Monique

The Alarm

The alarm rings. 

She reaches out to press the stop button. She feels the table beside her. She can't reach the alarm. It keeps ringing, grinding into her skull like a chainsaw. She groans. She swears. She curses the arsehole who invented the alarm. She finally finds the device and slams her palm hard on the shut up button, before throwing it on the floor. There's a loud crash and then silence. Monique closes her eyes for a minute. She hopes the damn thing is dead. Her life would be so much better without it.

Instinctively she cocks her head to the side and whispers his name. She waits. He doesn't answer. It's then she opens her eyes and reality sinks in like a tonne of bricks. He's gone.

She wants to lay back and go back to sleep. She didn't dream of him last night. She tried envisioning him beside her. All she heard was a muffled voice. All she saw was his figure in a flannel shirt. 

He didn't have a face.

She slowly gets up and places her body under the shower. The water is boiling hot. It scalds her skin. Her flesh becomes bright red, angry at the rising temperature. Steam fills the cubicle. She can barely see the tiled walls around her. She closes her eyes. She breathes in.

"John, where are you?" She asks softly.

There isn't a reply. The water falls like daggers on her skin. She reaches out and turns off the tap. The water freezes mid-air.

Monique stands in the shower, breathing and blinking. She squints her eyes. Maybe just maybe if she imagines John, he'll come back to her.

The air becomes cold and stale. Goosebumps appear on her arms. Her bones freeze the layers of skin and muscle. She begins to shiver. Her dad pounds on the door telling her to hurry up. It's almost seven fifty and school starts at eight thirty.

Great.

She wraps a towel around her body and steps out of the cubicle. She grabs her yellow uniform and hurriedly puts it on. She cringes when she looks at her reflection in the mirror. Yellow looks shit on her. Most colours look crap on her skin tone. She grabs her bag and heads out the door with an apple in her mouth.

John isn't there to say goodbye.

She's popular. She's the girl with over a thousand friends on Facebook. She's the top girl in the school's social hierarchy.

It's all a game.

It's a facade. This is how she's survived high school. She knows the rules of the game.

Once she enters the school building, everyone's eyes are on her. Some look at her with adoration. Others with loathing and self-pity. She ignores them. John taught her not to care. He said life was too short to care about other people's opinions.

But she can't help but stare at them once she turns away. Her skin prickles under the intensity of their gaze. Her friends come crowding weird her, their words violating her brain as the seconds pass.

She feels trapped. She feels lost. John had once described their relationship as that of a doll's house. She was the doll, he was the house. He was her protector; she was the damsel in distress.  

John always said the doll never left the doll's house. A doll was nothing without her house. He said she couldn't live without him. He was forever her safety blanket. She needed him.

While everyone glares at her; as their voices fill her brain, she understands. She understands what happens to a doll once the dollhouse is gone.

She is broken.