Alone

When I was very small I knew I was different from everyone else. I couldn't explain why or how I knew, but I was sure that all of the other people in the world were really two legged monsters, hairy, intelligent apes. When I finally saw The Planet Of The Apes as a teenager I recognized the plastic, domesticated versions of my childhood phobia.

The important thing to realize about these ape-like cave monsters was that they wanted me to think they were human, just like me. I'm not sure WHY they would bother to fool me, why every single being of their kind would want to focus on pulling the wool over my six-year-old eyes, but what mattered more than motive was that it was true. I was sure that, at some point, the monsters would reveal themselves and rip me to pieces.

I would stare out the car window and watch pedestrians crossing the street, on their way to work, to school, to home, absorbed in their own lives and ignorant of my very existance, and I knew that as soon as they turned the corner and were out of my sight they would shed their human skins and laugh about their scheme.

Not one person was exempt from this fantastic phobia. My classmates, my teachers, my parents, my brothers, they were all chosen to be close to me and deceive me, to lure me further into their trap. I was alone.

When I finally saw the movie Truman, I sympathised with the unwitting star of his own reality show. It revived my fears as a child. That movie frightened me more than any other I have every seen.

I don't know why I felt that way. I guess all children have some sort of self-centered fantasy, before they realize they are one of many sentient beings, and that every one of them has their own set of experiences, memories, likes, dislikes, and feelings. But looking back it's funny how things ave changed. These days I imagine that I am invisible. I can walk down the street or down the aisle of a store and no one sees me. My family, my husband, my own children, they all go through the motions, smiling, nodding, but they are just luring me into the beleif that I am important, that I am real, like they are. I am forgotten as soon as I am out of sight.

Bridge's House

"Aunt Bridge?" she called through the screen. The door itself was wide open, even though the air was chilly with fall. Shelly shielded her eyes with her hand, peering in through the dusty screen. "Hello? Aunt Bridge? Are you in there?"

Shelly glanced over her shoulder down the street, looking for someone, anyone, she might be able to call out to in case of an emergency - maybe someone broke in. Maybe the worst had happened and Aunt Bridge had some sort of medical emergency... as if that made any sense. Why would a medical emergency lead to the door standing open at 5pm in September. What Shelly was really looking for, down that tiny street, was a sense of regularity. Something to re-establish reality.

Lark street was lined with almost-identical houses, as though they had all been built from the same Make-a-house Kit. They were each painted a different color, but they were all very neat and trim. Lawns were mowed. A couple of houses had flags over their doors, one had a carefully tended rosebush prominently displayed. One even had a small statue of a child squatting next to a smaller statue of a frog. But the houses were alike inbuild and in the care taken of them. The driveways had different cars, if they had cars at all, but were all free of debris. The cars sitting in the debris-free driveways most likely worked. Insdie, the houses would be more or less neat and clean. The air would be breathable. The rooms themselves functional.

And then there was this house. Aunt Bridge's House.

It was the corner house, which made it stand out even more, if that was possible, given the bright shade of Barbie pink it had been painted. Even though the paint was peeling and chipped, it had lost none of it's color. The house itself was falling apart. Two shutters hung on loose hinges, and a window on the side of the house was actually barded up with boards, the boards themselves plywood stolen from a construction site across town, and half covered in spray paint.

The yard, however, was in such a state that the house was hardly noticable. It was clutteres with birdbaths, half begun gardening projects that involved deep holes and shovels still stuck in the earth. Piles of rocks , tin cans hainging from sticks and strings, and various other "Art" were scattered all over the place. This was exactly what Shelly had loved about Aunt Bridge's house when she was a little girl. And now that she was an adult she could see the danger in it, the disorganization, the senility, the mess, the craziness. It looked as though the bracken in back of the houses had actually vomited the unsavory parts of the woods and wilderness onto Aunt Bridge's property, and no one had cleaned it up yet.

Shelly pushed open the screen door and walked inside. It was, as usual, a cluttered mess. Shelly held her reath, trying to postpone the unavoidable scent of pent up air and dust and cooking and inscence and mold she would inhale as soon as the needed to take her first breath. "Aunt Bridge?" she called again. "Are you home?"

The light switch did nothing. Shelly gritted her teeth, wondering how long Aunt Bridge's light had been out and how long she would go without replacing it. The old woman might live years in a house with no working lightbulbs, and then be surprised and offended when someone mentioned the fact that she didn't have to live in the dark.

Maybe this is it, she thought. Maybe this is when I walk into a room and find Aunt Bridge... what> Had died in her sleep? Had suffered a heart attack? Hung herself in the closet? Had suffocated under a pile of fallen... junk?

Shelly stepped around a pile of books in the bathroom and peeked into the shower. Nothing. She walked carefully down the hall into the bedroom, dodging a trunk filled with rocks and sticks and a storage container of... scarves? Were those brightly colored scarves? Shelly peeked her head into the bedroom.

Aunt Bridge lay on the bed, eyes closed. A book spread open on her chest, her reading glasses askew on her face. Half of her grey-blond hair escaped the simple braid she wore each day, and frizzed around her face. The face was... slack. Shelly strained to see a sign, any sign, that her Aunt was still breathing.

"Aunt Bridge?" she whispered. "Bridget? Are you seeping?" Shelly took a step closer to the bed and reached out to take a pulse... if she remembered her first aid it would be right there, on the neck...

Her Aunt jerked back in surprise and Shelly shrieked in startled irritation.

"Oh, Shelly! How long have I been asleep?" the older woman asked, straining to sit up.

"Jesus! Aunt Bridge! You left the door wide open! I thought something happened to you!"

Aunt Bridge fixed her glasses and closed her book, folding the page back to mark it. "Well that makes no sense," she said. "Why would the door being open mean anything had happened to me?"

Shelly shook her head and turned back towards the kitchen. "Where do you keep your light bulbs?" she shouted.

The Bracelet

"You dropped something," he had said, reaching his hand into her pocket. She felt that same weakness spread through her body stemming from where his hand had brushed her hip through her coat pocket. What had she dropped? She softly picked her way through the kitchen to the chair she had thrown her coat over when she had gotten home, and slowly reached into the pocket, not wanting the rustling of the material to wake Jerry, asleep on the couch.
It was a bracelet.
And it wasn't hers.
It probably belonged to one of the other girls, but none of them had said anything about missing a bracelet.
She shook it, rubbing dirt off the charms as gently as she could. It was a thin chain, for a charm bracelet, and the charms seemed tiny themselves, delicate. There were five of them: a baby shoe with "1997" inscribed on the sole, a heart with a clear stone, a butterfly with both clear and blue stones in it's tiny wings, a couple of music notes with clear gemstones in the note parts, and something that looked like a book. "To JC from CW" was inscribed on the tiny cover, like the title of the tiny little novel. That was the biggest charm everything else was very tiny.
It didn't seem like something that would belong to Tasha or Ginger.
For a second she thought it might be a gift to her from Jesse, but them she remembered the initials on the book. She was not JC and he was definitely not CW. Whoever those people were.
This belonged to someone else.
She took it to the bathroom and dipped it in a cup of water. SHe was afraid she might rust it, but she was trying to get more of the dirt off. Whoever had lost it had lost it a while ago she guessed. They might not be looking for it. At least not anymore. It was surprising, actually, that something so tarnished and caked with dirt would be so... complete. The inscriptions were legible. The stones were still there - none had fallen out. They were tiny, tiny little stones - more fragments, than actual stones. But still. You could tell what they were
She looped it around her wrist and fastened it. The clasp worked with no problem. She was actually able to fasten it the first try, which was more than she could say for anything else with those little clasps.
The bracelet was warm from the water, and made her wrist seem graceful. She glanced into the bathroom mirror, half expecting to see a willowy, perfect-hair person staring back. But it was still her, hair frizzed out, eyes startled and a little bit poofy from crying and lack of sleep.
"I am not going to be with Jesse," she whispered to herself. She knew it was true, and she was, surpisingly, OK with it. The bracelet was light and tickly on the back of her hand and she brushed her hair back from her face and smiled.