who’s her latest. With every fraction and slight movement, I opened the door. I saw them, her new sex toy. It was Brando, my boyfriend for months, lying naked in the bed, moaning my mother’s name. And there she was, the slut, on top of him, gyrating over his thighs like a sex slave. Perhaps it blinded me, but dear Diary, I never mean it. You must understand how it was for me to catch my mother and my boyfriend in bed, and yes, I got my father’s gun hidden in the library, and silently went back to my mother’s room. You should have seen their faces when I opened the door, but I wasted no time and gunned them down. How sweet for both of them to call my name in their very last breath, as I tore their flesh with bullets. I’ve never seen like this in my life and I had to laugh dear Diary, I had to… Vicky’s face was wet with tears. She could not believe it, killing her own mother and her boyfriend. But she remembered it now, the rage that she had, the very moment that she saw them. It was too vivid. Vicky wiped her tears and continued reading. Death became me, dear Diary. Like withered leaves in autumn or a great drought in summer, I felt emptied and succumbed from bleakness. It would be nonsense if I would just leave them here, in this room, I will never let them become lovers again even after their death, so I decided to kill myself too. I will haunt them, I promised it to myself. And with the last bullet I aimed it in my stomach, I read it in the book The Da Vinci Code that it would be the best way to kill a person, for it prolongs excruciating pain before death. I should have been dead by now, I don’t know why I still breathe, but I can feel it now, I can feel it now… Vicky, her whole body trembling in sudden realization, snatched her shirt upward and checked her tummy. There it was, the hole where the bullet passed, now gangrened with yellowish pus and worms. The door of master’s bedroom flew open in instance, wind sweeping her over, and there at the bed she saw her mother’s corpse on top of Brando’s decaying body. And at the foot of the bed was her own body, her face was ghastly with her mouth and blood-shot eyes wide-open. Her blood all over the floor has long been dried. Before she could so much react, her eyes caught the reflection in her mother’s vanity mirror: there they are, mother and Brando, naked and pallid, their translucent bodies buoyed in mid-air, their eyes blankly staring at her. Vicky screamed in fear, in rage, in disbelief; as screamed the neighborhood would only think as a sweep of amihan wind rustling the trees. The gun, the bracelet and her diary fell from her translucent hands, and landed in spot exactly where Vicky first picked them all. (Michael V. Mariano) Possibly Related Posts:
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