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Scribe
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 51
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Coffee
I'm not sure whether anyone here remembers, but I've written a piece a while back that was entered into a competition. I just thoght that if any cared, it did not win, partly because of the style (a profanity or two perhaps), and because it wasn't good enough. Strangely enough, a friend of mine won 16 books, 120USD+ worth of book coupon, and read her story on the radio. Yeah.
Anyway, this is a piece that I've nearly given up on. Do not mistake with "I don't give a shit about this piece", because I do. I've tried hard to make this work, but it just doesn't. It's as if I no longer know how to write (I blame school). It wasn't that promising to start with, but I really don't know what to think of now. It is part of a project, and, well, I don't have much choice over the content.
Though related to other stuff, the only important background fact you need to know is that the writer is a female, allthough you'd have found out soon enough anyway.
A misc fact is that it is based heavily on real life exerience. I'm not a girl though, so at least that makes me passive.
Oh, and whether you thought it sucked or not, please tell me. And thanks for reading, appreciate it.
Coffee
Coffee is a disgusting beverage. I cannot bring myself to appreciate this aroma they always speak of (just a thick waft of air to me, prelude for a bitter taste). The drink’s beautiful swirls are the only redeeming factor. If only they are actually seen, not covered by thick plastic lids. They are like the hot chocolate I prefer, except without the marshmallows waltzing to the rhythm on the stage of a two-and-a-half-inch pond. It is like hot chocolate, but far less sweet.
Unless you are the romantic sort, because they say coffee is love.
I sip from my cup at that thought.
It is alien to me, why I asked for it at the counter, and it is unknown to me why it feels so right, seeping down my throat in this chilly winter morning, singeing my tongue along the way.
I peel the lid off and gaze at the oasis of warmth, and then at the person I was watching, tapping his fingers on a coffee house table.
I begin my flashback sequence.
***
He always liked change, wanted to change, to be better, but I wasn’t as strange, I was afraid of it.
(I dipped a fingertip into the drink as if to illustrate the point.)
After what happened to Charmaine, I can’t seem to have faith anymore in him and his yet unbroken promise.
“Yet” is the pivotal word to a pessimistic mind.
We had both known Charmaine, though separately— Asian body face smile and hair with matching glasses (thick rimmed). Her height leaned towards the short side and the smile on her face was shy— she was not distinct.
“Was” is the pivotal word, in hindsight.
(Sip.)
She joined our school the year I left, and coincidentally moved overseas to my current one the year after. (I found this out only recently.)
She had always fitted snugly in the cookie cutter— friendly, and slightly reserved. She had had those sudden outbursts now and then, of course, but they were rare. I don’t know if this is foreshadowing.
(I looked at the paper cup, at him, and then took a gulp.)
I hope not. My flashback failed. I try again.
***
Charmaine was seated among the circle of chairs, facing the other way. The shouts, laughs, and chattering behind me muffled my steps. I reached out and almost tapped her shoulder when I noticed her shaking.
I barely held my gasp back just in time, and stood still, watching her cry.
I didn’t move, and the moments of silence between sniffs and spasms were still, penetrated sometimes by soft, hollow chuckles. I ran my hand through my hair between the silences.
The laughter began dying off, climaxing in an unchecked door slam. They had left for the dorms, leaving her all alone with me.
(I sighed into my coffee, and gazed at it, as if I was watching it cool down. They no longer felt hot in my hands, so I quickly drank from it. I was wrong, it was still hot; it was hotter than I expected, and burned my lips.
Pushing the cup away sharply, I spilled some of the coffee onto my sweater and the marble ledge I was sitting on. I quickly took a piece of tissue and tried to wipe the stains off— the marble first, for reasons I do not understand. I reached down frantically, fussing over my mistake.)
I bent down, fussing over my mistake; she pushed me away and covered her face. She rubbed her face with the collar of her sweater, but more came to take the dried tear’s place.
I spoke to her and tried to help, except I didn’t know what I could say. I merely stood there, and later placed a hand on her shoulder as she sobbed away.
(The scenes made me think of him, and I glanced at his direction (again), still trying to remove the stain. I felt so useless when I see his problems, so useless.)
Our pose remained still until half an hour later when she turned around and said “thank you.”
I pulled my chair closer, the kind with a table at the side, and sat down next to her. Her head was down, the hair blocking her face from my view.
And then I noticed her closed hand— she was holding something,
“Chairmaine,” I placed one hand on her fist. “What happened?”
I rolled her fist open, and saw a small pocketknife with a smudged blade. I looked at her other hand, and saw a red cut on the wrist.
Just thinking about it, I would raise my brows, but at that time I was horrified.
The cut looked deep and was lined with clot, but most of it had been torn away. There were many smaller strokes around that specific cut; I suppose it takes a few tries to really draw blood.
I was horrified.
I wasn’t even unused to these kinds of things. (My thoughts are casted towards him, sitting at the table.) No, I was not unused to these things. People get sad sometimes, it happens. They get sad and do what they hear others do— a little out of hopelessness, the fantasy that a little cut would end the pain; a little out of hopefulness, that perhaps someone would come and help them. But I was still horrified.
Because none of that explains why she had a tattoo underneath the cuts.
I’ve been relatively hidden from the real world, but exposure does slowly happen. Raised on the Bible, my negative attitude towards tattoos and similar trends is pretty much a given. That’s not to say I go around preaching my beliefs. Still, I could not understand why someone like her would have a tattoo. I didn’t force my queries, but I talked about it with my closer friends, and, somehow, word came out; she blamed me since.
That was the last gatherings she came to.
***
I sometimes think that I worry about him too much. He had been agnostically curious about religion since before I had met him, and since then decided on blind faith. Either because of some spiritual enlightenment, or because he thought that there was nothing to lose, he gave up on logical reasoning. He goes to church, unlike many supposed Christians do, and tried to follow the morals, and, and all that jazz.
But really, if someone like Charmaine could start taking absinthe at fourteen and continue going out with the person who raped her, I don’t know see why I shouldn’t worry.
(I look at him, hair swaying to the wind, covering his eyes now and then. I want to spend a day looking at him, blissfully sure that he would always be here. I want to be naïve enough.)
I never spoke to Charmaine again, not even when we met in school. However, when the video clip began circulating in our school a few months after, I realized that she was completely lost to me.
The person(s) who released the video was from another school, so some gossip indicates anyway. No legal action was taken; it did not spread beyond the student body.
He was introduced to her through a friend, the same who released the video, all gossip agrees, and he thought she was “cute”, a primary source indicated. The primary source mentioned many other details about the “cuteness”. He wasn’t on the video, but I suppose it was only because he had to hold the camera. I guess she was attractive.
(He looks so beautiful and elegant with the cup of coffee though, I’m sure he would even if he dropped it. My shirt is still stained.)
She did not go to school for two weeks after what happened. I wasn’t brave enough, and did not ask how she was, how the parents reacted, or whatever.
The school staff did try to do something about it, which mostly amounted to sending counselors and not contacting her parents. She was expelled a month after that for bringing drugs to school.
She went back to the old school and acted as she did before all that. He probably found out about some stuff (he’s good at that), but I don’t think he had seen the video. I don’t know whether he knows about the things she still does with people she barely knows (according to the source), I don’t know how much.
* * *
I just can’t trust anyone anymore, not after seeing her changing to radically. She was a friend, and I was shocked, but he was much more than that to me. It’s the twenty sixth of December, and I’m hiding a dozen meters away, watching a person I love wait for me. It’s two thirty now, we’ve been waiting for an hour, and I will be taking the plane tomorrow. He’s going to stand up and walk away. And I will watch him walk away, tears running down my cheek.
Perfect.
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--Audrey
