Kitty's Freewrites

Words were her existence.

She lived them. Breathed them. They sustained her. Take away her words and she’d have nothing, but with them she needed nothing else.

All sorts of words.

Candy floss words that were sweet and dissolved in her mouth when she spoke them to the petals on the roses.

Bubblegum words that were quirky and loud and bright and ended with a popping sound when she shouted them as she skipped along the sidewalk.

Rainstorm words that left a damper on the day and were accompanied by the soft roll of thunder when she said them syllable by syllable.

Cobweb words that made her spine tingle and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up when she whispered them on dark and stormy nights.

Sunrise words, gentle and subdued, ribbons of promise when she spoke them softly in the mornings.

Romantic words, like ribbons and red taffeta, that made her heart skip beats when she murmured them as if to a lover.

All sorts of words. Ghostly words, warm words, sad words, sunshine words. Words as harsh as metal. Words like gossamer upon butterfly wings.

Words that she couldn’t help speaking over and over again, now whispering into the air, now shouting into the wind, trying out their taste in her mouth, rolling them off her tongue.

The words were her existence.

They were her everything.

Kangaroo awoke from pleasant (if slightly odd) dreams with a sneeze. But it wasn’t just any ordinary sneeze. It was a loud, wet, humiliating type of sneeze that laughed with contempt and scorn at Kangaroo and whooshed out his window with a sarcastic “Choo!” sound accompanied by a sneer. Blushing wildly, Kangaroo leaped from his bed as if it had stung him and thundered down the stairs.

In the sunny kitchen of their country-side home, Kangaroo’s mother, Mrs. Turtle, was laying out his breakfast: a very lumpy bowl of steaming porridge. Slowly (for she did everything slowly) and in a quavering voice she said, “There you go. Eat up, love.” She was oblivious to Kangaroo’s discomfort, too absorbed in the task of v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and diligently making him toast. Kangaroo looked as his mother, then at the porridge. It would make her sooo happy if he ate it…

But Kangaroo had no time for porridge! He had to save his best friend, Bird, from the Homework! Bird was fighting desperately against Homework using his video game controller. Video games were Bird’s vice, and always won against Homework in the competition for Bird’s attentions. Homework was fighting back now, but Bird was a video game virtuoso, and he wasn’t giving in that easily.

“Don’t worry, Bird!” Kangaroo shouted extemporaneously, as it seemed the right thing to do, and Bird’s sinking morale desperately needed a boost. Kangaroo scrambled over grassy jungle terrain, and finally stepped into the sun at the zenith of the jungle mountain, but it was too late; Bird had caught the rabies.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” screamed Kangaroo in anguish…

The light turned green, but not fast enough, and Taxi Cab Driver’s attempt to apprehend the traffic jam failed. He stuck his head outside the window to yell rude words at the other drivers, but, prudently remembering Kangaroo in the back seat, drew his head in from yelling point. Taxi Cab Driver settled for honking the horn instead.

Kangaroo stared sadly out of the window onto the heavily raining city street. “Nobody loves me,” he said quietly, beginning to cry. Kangaroo’s salty tears sank into the flecked mystery upholstery and mingled with the water streaks running down the windows.

We love you, Kangaroo!” said Mrs. Turtle, Bird, Homework, Video Games, Taxi Cab Driver, and Kangaroo’s sneeze altruistically.

“Oh,” said Kangaroo, snuggling into the seat though it smelled strongly of wheat. “I guess it’s alright, then.”

Raindrops exploded on the pavement like fat water balloons. The sky was a steely grey and the clouds seemed to close in on you. The wind cackled in your ears. Wisps of mist snaked around the trees and your ankles like chains.

In short, it was the type of day she loved.

It was the type of day that made her wish her deranged parents had not named her Sunny. She was as far from “sunny” as someone could get. Sunny was quiet, reserved, and wrote depressing poetry. In contrast, her twin sister, Stormy, was bubbly, loud, and enjoyed blue skies and daisies.

For the fourth time that day, as Sunny quietly indulged in the rain sliding down her arms and face and making her prep-school uniform soggy and her dark hair stringy, Sunny wondered what she had done to the universe's fates to make them so angry at her that they pulled this bad joke.

They would whisper to each other as she and her twin burst into being, “Let’s make their parents name them Sunny and Stormy (which, Sunny thought, were some of the most idiotic names in existence), and then give Sunny the stormy personality and Stormy the sunny one!” The universe would guffaw at their cruel little humour.

Stormy ran by, her bag held over her head. “I hate the rain!” she shouted to no one.

Sunny once again sarcastically thanked the universe for saddling her with the oxymoronic name they did, and walked home slowly; savouring the storm she so wished she had been named for.

The sky was the colour of ink, filled with clouds that loomed over everyone, and if skies could laugh menacingly, this sky would.

The rain was the colour of stormy grey seas, falling to the ground like quicksilver, and if rain could cry, this rain would.

The pavement was the colour of red Styrofoam children’s oversize building blocks like she had played with in preschool, blending into the rest of the posh townhouses and manors, and if pavement could giggle, this pavement would.

Her hair was the colour of the mud gathering on the sides of the boulevards in little mesas and rivers, hanging long and loose down her back, tangled and wet. She had never been particularly fond of her hair.

Her eyes were the colour of the sodden leaves on the trees, sighing and dripping water to the ground. They gazed out meekly and intelligently. She liked her eyes best.

Her mind was the colour of the world, filled with flittering inspirations and thoughts that bloomed like flowers, questions ambling about like clouds, more thoughts and memories zipping about like dragonflies. Right now her mind was raining.

Rain the colour of stormy grey seas that would cry if it could...

My mind is like a meadow.

A meadow with swaying grass, and a blue sky made of memories and images, and clouds for my five senses, and thoughts and ideas that bloom, big, bright, nurtured by the caretaker, like flowers.

A meadow where the birds are made of words and paper, floating along on fragile, feathered inspiration wings, and sing my play-lists instead of chirping.

A meadow where all things related to math and science are pushed down wells, only fished out again when absolutely necessary; other than that, they might not exist.

A meadow where logic and reality doesn’t exist, and nonsensical whimsy abounds.

A meadow that is rainy, misty, grey, and cool for three hours every day.

A meadow where every rainbow is poured out of a tea pot.

A meadow where my inner self can roam around, not caring, or caring too much.

Sometimes the meadow dies briefly.

Sometimes the horrible thing called “chronic depression” has to barge in and everything shuts down for a while.

But there are my dear ones, the ones who make me laugh, and who hug me, and encourage me, to water and replant and make it new again.

That is what I really need. And even if they never know how much that means, for them to care, even if they never read this, I hope they know I love them.

Cleaning can be so much more fun than I ever imagined possible.

To clarify: today my mom told me to pick up my room a bit because we’re having company. So, naturally, I grumble and gripe about it, and stomp off to my room.

Then, I realize that being an old grumpy gills isn’t going to help anything. In fact, it’s going to make it worse.

So, when my mom comes in a few hours later, she’s totally unprepared for the sight she’s about to see.

Me, wearing boxer shorts and an old, stained tank top, my hair pulled up on top of my head into what is quite likely the worst bun in history, standing on a chair. One of my feet is pushing the vacuum cleaner; I’m using one hand to scrub shelves, and the other to sort through my desk. I don’t care what you say, that is skill. My room, looking like someone dropped a bomb, because there is stuff everywhere, but when cleaning, it always has to get worse before it gets better. And I am BLARING Boston. Literally, as loud as it will go. That is the best cleaning music ever; it makes me want to roll up my sleeves, and attack every bit of dirt I see. That’s a new feeling for me, but it does help when you have to clear up a room that looks like both a tornado and a black hole have dumped everything they ever held onto the floor and bed.

But all that my mom sees is how I’m only standing on the chair with one foot, and how it would be soooo easy for me to fall off and get a concussion. So I hop off the chair, carefully so as not to squish anything, and console her by saying I won’t do it again, showing her that I unearthed my Perfect Attendance certificate from the second grade, and telling her that I found the cat, who had been missing for a few hours, and, on cue, suddenly streaked out from under my bed, where he was hiding, quivering due to deafening classic rock.

So, of course, as soon as she leaves I get back on the chair, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do in the name of cleaning.

One of the good things about cleaning? I found enough old/useless objects that I thought I had lost/forgot I ever had to hold a mid-sized yard sale. I mean, I had been looking for that old teddy bear since I was like, eight. And I suddenly just pick him off of the floor!

And there were some extremely dramatic moments today. Like, horror movie worthy. For example, when I was going through some old papers in one of my storage boxes, and this HUGE spider crawls out. Which was especially traumatic, since I am afraid of spiders with every inch of my being. Or when the owl kite that I love from Japantown in San Francisco, which usually hangs from the ceiling, came very close to being sliced to ribbons by a deadly ceiling fan. I had to scream, “HIBOU, NOOO!” and vault over a music stand and onto a chair so I could pull him back to safety.

I hadn’t cleaned since around last August, so my room was a disaster. I attacked it, probably with a little more vigor than necessary. But it was disgustingly dusty. So dusty, that if there is any possible way it can be wiped down, I wiped it down. This required some creative tactics, such as climbing onto the narrow window-ledge to get the cobwebs off the corners of the ceiling. And you would not believe how much dust can gather on a metal lunchbox full of magnetic poetry. It was really, really gross. So I used practically a whole roll of paper towels, but at least my room was dust free, and I managed to get some marker lines off the wall that were added two years ago when my friend attempted to give me a purple mustache, and I, being a ninja, dodged. The wall wasn’t so lucky. I also was able to rid the fan of all the extremely gross dusty-lint stuff that gathers on the edge of the blades, and that was like an inch thick. Yuck.

All this lovely gain absolutely did not come without pain. It was extremely hot today, one of those days where all you really want to do is wear as few clothes as possible, dump a bucket of water on your head, and eat three tubs of ice cream. To combat this, I had the window open all the way, making everything in the room blow around, because there was a hot wind outside. Isn’t that oxymoronic? A hot wind? That just goes against wind laws. That breeze should be arrested. Anyway, so I’m standing on the chair again, and my mom comes in, kind of gasps, so I turn around, and at that moment, as I assure her I’m totally safe, a super heavy picture frame blows onto my head. Can you say ironic? But I tell her I’m fine, and to close the door on the way out because I need to polish the knob. The wind messed up my cleaning a bit, but it was necessary, because if it wasn’t open I would have passed out hours ago due to a combination of heat stroke and cleaning supply fumes.

But even though I worked so hard in my room for six and a half hours (which is pretty much the length of one school day) people were actually MAD at me! About four hours in, my “elderly” neighbor actually came out of his house, shook his cane at me through the window, and told me to “turn down that abysmal racket! You rotten kid!” Who actually does that?! That was just uncalled for and hurtful.

My mom wasn’t too pleased either, because, to fuel my cleaning frenzy, I had three big cans of caffeinated soda and four of the five mid-sized Hershey Bars I’d been saving up all year every time I got an ‘A’ on a math test. But I think she preferred that to the alternative, because when I get low blood sugar, I could reduce a monster to tears. Besides, cleaning burns so many calories! I never knew going on a rampage against the forces of dust, dirt, grime, and disorganization was so good for weight loss. Plus, now when she tells me to get something, I can actually find it. Nutty, right?

Pfft, and people say cleaning is boring.

The carpet in our house is old, and really dirty.

Seriously.

It’s at least eleven years old, and I think it was once white, though it’s really hard to tell, because now, due to years of stains and dirt buildup, it’s kind of a vomit-y brown color.

But that carpet has got character.

See, here’s the stain from that ill fated day when I was trying to make smoothies and forgot to put the lid on the blender. And here is exactly where my sister sat when she tripped me and I accidentally stabbed the kitchen scissors handle-deep into her leg. And can you even count the number of Christmases we’ve all sat on this carpet, littering it with wrapping paper and plates of food? I can; nine. All the Christmases we’ve been in this house.

And then in this room is the stain where my mother tripped one Thanksgiving and the whole turkey went down. And over there is the place where my dad fell out the second story window while putting on his pants. Ah, good times.

On commercials, we see those bright white carpets and we laugh at them, because we know they wouldn’t hold up under what OUR carpet has been through. Our carpet is a veteran, for being able to stand up so long against everything my insane family can throw at it.

Despite how old, dirty, and kind of gross our carpet is, no one would ever dream to get rid of it. That carpet is as much a part of our family as any member.

Besides, if we replaced it with wood, it would really hurt considering how much we all fall over.

Battles were not what she thought they were.

Every book, movie, or description she’d seen or heard made them out to be honorable, glorious affairs.

They weren’t.

No source had ever described the anxiety and excitement as the two sides stood opposite, the quiet before the very first charge. It was worse than the drop on any rollercoaster.

No veteran had ever told her that in the fray, it was hard to tell what was going on, or who you were fighting. You just tried not to kill anyone in the same tabard as you and rushed blindly on.
With the lack of the dramatic music so often present in films, the yells of triumph, the screams of pain, the battle cries were more apparent than ever. She hoped desperately, whenever she heard a voice that sounded remotely like someone she knew, someone she loved, that they were fine; that they were cries
of victory, not defeat.

Dead soldiers from both sides lay on the rocky hills, in puddles of blood and entrails; she tried to step over them, hoping they were no one she knew. Others just trampled them; the thought made her feel sick.

She tried to stop thinking about each person she felled; tried not to think that they had a family, maybe a lover, and a life outside of this battle field; that people would mourn them, the same as people would mourn her side’s casualties; that to them, she was the bad guy. She made the mistake of looking at the eyes of her first victim, as she pulled her bloodied sword from his dying body, and vowed never to do so again. The opposing soldiers just became a faceless mass of pure evil, everything she was opposed to.

She was scared when she actually started to like the killing, when she began to feel the bloodthirst.

Her sword was stained red; her face was bloody; her arms were covered in blood up to the elbows.
Despite the heavy feel of her chainmail, the sweat she could feel on her face, her body was cold.

All the fancy sword work she had learned and perfected, all the honorable codes she had memorized, were useless now. In battle, you tried to run your opponent through quickly before they did it to you. Anyone still with those false ideas of an honorable fight had them quashed early on when they found a sword stuck through them.

Twice, she ducked only just in time from a fatal blow. One lopped off three feet of her braid, and her hair fell loose; she had lost her helmet ages ago.

The adrenaline coursed through her as she left rational thought behind. She could feel death hovering behind her, or to her sides, where it couldn’t be seen, ready to strike at any time.

He showed up two hours in.

The tyrannical king, the evil king, cut down anyone near him like water, moving almost lazily forward. He hadn’t bothered to put on chain mail; that insulted her. He was wearing his crown still; that angered her.

He was the one that had killed so many of her friends, and so many people she didn’t know. He was the reason she was here. He was the reason that any of them were fighting.

It all came down to him.

She yanked her sword out of the soldier she had just stabbed and kicked him to the ground. She wiped her bloody mouth and sweaty forehead. She glared at him with every hatred, every evil thought she could muster.

The fighting was still going on, but the sound was quiet. It wasn’t important. She saw death now, and she smiled at it; she would join it in a moment, without a fight, but she most definitely was not going right now.

Soldiers of both sides seemed to clear away; there was a path for her now. She wondered briefly if anyone would cry over her death, or if all the ones that cared were dead now. She pushed that thought away, along with all the others, until her mind was just the red pulsing of hate and violence. Her blade seemed to pull her forward, thirsty for this man’s blood. She was going to kill this man; she hated him like she had never hated anyone before. She felt herself smile an insane, determined grin.

He saw her, his eyes lit up viciously. His lips twisted into a grin of malice and evil. He beckoned her forward. He taunted her.

She charged.