Translucent Chapter 1 - ORANGE

Note: recently was published professionally in a literary zine :)

‘Translucent’ Novella Chapter 1.

—Fiction — 2795 Words —

I’m tired of trying to find out who I am. While my identity is formally stamped onto documents, my driver's license, and my fingerprint, the mirror presents a challenge where recognition eludes me. It’s a form of verification that I always fail. I search and search for a flash of familiarity in my parents' mashed, morphed, and blurred faces. When verification fails, I am locked out and stranded. I’m locked out of knowing; knowing who I am, what I am. When that verification fails, I walk away and wait for the time to run out before I’m attracted to the question again: “Who are you?”

The mirror was something I only tried to look at briefly throughout my life. Living in the body was enough, there was no need to look at it too. My eyes could be used for more efficient activities. I always preferred seeing the world over myself, in body and mind. At times, I felt translucent; watching the world unravel before me while I never moved an inch. I was a spectral observer. I was translucent; perched in the elementary school fields, watching the girls with bouncy hair cartwheel through flowers, shoes uprooting plants with every dramatized shift and turn. I was translucent even through the clear hospital doors – unattended –watching words spill from unbothered mouths ripe with the scent of black coffee in the cubicle parallel to me.

When the mirror didn’t aid in my search for an answer, I turned to the world I once only observed. I swam through eyes that burned holes in my body with their stares. Their eyes burned trails in the direction of their gaze, my skin set ablaze by them. In those moments, I understood the importance of a mirror and the significance of self-reflection. I tried to answer my question, tried to unlock anything possible at every chance I had to check my reflection. Each time, the verification process came to a suspected halt. Every road led to a dead end. What I found in the mirror never gave me a real answer, but if I checked my reflection in those people’s eyes, everything about me looked so very wrong. Contorted. When I got home, my fist collided with the dollar store screen of cheap reflective material. I started to understand why man was never supposed to see themselves.

The world is not what I expected it to be, so I often made my own atop a canvas. I knew my eyes could be used for different, more efficient activities than slaving away at a desktop, committing a slow suicide gifted to all beside the cap and gown with a bow– but my eyes were far too sensitive for a world set ablaze. There was too much chaos in the real world that I just couldn’t wrap my head around. I knew my hands were far more useful when they weren’t clenched, anxious bubbles of sweat dappling within my palms. I create my world. One where I can define myself.

I’ve always ired artists, but I would never call myself one. I felt like I never fit the criteria. I create and create through the brush strokes used to paint a leaf onto a tree. No God put that leaf there, that tree there.But I did. I liked playing God in a world that was invisible to all else. I liked to cut my hair short and change my clothes. I loved to look in the mirror; eyes –only my eyes – gazing at the familiar face that was reflected back. I enjoyed this world where my fists weren’t covered in blood and over-picked scabs; fake, cheap glass that was still stuck in the ridges of broken skin my cells had yet to mend.

“Who are you?”

—

“When you're feeling low, when your hands shake, when your breathing quickens: we use the STOP method.”

It was a foolish saying, I thought. Therapists are the greatest actors in the industry. They read script after script to convince people that they're something they are not. Truly, they are there to assess those with some range of deficiency or surplus in their body to teach them to cope with it. I didn’t feel I had that deficiency of chemicals until every anxious tantrum was halted to a complete STOP.

The wind blew formerly brushed strands of my hair into angry tangles at the bus stop. My legs rocked and swayed in anxious vigor. I blinked and blinked and blinked away the harsh wind's pull on my lashes. Early morning hours crept around me; the wet scent of concrete masking the industrial-city stench permeating Puget Sound’s banks. Dawn’s morning shadows stretched along the street, painting the murky roads with a velvet black. Shadows cast even darker upon those too traveling through the hour; drunks with worried spouses, children with careless parents, those without a place to call home, and myself. I didn’t know where I fell in the mix. I wondered how visible I was, hidden away from the solar spotlight, legs rocking and swaying in anxious vigor.

Stop.

S.T.O.P.

Stop, breathe, observe, and proceed.

“Why so anxious?”

I could breathe. I could smell the alcohol on her breath. I could observe, and feel the hands snaking around my waist for and warmth. Headlights struck me; I could’ve been a doe, legs rocking and buckling under the force of the bullet.

I brushed the redheaded woman named Mila away.

“I thought A.A. meetings were supposed to help you get sober, not get you more drunk.” My words traveled through the cold air, and the redheaded woman beside me shuddered as if ice pierced through her bones. The air was thick, moist, and tense with my annoyance. It was hard to breathe.

A cold silence similar to the rare, murky Tacoma snowfalls fell over us as we watched the ashen flakes fall from a stranger's cigarette butt beside us. Mila didn’t enjoy my response; she didn’t need to move her lips for us to communicate. All she needed to do was flick the lighter at the stick between her lips, inhale all her words, and blow the thick fog of prattling into my face. I impatiently waited for my turn in our pitiful smoke circle, my turn to speak.

—

Her body moved in ways a man couldn’t imagine; a painter's twisted daydream. My fingers shook around the brush and my lips trembled around the filter, yellowing from our shared use. We’d grown accustomed to painting together, or rather, me painting Mila. We didn’t brag to the public ear, but we were one hell of a duo in the world of underground artistry. As we grew accustomed to our proximity, countless hours together, Mila and I eventually ran out of money. Back when we’d formally met – after just graduating high school – she knew me as the kid who stayed back in the art room, “wasting the experience.” Now that we were wasting experiences together, wasting money together, Mila suggested we use my knack for acrylics to the best of ‘our’ ability. We sold replicas of paintings to idiots in over their heads and lived lavishly with the amount of shitty Tacoma weed it could buy us. Now at twenty-three, we sell original paintings to our perverted connections; a less risky job for much riskier drugs compared to ‘back in the day’.

The horsehair greedily soaked up the peachy skin tone puddled on the paintboard, and the redhead behind the canvas grinned.

“You think that’ll be good enough to sell? You owe me for the dimebags I gave you last week.” A heavy cloud of smoke rich in hushed arguments filled her vision. Mila coughed hoarsely when her lungs captured my dispute.

Money was all we cared about because it was the only thing we never had. When we did have it, it wasn’t ours. The money belonged to the dealer, the liquor store attendant, and the Dicks restaurant where we bought cheap burgers like royalty whenever we blacked out.

It would be good enough to sell, but I wouldn’t reap any true rewards.

“I’ll share.” Mila coaxed with a playful wink.

I hold in my smoke, eyes wavering to the bouncy curls and wide eyes burning holes through my bones.

“...It’ll make some money.”

Mila’s lips curled, shifting in her uncomfortable position to reach for the cigar. The cheap paint on the canvas slowly dried, and I subtracted each quarter lost as the acrylic cracked in its hardened, oxygenated form.

“Some.”

When the artificial light inside grew brighter than the one outside, an exasperated sigh left the lips of the contorted woman before me. She dropped her body limply into the opaque milky sheets. My fingers unclenched the wooden stick between them and dropped limp at my sides. The worn-down skin in between my fingers flushed pink, blistering from the paintbrush's friction.

Mila remained in her bare state, stepping across the abandoned flat to the full-length mirror kitty-cornered in the room. My eyes followed and met with the stranger behind her. She looked at that stranger too. Our eyes met, lasers reflecting in the glass to strike at their target. She shifted a baby pink robe onto her soft limbs and picked up a trash bag.

“Cover the painting when it dries and I’ll take it downtown. We’ll find its worth.” Mila’s words traveled greedily through the air with a thick tension. We weren’t looking for the paintings' worth.

“We’ll find what we’re worth.”

Wiry footsteps followed a sigh and receded into the bathroom where Mila took off her dignity. I lit another cigarette so my words didn’t anger her any further as she slammed the door.

I woke up to notes of Dollar General blueberry perfume wafting around Mila’s flat like a ghost against the dim morning hours. The flat moaned and creaked with every footstep and the ceiling shook when those above us did the same. It always felt louder during those unsolicited hours. Wants and needs were stronger and louder in those hours too.

Mila filed the painting into its disheveled white cover, clutching it against her clothed chest with a final huff. The creaks and moans came to a halt beside the sofa where I pretended to sleep. Unfortunately, we don’t ever sleep long. It’s a facade Mila can always break through. When people aren’t asleep, their eyelids twitch from the unrelaxed muscles. Mila didn’t know my name but she knew everything else and knew how to use that knowledge against me. She blew on my eyelids until they twitched open.

“Get up. The first bus will be here soon.”

My muscles burned in retaliation, but my body moved in anticipation of the reward that’d come from the day's venture.

The city was tranquil when you could ignore those eyes burning holes through your back. It was tranquil when I ed the painting through my hands into dirtier ones and could ignore their eyes. We didn’t care about eyes as we stuffed our pockets with loose bills, satisfied grins plastered into the corners of our greedy lips. We didn’t care as we shook the client’s hand, causing our hands to be just as dirty. Dirtiness was a virus.

“Do you think you’re worth it yet?” Mila muttered snarkily as she flipped our shared burner open, dialing the only number we both had memorized. We walked down 13th, I caught a glance at myself through a building's tall window. The dirty glass disallowed me from seeing myself very well. That smile wasn't mine, nor were those crumbled dollars clenched in my fists. My posture was weird too.

“Do we have the bag yet?”

“I meant… you sold a painting.” Mila lit a cigarette with a sigh. She shielded the flame with her hand. “Shouldn't you be proud of that?”

“I sold a painting to get high with a girl I met downtown not too long ago.”

The redheaded woman scoffed, soon swallowing her shame and inhaling deeply. Mila released her affronted screams through the thick cloud of smoke.

The cloud hit me like a swing to the gut.

—

With my free hand, I twisted my key into the lock, clutching a glass bottle and a brown paper bag. Mila followed stoutly, harboring a gift of assorted colorful paints. The moment we entered the warm environment of my home, I broke open the seal on the bottle, fidgeting with the wax in between my fingers.. The warped shape of the glass bottle left my reflection distorted, and the liquid inside soon did the same to my vision.

Mila and I were not close people. We were people with the same goal in mind. We were also people that had been wronged, time and time again. Mila never spoke of her life before it was spent with me, but her eyes and body flaunted her story. Her cigarette smoke bawled her tale while I breathed in every fume to familiarize myself. I liked knowing others while not being known myself. I never spoke of my life, for there was nothing good or worthwhile to say. She knew I loved to paint. That’s about as much as I ed too with the years of deterioration to my memory. Anything I did wasn’t important in comparison to my adoration for the manipulation of life at my fingertips.

Mila es the bottle back to me stained with cherry-red lip gloss, and replaces the emptiness in her hand with the paper bag. She was a professional, and I was in the audience watching in awe at the magic trick.

It wasn’t long before the world we resided in melted.

It was a calm form of destruction I welcomed with open arms. My skin attached itself to the sticky leather of the sofa, the weight of my body pressing into its confines. The frame rate of my vision depleted rapidly. It was a terrifying peacefulness I chased time and time again. It was a horrifying descent each time. Mila beside me, whom I held useless hatred over, looked beautiful. Her toothy grin and gaze spiraled the both of us into a forgetful evening.

I could forget I hated Mila because we were the same.

Mila could forget that she despised me.

We could take, and take and take until there was nothing left to offer. It was our curse. It was a curse every time we got down to the bottom of our reserves.

By the time my vision and brain were pieced together enough to consider their surroundings, my body was no longer one with the living room sofa. The redheaded bundle of drugged sunshine was no longer at my side. I lie in my bed without motion, the mirror across the room revealing the stranger beside me. I looked back at them in exhaustion. They seemed tired too.

“Who are you?”

Across the mirror was my home easel and the new paints gifted to me by Mila. The stretched fabric was dappled in colors; splattered, and abstracted from the executive control networks of my fried brain. The trees reigned into the sky dressed in fluorescent tones. God didn’t put those trees there, I did. The stranger in the mirror did. Mila did. The money we made downtown every few weeks did. The drugs did.

God didn’t.

I lulled my head off the pillow and detangled my limbs from the sheets. My clothes felt as if they'd been soaked by the ocean, weighing me down more than gravity ever could. Each step toward the canvas felt like the last before I’d go crashing into the water, the linoleum floorboards. came from the wooden stand I thrifted for the canvas.

The fluorescent tones of the trees mixed into the rosy sky, contrasting from the deep velvet green blanketing the ground. If I stared correctly, the trees towered above me. I could take it all in, encapsulate every detail. Every leaf and flower. Every tree. Every brush stroke reminded me it wasn't real. Each stroke prodded at my yearning for its reality.

I closed my eyes and felt the medicated bile bubble up from my throat. The weight of the ocean tugged my heavy body lifeless. My vision flared and diminished as I sunk into the linoleum.

I felt light again.