A wind chime swings in an arc, its bells sluggishly tinkling as the cold night air makes its way into the cracks of the worn-down walls of a worn-down house in a worn-down city of a worn-down world.
A street lamp flickers, its light illuminating the sets of recycling bins lined on the street, and then with a pop, it goes dark. Three pairs of glistening eyes watch from a distance, munching on the food they found from the black bins in the alley, as a car loudly accelerates down the road. The neighbors turn in their beds, grumbling that they will report the night-time driver, but in the morning, like always, they will forget. A mouse makes its way into the crevice of a baseboard, its whiskers twitching as it looks for shelter from the chilly night air.
It is unaware of the glowing emerald eyes behind it.
The girl’s eyes shoot open, then she scrunches them shut, desperate to catch a moment longer of rest. What had awoken her?
She lies flat on her back, breathing shallowly, ears tuned for any racket. Her eyes adjust to the darkness. She should have left the blinds open, she thinks, but concedes, it would be no use, the street lamp is fried anyways.
She hears a loud thump, her heart flutters. Surely she had locked the door after coming home earlier that night. Her eyes wander to her phone, she could call her mother. No — she should call the cops first, she decides.
The bed groans as she rolls to the nightstand. A fine layer of dust scatters as she lifts her phone, a charging cable connected to its port. She holds the power button expecting the luminous glow of the screen, but nothing happens.
Dead.
Her heart hammers in her ears, the charging cable dangling from her phone, unconnected.
She stands cautiously, painfully aware of the crisp sound her forgotten essay makes under her foot.
A cold breeze sweeps around her bare feet, and a shiver runs through her body, the darkness of the room beating down on her. The window is closed, but the draft swirls around her, its spindly arms caressing her, until, with a sharp tug, its strings grow taut, pulling her into the darkness.
At least, a feeling in her gut tells her that could happen if she doesn’t get the draft fixed. She has a sudden urge to look under her bed.
The door creaks open. The girl freezes, her mouth hanging open, undecided whether she should say something bold to the intruder, like they do in movies — or stand there, mouth gaping, like she is now.
A long, fluffy tail swings into the room, its paws padding softly on the carpeted floor.
Of course.
“What did you do?” the girl asks her cat, scratching its head as it circles around her legs, oblivious to the panic it caused.
Outside, on the windowsill, raindrops patter from the sky, and pink clouds roll over the houses. The cat meows, nearly famished from its long hours of sleeping all night.
She grins down at its flashing eyes, “I imagine you’re here for food.” The cat circles around her feet, its tail brushing her checkered pajamas, leaving white fur in its wake. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
The digital clock on the oven flashes 04:30 am.
She sighs, her eyes wandering to the round table in the living room. Her laptop sits there, along with a pile of unfinished paperwork, its screen raised. For a moment, she feels as though it is an oppressive blackhole, sucking her in. Until she is nothing and nowhere, but in a black void. Or perhaps, it is more like white light, cold and blinding — a claustrophobic space nonetheless.
Her thoughts stray — but how can she feel claustrophobic if there is no space, nor sound? It is inescapable, yet there is nothing to escape from. It’s empty and yet so full.
The lack of sleep is making her delirious, she thinks, blinking back to reality. She sighs, the paperwork summoning her. Sleep will have to wait again.
Pulling her hair into a bun, a flash catches her eye. In the corner of the room, next to the tall, curtained window, there once sat a rainbow vase. Its multi-coloured surface reflected the sunlight and created dancing prisms across the walls. Now… The girl stares numbly, it lies on the floor, its shards spread across the room, like sad puzzle pieces to a forgotten, locked treasure.
The girl kneels to the vase, forgetting her work. Cupping the shards in her fingers, her heart sinks as she realizes that its damage is too fine. It cannot be fixed. She stares at the blank ceiling, but her body feels heavy, and her chest heaves laboriously.
Perhaps she is the broken piece, she cannot help but thinking.
Get Zoya Hasan’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
She remembers it like it was yesterday.
She was only six, with a gap in her front teeth that she stuck straws into, to drink juice. Bunny teeth, her mother used to call her.
It was raining. Lightening cracked the sky, and thunder boomed loud enough that she was convinced the floor shook. Her mother had brought home a pack of clay and new paints. They had worked together, shaping the lump of clay as it formed into a sagging vase. Its base was wide and oblong, and its body swooped up so that it opened narrowly.
But once they had left it to dry, they had found that their cat, just a mere kitten at the time, had sunken its curved nails into the clay, leaving behind long and deep scars. Sullen, she had wanted to throw it out, but her mother had smiled and told her to make the best of the situation.
Foil had been her answer.
They used the claw marks to outline diamond-shaped prisms and stuck the foil onto the vase. They painted the clay, splatters of every colour the girl could think of, and in the end, it was a chaotic, kaleidoscopic vase.
Now you have a rainbow in your own home, her mother grinned as they stepped back to look at it, just as the storm clouds had rolled back and a rainbow nested between them.
The girl startles, snapping out of her daze as her cat crawls into her lap. “You won’t give me a break today, will you?” she mutters under her breath.
The cat begins to purr, nestling its head onto her lap. She numbly looks at her new cat. It resembles its mother when she was just a kitten, long ago.
She smiled, stroking its head. Happiness, she thinks, looking at the broken vase, can be found when you take the time to look for it. And sometimes, you can make it.
Suddenly, the girl has an urge to make something. She stands, gathering the shards into her palms, and runs to her work table. Dumping them onto it, she pushes aside her work papers. They fly off the table, but she does not mind. Running to her room, she pulls off a round mirror that hangs over her bed, grabbing glue along the way. She begins sifting through the shards, sorts out the larger pieces.
The cat prowls after the girl, curious as to what she could possibly be doing. And without her help? Absurd.
Before she knows it, she glues the last piece of the vase onto the mirror. Iridescent parts of a puzzle sit snugly around the edges of the mirror. Her breath catches in her throat, and she stares back at her reflection.
She sees a rainbow in her eyes. And this time, she does not see herself as a six-year-old little girl. She sees herself as she is now.
She sees a future.
An old woman rises early. She limps to her cat and pats its head, “Time to wake up, dear.”
The cat covers its eyes with its paws, protesting the early rise, even if it is their daily routine. A clip, clap noise, like wet splatters, sounds outside, and the woman peers outside her window, using her ringed pinky to lift a blind at eye-level.
A girl races on the road outside her window, wearing nothing but the clothes on her back and a pair of sandals that slap on the wet pavement. A smile, as wide as the sun itself, swallows her face.
“She’s goin’ to catch a cold,” the woman’s son sniffs, just recovering from a nasty cold, as he joins his mother.
The woman makes a slight sound, looking at her son, then at the girl, “Maybe,”
Doctor visits and endless days sitting on a cushioned rocking chair take up her whole day. Her frail hands are a constant reminder of how much she had aged. Once, the skin on her knuckles was tight and smooth. Once, she hiked mountains during the days and spent nights gazing into the devouring and ethereal sky that twinkled with silver stars.
The woman closes her eyes. At first, she can only see the blackness of the dark room under her eyelids, but then a warm sensation, like golden light, trickles around her body until it wraps her like a warm blanket.
“Perhaps,” she murmurs, as her son turns his back to the window, shaking his head.
She sees rainbows dribbling down from her fingertips and drops of cold rain splattering on her face as she watches the porcelain clouds dance in the endless sky. She imagines herself, both young and old, yesterday and tomorrow, twirling in the rising light.
A yearning.
A promise.
“Perhaps,” she repeats, grabbing a coat and pulling on a pair of rain boots, “I might join her.”
A curtain of clouds blow away and behind them, is a faint rainbow.
