Corners & In-Betweens

"To perceive is to suffer;"
Attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius in Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

The poor girl's brain was nothing. Not even a proper body to cease, and her mind... Unreachable. The flow of memories from what her life had been flowed in quick flashes through her broken mind.

'In the bazaar, a pretty doll.'

Oxygen lacked, there was no room to move. Nothing but darkness.
'I said something, that made them happy. It wasn't only sounds that time... اب.'

As the flashes went on, their speed went down, as if the details that slowly filled them held them in time.

'That girl, I want to be her friend. Her hair is nice and I like the way she speaks. I approach her and... bite her arm.'

'My essay got the second prize. Minu's was way worse, I read it. I can see her smug face as she receives the small trophy. If I had sold myself out like her to the religious theme, I'd be the one there.'

Her body tried to react, but not only did it have no strength, it also had literally no space. Stuck.

'College is so weird, I don't like much studying close to boys. That one... He's staring weird at me.'

Things became clearer and her head got lighter. The events got closer to now.

'I'm so tense... I can't believe I'm graduating. My life starts now, and I will finally be able to follow my dreams and get that book written!'

And, inside her memory, she found herself leaving the removal van, two weeks ago.

Babak had just started taking her things out of it as she sat on the stairs of the building.

"Well, I could really use some help."

She rose one eyebrow and laughed.

"No way, you lost the bet. There were way more old car models on the way here than new ones."

"How cold of you... " He said, facetiously. "You know I'm a silly countryside boy, I just assumed the capital would be full of newer cars. It is the big city after all."

"You can cry as much as you want, I'm not laying a single finger on those crates. These nails have just been made. Plus I gotta write, you know."

"Oh... So Miss girly girl, with her pretty nails and prettier poems!"

"Yes, I am Miss girly girl, and that won't stop me from kicking your balls if you keep crying for help with the results of the bet you lost."

"So you want to talk about losing bets? What about the Persepolis match?"

"Pff, I will pay you..." She said, turning her face away. "I will get you your poem."

"Poem? I thought we settled with a kiss if I won, and if you did I'd have to move your stuff. And then you came up with the other bet, and now I have to both move your stuff alone and got no kiss..." Babak said as he looked at her in a goofy way.

"I said I could do a poem as good as a kiss, and that's how this whole ordeal started. I'll make your poem, so stop crying. I'll go see my new neighbors."

"Ok, I'll handle back the keys when I finish getting those to your place..."

"No prob!" She said, walking backwards and doing finger guns, as she entered the building.

She greeted the handyman and made her way up the stairs, since the elevator was broken. The place's manager told her the building had just been finished a couple of months back, but something felt fishy. It was not like the place looked dangerous or unstable, it was only that it had small cracks and bumps, as if the place was really old. The paint was cracked and dropping in chunks too. But she wasn't the one to judge all of that so proactively. That was the only place in the capital which she could afford.