The Afternoon

"It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis."
~ Margaret Bonnano


She peered through the wire fence and concentrated hard on the steel fence on the other side. Half expecting it to melt, but it didn't. She heard non-existant murmurs from nowhere and felt warm inside. A fly buzzed right past her eyes and settled on the back of her hand. Not wanting to shoo it away, she tried to stay still. Still. Still. Not that hard, clenching her hand harder on the barbed wire, she thought deeply. A surge of anger and she pulled at the fence, the fly buzzed away. Happily, she thought. What does the fly know of her life, anyway? Two months.. at the most. It had nothing to do except fly, fly, fly. She realised with a shock that she can't compare herself to an insect.

The afternoon sun warming her back and a dreary sleepiness seeping into her head. She felt her eyes grow heavy and her inside turn colder. She moved her feet a bit and they ached with a dull ache which said that she should try thinking somewhere else. Moving inside, she saw the stray cat sit by the gate and close her eyes. Once inside, she truned around and latched the gate. Sighing deeply, not a sad sigh, not a happy one, just wasted. The floor felt ice cold beneath her feet. She tried sitting on the stairs but it felt colder sitting on hard metal. She decided to go to the old library through the backyard.

The library was always a spot of fascination. Ancient leather-bound books mixed with encyclopedias, dictionaries and books in languages she couldn't understand. Last summer, she'd found a heap of old paperback romances pushed away into a corner. Neglected. She picked one up and sat on the old, rickety chair kept beside the oak table and flipped open the dust-covered book. Sifting through the yellowing pages, trying to see if the book was worth reading, she stumbled upon something she never would have thought of. A letter. An age old letter waiting for someone to read it sometime, somewhere. But she didn't know it would be her. Neither did the original recipient.

She sat and thought hard. Who had written it? Who was it for? What was it doing in this book? What will she find inside after she reads it? Should she read it at all? She looked around the room. No-one. But that was expected. She stood up and went to the door to see if anyone was around. No-one. Out in the sun, it had turned hotter since she had come inside. It made her head ache and she feared her feet being blistered by the scorching ground. She looked up at the mango tree and felt strange. Not one bird in sight. Too hot even for them, she thought. On her better judgement, she turned to go inside the library again.

Just as she's left it, the letter lay folded on the open book kept on the table. She moved slowly towards the table. The letter was folded in the middle with a little doodling done on one side with an ink pen. It smelled faintly of sweet smelling roses and something she could not quite recognize. The smell made her smile, she didn't know why. Tempted, she opened the letter with trembling hands and started reading..