The Return

by Rachel Harrison

Maggots. I thought I should scream, but I couldn’t muster one. Instead, I backed up slowly, as if from a crime scene, until I was far enough away to safely turn my back. Still, I felt like they were on me. Like maybe one had burrowed in through the bottom of my shoe, crawled up my leg, my spine, and was now perched on my shoulder, waiting to climb into my ear and, eventually, eat my brain.

“I go crazy without my alone time,” I said. That had been true at some point in the past, but then I was alone all the time, and that was bad, too.

I said, “You’d think after being stuck in the same room for days, the room would seem smaller, but it doesn’t. “You forget what it’s like to leave. To be somewhere else. “We’re adaptable,” I said with a definitive nod. Outside, the wind howled like somebody dying. “Stay somewhere long enough, it becomes your world. “Actually,” I told Julie, “I hate this place.”

“I’m not too happy with you,” I tell my reflection.

I’m always thinking about money. I guess it’s because I don’t have any. It bewilders me.

I’m too much of a coward to call down and complain. I’ll wait until I’m spitting mad to do anything about it, and even then, I’ll work myself up to be firm and end up polite. “Is there any way you could, please?” That’s how I operate.

There’s also this nagging voice telling me I should go home. Return to my own bed for some decent rest. Spare myself any potential unpleasantness. Hibernate. Become the hermit eternal I’m meant to be.

It’s kind of amazing what you can choose to ignore and how successfully. Selectively lobotomize whatever doesn’t serve you. I figured if it was that easy, it must be right.

My problems aren’t invalid. Not to me. Just because they aren’t life altering, life-threatening, doesn’t mean they don’t make me feel bad. I wake up with them every morning, carry them around all day like a lead backpack, and I fall asleep with them at night. They’re real, and they’re mine. I know I’m lucky. I know that. But it doesn’t change how I feel.

“Don’t let the clock scare you,” she says. “It’s only time.”