Scylla and Charybdis

(Also posted at IndieInk, July 2010.)

You look at me from across the room with a smile in your eyes but not on your face. You approach, and I am conscious of your breath, mere inches from me. You accidentally-on-purpose brush up against me, or touch my hand as I go to gesture. This is the undertow that keeps pulling me in; you are the vortex.

It’s the things unsaid that echo in my mind; the words just underneath the surface. They imprison us; we are imprisoned by them. It’s as if our vocal cords are paralyzed. You can’t say it; I won’t say it. And you’re scared and I’m scared and together we’re even more scared. We can’t admit what everyone else has long since realized. If you would just tell me then I could let you in – I would tear down my walls for you if you would just ask. But you won’t ask, and I am tired of being your second choice.

I clenched my teeth when he touched me for the first time; I shuddered the first time he kissed me. You know how it is: wanting what you can’t have, not wanting what is right there in front of you. I wish I could say that I made the right decision. But you and I both know that’s not how this story ends.

Quitting Time

She walked in to the office that Wednesday knowing that she had a meeting, and knowing exactly how it was going to go, from beginning to end. What they didn’t know was that, when it did, indeed, reach the end, she was finally going to tell them that the job was ridiculous, that they were ridiculous, and that her life was no longer going to be ridiculous. Freedom was to be hers, at last.

Somehow, she managed to refrain from smiling too much, but inside she was brimming with glee at the prospect. No more eighteen-hour days. No more being on call at god-knows-what hour to cater to the bizarre demands of her unreasonable superiors. She would travel, read, sleep – all of the things that she had loved so many years ago and hadn’t had a chance to do in ages.

No more sleepwalking through life. Finally, she would get a chance to live.