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Jag fick nån luddig idé för en novell ett tag sen. Jag vet inte vad storyn kommer att vara exakt, men jag har en idé vad den ska handla om och så. Jag skrev första delen till den idag, fast sen får jag fundera lite på hur fan det ska fortsätta.
”Please don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die...” She closed her fist in her right jacket pocket and clutched the one thing that kept her from a nervous breakdown, the thin veil between sanity and insanity. She clamped it tightly as if it was the thing that her very life depended upon, and without it she’d drop dead right there. Her eyes were shut hard and she tried to focus on the small device in her hand, tried to breath life into it. Deep down she knew that it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference, but putting her mantra on repeat and trying to keep the device alive by thought power alone, almost made her feel as if she was mastering the situation. But she knew it wouldn’t last forever. She knew that on the device in her pocket, the battery indicator was probably bright red and down to its last hair-thin shred of life. The music was still loud, louder than most people could stand, but she knew it would be over soon. “Still eight more stations left to get home,” she thought. The battery would never last eight stations. The song was about to reach its crescendo. I cry, when angels deserve to die... Then the battery of her MP3 player died, and the temporary numbness in her ears following the hour-long stint of listening to deafening music quickly abated, and she could hear the old lady sitting next to her. The words she heard weren’t a surprise. She had heard them before, or variations of them. ...kids of today no respect for anyone around them only think about themselves no care for anyone else than themselves if I was in charge I’d have all forms of music banned on trains... Sarah opened her eyes and briefly glanced over at the lady. She was sitting with her head tilted slightly back, her lips pursed and her brows knitted. Her face displayed an utter contempt for anyone younger than 25. Outside the train window, the rain started to fall lightly. The drops hitting the windows trailed down slowly and Sarah focused on them as hard as she could. She followed a drop on its journey from the middle of the window down to the bottom, and then she started over with a new one. She tried thinking about other things; rusty cars, butterflies, that she needed to remember to buy cat food and that her oven just broke and she would have to settle with microwaved food for a while. Nothing worked. The old lady’s words pierced her own thoughts and made it impossible to focus on anything else. ...I was never like that when I was young I always had respect for the elderly haven’t I deserved some respect I have done a lot for society but have I ever received any thanks no I haven’t and now that I’m old nobody cares about me... It was impossible for Sarah to keep the lady’s thoughts out of her head. They swirled around there like a swarm of angry bees, stinging Sarah’s brain, refusing to leave, refusing to stop. Sarah clenched onto the MP3 player in her jacket pocket and a line from the song she had heard earlier flashed through her head. Why have you forsaken me? She tightened her grip around it so hard it hurt her hand. That worked in a way; the thoughts buzzing around in her head quieted down a bit and she focused as hard as she could on the pain. Five more stations to go. The pain grew worse and worse, but Sarah didn’t relax her grip. As the pain grew worse, the lady’s thoughts in her head grew quieter and quieter. With two stations left, Sarah felt her hand getting wet. At first she thought it was sweat but then she noticed she only felt it on a small part of her hand, around the middle of her palm. She realized she had squeezed the MP3 player so hard she had started to bleed. She slowly let go of it, and the effect was like turning up the volume of a stereo to the max. While Sarah had been focusing on the pain in her hand, the lady had gotten herself worked up and her thoughts almost felt like someone yelling inside Sarah’s head. ...AND WHY IS THERE NOBODY TO HELP ME ACROSS THE STREET WHEN I WAS YOUNG I WOULD ALWAYS HELP THE ELDERLY ACROSS THE STREET BUT NOBODY HELPS ME KIDS OF TODAY ARE ONLY MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS WHY DOESN’T ANYONE CARE ABOUT ME... It was as if someone had grasped Sarah’s head and shaken it violently, upsetting all the bees inside her brain to a ferocious panic, making them want to sting their way out of her head through her ears. The train arrived at a station and came to a halt. The doors opened. Sarah got up and once again clenched onto the the MP3 player in her pocket, feeling the sudden rush of pain shock the bees to silence. She turned to the old lady and yelled: “You wanna know why nobody helps you, why no one cares about you? Because you’re an annoying, nagging, tedious and very, very old hag!” The moment the words had left her mouth she turned around and rushed out of the train, one station too early. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She didn’t have time to see the lady’s reaction, but she couldn’t imagine it being anything else than shock. “How could she have known... what I was thinking?”, that’s probably what the lady thought right now, as Sarah was walking up the escalator at the station, two steps at a time. She made a mental note: “I have to buy extra batteries for the MP3 player.”
_________________ Tigers like pepper. They don't like cinnamon.
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