I had been thinking about writing some zany, dark comedy zombie story (which may be my story for the 3rd) and then read about someone's suicide via twitter, and even though I didn't really know her it still zapped all the zany out of my writing. I'm not exactly against suicide since I think people should be able to make that decision for themselves, but thinking about anyone suffering for a long time due to anything is pretty depressing.
When I took 3-dimensional art I was told that glass, especially broken glass, was too symbolically easy of a material to represent pain, so this story may be that but I don't really care. It's just the 182 words I wrote yesterday that were somewhat cohesive and comepelte. Also, the "they" in this story is a singular gender neutral "they" because I couldn't decide on any specific details.
The Window
The first time the window broke, they patched it back
together with tape. Scotch tape. Invisible, but not so secure. Smoothing it
down flat until it was only a delicate ripple on the surface. It was the best
that could be done without anyone being able to see the break. And there was
only one at that time.
Over the years the window broke several more times. Sometimes
they knew what had struck it and other times they did not, but it broke anyway.
The cracks spider-webbed out from the impact. Almost invisible tape held the
splintering pane together. Layers of adhesive clouded it over from the inside.
It wasn’t a perfect fix. The integrity of the structure had
been compromised, but they’d reached a point where they couldn’t add any more
layers because someone would notice. Some people had noticed. Friends would
walk by and wave, but they couldn’t be seen through the fog. Besides, those
people didn’t have to deal with this constantly broken window. Pieces of glass
that were only held in suspension as long as the tape held.
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