Short stories

Into the New Year

Staring at the stars outside her house, Ashley wonders how the new year will be as the clock merrily chimes its arrival. The last year has been a mess of a year and the loneliness has seeped into her skin and made a home there. It became a second skin, a weight on her very being, that became comforting in its own odd way.

Looking at the clock, she realised how everything seems to blur into each other. Time seemingly speeding and slowing without care, taking her in for a roller coaster ride she never asked for. The calm where she could relax and the loops where her heartbeat can't help but try to escape from her ribcage.

Oh, how she longed for something to distract her mind from the abysses deep in her head, in her heart, in her soul. She just wants to feel the calming peace she had with her horses, when seeing her swim team, when she got to work on those antique cars her boyfriend owned. But all she can think about is sand and the hands of fate. Thinking how the fates sit and spin the lives and fates of everyone. Thinking of how they spin her own life as it lays there as delicate as a string.

Sometimes she wonders if they worked in a room with sand falling from the ceiling. Falling, constantly falling, into the bottomless abyss. They'll just sit there - spinning, measuring, cutting - deciding how much sand goes into every person's hourglass.

Watch the seconds bleeding into minutes bleeding into hours bleeding into days bleeding into weeks bleeding into months bleeding into...

It's now the first of January and the calendar resets. Ashley turns 19 this year. She can't help but feel slightly terrified at what's ahead of her.

She's going to be an adult soon.

She's going to have new responsibilities soon.

She's going to have new burdens soon.

She's going to have new ways to disappoint soon.

She's going to FAIL THEM.

She's going to -

The dings of her phone notifications echoes throughout staring at her phone as messages flood her group chats as her friends and groupmates excitedly proclaim their excitement for the new year.

She can't help but smile slightly when seeing their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their thinly veiled desperation for a good year. Seeing them feel so intensely for the new year, for the new opportunities, made the hole in her chest seem to deepen as she watched them from a distance. Sometimes, Ashley can't think of the good things. Sometimes, all she wants is to go back in time to those days of naivety. Where she could play games with her friends and look around the world without a hint of desperation and despair. When the days were easier. When she was better. Sometimes she can't believe how different and similar she was to her past selves. She was never one for grand dreams, and all she wanted was to spend time with the people she loved. It's still the same, just with the pressures of adulthood looming over her shoulder like a phantom from her nightmares. Ashley barely felt like an adult herself, all she felt like was a child wearing a coat too big for her small body as she hesitantly played the role she was given.

She wished for days where she could focus on assignments instead of latching onto whatever made her happy at that moment. She wished that she could remember more so that she wouldn't be a disappointment to others. She wished that her thoughts didn't so easily spiral into thoughts of her friends hating her, of her friends being disappointed with her, of her friends leaving her. It clawed at her throat and left divots of blood bleeding freely as it pooled down to her collarbones. The words stuck in her throat and threatened to choke her when she attempted to give voice to them.

Her friends, both the subject of these thoughts and the balm for them. How ironic, she chuckled humorlessly to herself. Being exposed to such people did help her in the end, all things considered. Being with them, talking to them, brought so many happy memories to mind that she cherished. Even when trying to supplement them with storybooks and characters that brought some colour and saturation in her life, her friends will always be a second home for her.

Part of her is scared that they would leave her. Part of her is scared at the uncertainty of what the future holds, at what laid beyond the present's horizon. Humanity had always been afraid of the vast unknown - and she's not exempt from that. And yet, somehow, some deep part of her is thrumming with unrelenting excitement at that unknown. At the unknown treasures and adventures. At the unknown dangers and hurt. Towards the new experiences that adulthood can offer and all it's adventures and miseries.

Looking down at her phone, at the group chat with her closest friends, she hovered above the keyboard. A reply forming at the tip of her tongue. At the tip of her fingers that shook a bit with every bit of hesitation and anxiety she felt in the depths of her soul. Scrounging up every bit of resolve she had in her body, she responded to her friends and tried to soak in that feeling of contentment she always had with them.

Maybe one day they'll leave her as they drift apart in the grand sea of life, maybe they'll never part. Will she be a memory left to be only thought about wistfully or will she be a burning presence for them even when they're miles apart.

Only time can tell but time is as unforgiving as fate and she has placed only a tentative shaky hope on it.