The Tens, Vanessa Jones [i like reading books .TXT] 📗

it, further adding to his narrative that she was a careless and reckless artist.

‘Grrrr. For fuck’s sake! Those stupid birds need to realise there’s a window there,’ she said to no one in particular.

Below the window, outside, lay a ball of a blackbird, its head tucked towards its torso. The bird's feathers had fluffed up, to cover its motionlessness. Alex can deal with it when he returns home, she thought. She couldn't be bothered discarding yet another dead bird.

But, like last time she went to inspect a fallen bird, she noticed something beside it. A thin, creamy matchbook lay next to the bird’s slackened beak. Admiring the ornate design on the cover, she picked it up and then pocketed it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

'Fly.'

A disembodied command woke her up. The air around her yellow and thick. It was afternoon and she had nodded off after leaving her painting half done. The unfinishedness of it replicating how undone her mind and life felt. Her thick slumber was helped by the painkillers she had unearthed at the back of the fridge, leftover from when Alex once had dental surgery. She didn't care whether they would make her more miserable, as long as she got snatches of sleep where she could. A nervous energy had been bound to her, swirling her around the house each day, pushing her to half complete simple tasks. A half-emptied dishwasher, empty toilet rolls spilled through the bathroom, three separate grocery lists had begun and were dotted around the house. The couch housed baskets and baskets of laundry that she felt too heavy to put away, sometimes too tired to even push off the couch, so she just laid on top of. The mail piled up in the letterbox and she had no intention of changing that. His mail was still coming, letters addressed to them, with both their names printed boldly across the front like they were still a family. Which they were most definitely not. It made her sick to think of his current address. Where was he? Who was he with? And the recognisable wash of anxiety scraped through her. Annoyed that the voice demanding that she fly had poked through her rare bit of rest, she rolled over, wanting to slip back into the chocolatey sleep. The TV stared silently and dully back at her, waiting for her to alight it with their familiar routine. She reached her foot towards the curtain, trying to hook it with her toe and push it back, wondering if the voice came from someone outside. Was he back?

Sophie leapt out of bed hoping that he had used his key but she didn't even need to look in the kitchen or lounge room to know he wasn't home. The air was still with loneliness. That icky still feeling when you know that no one has entered the room in a while.

Sighing with despair, she shuffled around the house wearing nothing but greying socks and a faded blue t-shirt, looking from window to window to window, hoping to see anything... but really hoping that her will would be strong enough to bring him to her.

A tiny sparrow collided into the window she stood facing, reverberating as she jumped her socked feet together as if by pressing her legs together she could stop the impact. Outside the window, the clump of bird lay still, folded in on itself. The fluffy plumage stood up in spikes and it could have been mistaken for a baby hedgehog. Sophie left the dead bird— yet another— on the ground as a symbol of all that was dying, was dead, within her.

Suddenly it hit her. The birds, the voice telling her to fly, the pent up angst inside of her. In somewhat of a trance, she knew what she had to do. Sophie flung open her wardrobe and wriggled into a cobalt blue dress and shiny heels.

The tinny beats exploded and made the rest of her body reverberate as she pressed her earbuds firmly into her ears. With each vibration, she felt like she was shaking off a demon, one that followed her everywhere. That demon was the wincing, squeezing pain of anxiety: a twisted stomach, chilled blood and broiling cheeks. The music and the rapid pacing helped to blast away some of the noise that sat in her head and she didn't have to hear her own breathing. The chaos of strangers and her first real foray into this urban wilderness—aside from going to work— provided an unexpected comfort. She timed each beat with a footstep to shake off the chills that the sunshine couldn't touch. But the more she walked, the more she became alert to something uncanny. There was something building inside of her. It felt like sagacity. It pushed aside any need to know where Alex was and why he left. Or why she couldn’t get a handle on her nightmares. It was bigger than that. And suddenly, it started to make sense. Slapping her palm to her forehead, she admonished herself for being so daft and resisting a knowledge that was there all along.

Her eyes scanned the open-air mall, darting from shop to shop, building to building. Which was the right one? They all looked similar, not fit for her purpose. But there was one, at the mouth of the mall. One that she'd looked at many, many times before. In the past, it was nothing more than familiarity to her ordinary, everyday scene. An invisible prop on a set. But today, this building was something different to her. It was a catalyst. Again, she was embarrassed that something so obvious had been sitting in her mind and she hadn't bothered to listen. Too busy being obsessed over Alex's whereabouts to understand what had been flourishing inside of her this whole time.

A soft mist started to fall, despite the crisp sunshine still out. She felt it hit