three : an unconventional lover and a re-encounter

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by ChocolateSummer

by ChocolateSummer

- - -

IF YOU LISTENED CLOSELY, with your ears to the walls and silence as your companion, you'd hear the harsh yet soft, steady sound of a machine - a machine that can torture you with its unending flatline or bring you joyful tears to your lashes with its steady beeping.

I yelled at it, not for ending the life of its patient, but for creating pain that was long undisturbed.

In my case, Emmy's pain. Miss Eloise, the head nun, laid lifelessly on the neutral white sheets that was not meant to soothe or pain, but in this case it decided to hurt.

I remember Emmy squeaking her name, "Miss Eloise."

"Miss Eloise."

Until she uttered on a more personal note, "Mama?"

Miss Eloise had never been Emmy's mother, but she was a rare, pure mother's love to her, as if she was love itself.

Which was why Emmy was pained in the worst way - because love itself was dead.

- - -

It was morning and she was mourning. Emmy had transformed three hundred sheets of tissue into crumpled nothings stuffed into a random chasm in the apartment.

Her eyes were puffed and red. After coming home from the radio station (which was an anxious first day of work for me), as blithe as I was, I suddenly met the eyes of a cavewoman on drugs. (Hopefully that wasn't offending.)

"We need more tissue," she croaked, right after blowing into one, and I immediately believed the cavewoman chopped Emmy in pieces and crumpled every piece of her body in the tissues.

"Irene, please. Just go. I'm crying now so I don't have to in the future," the cavewoman, who I finally realize as Emmy, voiced nasally.

"Alright. I'll also get some ice cream because apparently that helps emotional teens?"

I slowly backed out of the door, letting the soft click of the door drag me to another world.

- - -

"What would be better - banana nut or wild berries?" I whispered to myself, sighing as my head throbbed along with the slight thrumming of my heart.

"Banana nut. I swear, that's the best bloody thing in this entire store," an all-too-familiar accent startled me.

It was certainly too early to be startled.

"Percy, hi," I breathed, cracking a small upturned curve on my lips.

"Oh? Hello, Irene, right?" he replied, a chuckle following shortly after.

I drew in a breath and prepared to ask him how he'd been in the last three weeks I hadn't seen him. A high-pitched ring snapped me out of my sleepy daze.

"Sorry, got to take this," Percy said, pressing his cell to his ear.

After paying for the 'best bloody thing', I watched Percy scurry out the door.

I waved my hand in the air several times, but he seemed to ignore me all the more.