Rip Current

A couple things:
1. I didn't write yesterday because I was really sick (aka hung over).
2. You should vote on the poll. I'm going to be writing about it at the end of every week. I'll explain this blog's setup later at the end of this week. "Ego" week, that is.

Now, onto today's story.

~~~

Janice hasn’t been there in so long that she had forgotten how it made her feel. Sometimes she would wonder if she would ever go back. This place inspired in her a deep melancholy and pure happiness, all at once.
The tide was slowly drifting out. It made her want to get in and be absorbed into the giant mass of water, never to be seen again. No one would ever be able to hate her anymore. Her life could end, and with it all the sadness she carried, like so much dirty laundry. A waste of a person. She shouldn’t waste the precious resources that more beautiful human beings need. She could just go.
Janice knew that she was almost a miscarriage. Placed in intensive care from the moment she was shoved out of the womb. She had always suspected that her parents blamed her for their extreme poverty. Hospital bills still came in; the interest built faster than they could pay. When Janice had tried to move out of her parents’ house at the age of 18, they had made her get a job and stay to help them pay. Her mother had threatened to transfer the debt onto her if she attempted to leave.
The last time she had been to the beach was with her old friends Sara and Margot. The three of them used to hang out all the time. Well, until Sara had started dating Fred, and Margot got with Jolene. Fred and Jolene were best friends, of course, and so the four of them began hanging out all the time. Janice started feeling like an unimportant tagalong and stopped spending her days with them. Janice didn’t have anyone to turn to, so she then just filled her time elsewhere. She accumulated online friends that lived hundreds or more miles away.
The lack of face to face human interaction might have driven her to severe depravity and self-degradation. She had decided to come to the ocean today because none of it was really worth all this pain. The water was a bit chilly—it made her hair stand on end. Maybe, hopefully, the last time it would ever do that. The sun was on its way down. Maybe she would wait for it to set, and then start swimming towards it.
A sandpiper was flitting nervously across the sandy terrain. Janice noticed that it had four children excitedly following behind. She smiled. If only life was that simple. If only she could experience such a simple joy. If only, if only.

Sallow Susan

She had only last planned driving down the highway. She didn’t know where she was headed, but it didn’t really matter. Things just needed to be made right, and if anyone was going to do it, why not herself? She needed to escape. All that mattered was that she put as many miles between her and Chicago as possible.
A familiar sound buzzed through the car. Text message. Good thing the traffic was slow at three in the morning.
suz u r in NO condi. to drive…that shits gonna get fucked thats MY car tu no
“Bullshit!” Susan screamed, all of a sudden. Her voice was a little scratchy due to not being used for nearly an hour. “Bullshit bullshit bullshit!”
Susan felt as if she had helped make at least half the payments on the Plymouth she was sliding down the highway in. But José didn’t give a fuck. He didn’t give a god-damned shit. She would just hand him the money. He probably didn’t even spend it on the damn car; he probably got laid every fucking night by a different girl, leaving her at home by herself. The creditors were always calling. He didn’t answer the phone because he was always gone, doing something mysterious. If she even asked where he had been he would just tell her to shut up, goddamn it. Sometimes he wouldn’t even speak English for her.
She had always wanted to want to escape. She just didn’t think it mattered all that much, for a long time, whether she stayed or left. Susan had a very high boiling point. Like copper, or something, right? That stuff takes forever to boil.
“Who gives a fuck!” Susan’s frantic voice again. “It doesn’t even matter what I do now. I’m stuck here on the highway. I have nowhere to go! No one to see! Fucking, goddamn son-of-a-bitch no one!”
Susan usually made it a point never to curse, but these sure were extenuating circumstances. She had nothing but the car, her CD case (“Ironic” by Alanis Morissette was playing medium-softly), her cell phone, a duffel bag of clothes and a toothbrush, and the vodka she had under the passenger side. She didn’t even have her wits any more, it seemed.
“Shut the hell up!”
The road was empty on I 80-W out of Chicago. Cars weren’t out at 3 AM, they all respected themselves well enough to be asleep at this time of night. They had jobs, friends—pasts, futures. You know, everything that everyone wants. Like a sitcom, like a Hallmark card.
She figured she could make all the way to Iowa City. Start fucking fresh. Maybe she could make things right this time. No more stupid relationships. No more stay at home and live off the trust fund. No more no life. She would change her name. Blanca. She had always liked that name, for some reason. She wanted it for her and José’s child, but it had turned out that she was infertile. So if she couldn’t give the name away, she would keep it. Hold on to it tight.
All of a sudden she remembered what he had said, two nights ago. “I don' t da una mierda maldecida dios qué usted hace con su vida! Aren' ¿t nosotros en esto junto? Pozo no más. I' m en esto para mi uno mismo de mierda ahora,” from which she could only figure out tht he was switching between Spanish and English, his alcohol intake sure was showing, and that he didn’t care about what she did anymore.
So she left. With nothing to her but some collected items and a beautiful, beautiful name that almost fit her, she left.