Searching for a Perfect Day

Complex

Anna jerks awake, heart thudding erratically in her ears and breaths coming in short uneven pants. She looks to her left side, one of the exhales coming out in relief when she sees her sister’s still sleeping visage before the back of her head meets the comfort of the hot pillow again. She’s not sure what time it is, but the palpable darkness of her surroundings indicate an early hour. Still too early for her to be awake, but she’s used to it by now. 

Her night terrors have been a part of her sleeping schedule for years—three, four? She stopped counting long ago. And one would think she’d be used to the chill that comes in near tandem with the constant occurrence, averaging four or five times per week, but in her dreams her mindset is always the same—a blank slate. As if the last five years hasn’t happened, Elsa’s only turning her back now, and the deep, knowledgable, and sadistic part of her brain triggers the fact that the older girl is leaving her forever and she’s helpless for all the effort, the crying, and pleading she screams in a dark, lonely world. 

Recently it’s manifested into more. More of the same, but with additional people: her parents. Unlike Elsa, they don’t turn their backs. They eerily stand in place with eyes unblinking as if staring right into her soul. Then they slowly degenerate from the loving people she remembers them as to the mangled bodies inside the freezing morgue. She’d scream just the same, until her lungs would give out and her throat would grow hoarse, but just like all of her other nightmares, it wouldn’t matter. No one ever hears her. 

She draws in a deep breath, sleep deprived eyes staring wide awake into the darkened ceiling. She knows it’s impossible to get back to sleep now that she’s awake. It always ends up being this way…and just like those other early mornings she’s endured, she figured she might as well make the time forced on her a productive one. 

She slides carefully off of the bed, eyes glancing warily back at her sister to ensure she doesn’t wake the still slumbering girl. The cold, wooden floor feels good under her bare feet as she tiptoes to her sister’s work desk, clicking the lamp on its surface, and glancing at the homework the other girl had started and finished the night before. The end result are drawings of many final structures—all outdated, medieval-like. Again, an amazement like no other seizes her at seeing Elsa’s work. There’s so much precision, each sketch showing detailed outlines of one story straw houses or two story Tudors in different angles and perspectives—even what it would look like if someone were to cut the building in half and show the interior versus the exterior and how it looks like as a whole. 

Anna had been joking with the other girl about finishing it—she hadn’t expected her to, although in retrospect, she should’ve known…This is Elsa after all. The older girl had never been one to struggle with schoolwork, another enviable trait. She wonders briefly if Elsa had ever looked at her in the same light—with jealousy, hoping to attain something inherently Anna’s that she can’t grasp. The redhead can’t pull any trait of her own that the blonde can’t or hadn’t already surpassed though, so she lets the thought flicker off. Best not to dwell on it and ruin the start of what’s promising to be a good, albeit, last day with her sister. 

Finally remembering why she tiptoed to the work desk in the first place, she grabs a few choice items: Elsa’s sketchpad, a couple of drawing pencils, and an eraser and makes her way back to the bed. She turns the bedside lamp on to the dimmest setting, eyeing her sister for any reaction to the sudden light and smiles when the older girl merely sleeps on, arms splayed and crossed in front of her, body curled in a fetal position, and legs bent together, the blanket kicked haphazardly to the bottom of the bed. 

The redhead drops the items on the floor carefully and goes back to the work table to get the chair as well, trying with all her might to not make any noise—every shuffle and thud in the heavy silence rings like gunshot to her ears. She sets the computer chair on the floor, cringing at the sound, looking again towards her sister and sighing in relief at her continued sleeping state. The younger girl’s not quite sure what time the blonde had gone to sleep the previous night—Anna had watched her work for the better part of an hour before tucking in at her insistence on not waiting up.