Five Minutes of Life - 10thDoM A Cat Can Look At A King

The wind easily whips her hair across her cheeks, stinging them so that her eyes water. This isn't a lullaby, she thinks, this isn't the way things are. Across the busy road, she spots a bench beneath a tree that looks oh-so-inviting. Making her way there is a careful process as cars and trucks rocket by her. She is terrified of being hit but starts a timid venture out into the sea of steel meteors whizzing by.

If she had an umbrella, it would be inside out by now. If she were wearing a skirt, it would be Marilyn Monroe'd by now. She loathes her long hair right now even though it's one of the few things about herself that she likes.

Twice, she is nearly hit. The timid, start/stop gait she has taken across the street has irritated many motorists and barely escaped causing a wreck. If she didn't know better, she'd swear that her heart would explode from the massive bass drum speed roll it's doing. The bench is nearly hers though, and she sighs and smiles at once as she balances on one foot, crossing the other over her knee to remove her shoe, then repeat to the other side with a bit of a wobble. It's OK. Today is a Monday. Balancing is always harder on Mondays, she remembers her yoga teacher saying.

The grass is cool beneath her feet, surely kept that way by the gusty winds, since the sun is doing his very best to smother the earth with his heat. The feeling reminds her of summer days back home, minus the wind. It never got this windy and this sunny at the same time back in small town, Alabama, or if it did, she can't recall.

A lump of something is on her destination bench, but she can't make it out just yet. She hopes it's not something gross and looks around for someplace else to go. There is another bench... Across the street she nearly just died crossing. It is not beneath a lovely tree though, nor is it sitting upon lush green grass. The bench across the terrifying sea of speeding steel is lonely, and she's tired of being in lonely places. She's tired of being lonely.

As she nears the bench, she can make out that the lump is furry and has a mini panic attack at the irrational thought that the creature inhabiting her bench is a rabid dog. She's terrified of dogs for no real reason she can recall. Once, or maybe more, she was attacked by her great granny's cataract-blinded demonic chihuahua, and for sure just once, she was attacked by a Great Dane. That's what she tells everyone, but if the truth were fully disclosed, she was afraid, or maybe just had a deep dislike, of dogs before any of those events ever occurred. At any rate, she dislikes dogs with a passion. Every time she reads one of those articles talking about how people who dislike dogs are not good people, she truly feels bad about herself.

Much to her relief, a lazy cat peeks his head up as she approaches. She's highly allergic to cats but loves them anyhow. As she gets closer, she notices that the cat is lying on a paper of some sort, and the cat, rather than closing its eyes and being aloof, seems to be staring at whatever is on the page, and she wonders what could be so interesting to a cat. For a moment, she watches the cat as its fur bristles in the wind.

She sits on the other side of the bench from the cat and pulls out her Nook, pressing the button on the top to make the scary forest screen saver disappear and the navigation panel light up. Surprisingly, the cat isn't skittish and doesn't move nor does it take it's eyes off of it's bed/very interesting paper.

After trying to read a book on her Nook and then playing a game of Sudoku but being completely distracted by the cat's uncanny interest in a paper and the whipping winds thrashing her hair about, she can't really concentrate on either. Finally, she carefully leans over to see what in the world could be so interesting to a cat. It's a magazine, she can see now, and it is open to a page about the deteriorating health of Rama IX.

She giggles out a little too loud, startling the cat enough that he takes his eyes off the Thai king's picture long enough to look at her with all the disdain a cat can muster. She smiles at the cat, satisfied to know what is so interesting, and as the cat returns its gaze to the king, her mind settles enough to let her enjoy a book on her Nook.

Not For Jellyfish - 10thDoM RoM No Prompt (M0,C1)

Each "chapter" for the RoM Challenge will include prose as well as a simple song to accompany it. Yes, the songs are "original" to the extent that anything can be original these days and yes, the video will be of me singing it. Enjoy the journey...

Here are the chapters, in order:
Not For Jellyfish
Into The Deep
Reluctant Titans
Origami Heart
John Followed
Whale Tide
Beneath The Stars
Operatic Irony
Careful Wishes
Goodnight


Not For Jellyfish

The aqua colors, silvery lines crawling the ceiling, and general hum of the large cavern allowed her to be in a trance that couldn't be easily broken. She watched the large grey predators swim menacingly through the bright blue waters, completely unimpressed and feeling no awe or fear of the aquatic predator.

She wandered through the halls of exhibits, in her own world, completely unaware of the swarms of people brushing against her, ignoring her as they pointed and gasped, screeched and awed at each of the sea creature exhibits. More than anything, she enjoyed pretending to be invisible, anonymous, a wisp in the memories of the people she passed.

Her posture and gait changed with each day, each feeling. Sometimes, she walked tall and confident, head held high, smiling brightly at passersby as she offers a friendly greeting to those she knows and strangers as well. This happened fairly infrequently because for some reason, she found this to be infinitesimally exhausting. Sometimes, she seemed to float through crowds and down streets, aware that she must look somewhat confused and aloof but not caring that some might figure her to be a little mentally unbalanced. Mostly, however, she kept her gaze ahead, blinders on, and her best "eat shit and die" face staring out at the world. If she couldn't be invisible, maybe she could be unapproachable.

There was an awareness that certain people had a certain idea of her. It, at once, made her feel powerful and sad. Powerful to know that she wielded some kind of off-kilter, trance-like allure over men, particularly groups of supposed friends who would compete against each other for the chance to be with her, and sad because she knew that the image created of her was not anything close to the truth of her being and that there would be disappointment with their "prize" should any of them win her at all.

As she wandered from hall to hall, exhibit to exhibit, she had hundreds of thoughts, few having to do with another, no clear path from thought A to thought B and most of them contradictory even if they were truthful. It was this constant duality of thought that made her "the weird girl" she'd come to believe... That, her unnatural literalness, and her incomprehensibly trusting nature created a person who fit no molds, who couldn't be categorized or controlled. She found this amusing considering her sometimes incapacitating need to categorize and control everything in her life. Her naivety, if it could be called that considering her awareness of it, was her favorite quality about herself even as it tended to cause her the most pain in all of her relationships.

With that thought fragmenting through her mind, quirking up the right side of her mouth in the way she did when she had these mental tangles, conversing with herself, facial expressions and all, she wandered into the final hall of the massive aquarium. She always saved the best for last, savoring the moment she'd get to gaze upon the ethereal creatures falling and rising, pulsing and floating, tangled and billowing, dangerous and transparent. In all the animal kingdom, she would never feel connected to another species if not for jellyfish.



Jellyfish

She wanders along
Looking through the wrong glass, the wrong glass
And she’s crying her song
To pass the time, it’s time to pass

It’s useless to move on by
Her reflection in the watery sky
It’s useless to move on by
Her reflection in the cool waters lie

She’s singing light
Floating tendrils, poisonous grasp
Her voice takes flight
A crowd of solitude at last

CHORUS

She’d float, float, float for you
But no one looks at the jellyfish
They look right though

She’s smiling dark
Voices crack a little, seem to wane
Her presence sheer
Let’s go up, up, and away

CHORUS