Natasha

It’s a crispy Saturday morning with a few sun rays coming through. But Nina is unimpressed. With a blank face she goes on to do what she usually does, sitting by the window.

Natasha slowly appears at the door. She has not come to visit in a good time. She walks towards the window, looking slightly disgusted. She finds a pile, born out of many different things, clean and dirty, to sit on. She tries to cross her legs while looking around the room, frowned. As she places her hands on her legs she looks even more disgusted, disappointed, quite scrutinizing of her person and her surroundings. But then, for the first time in a long time, her sarcastic expression is gone and she actually looks slightly worried or rather scared. Nina’s room is a mess and it looks like it has been like that for some time. The table is full of dirty plastic containers, hair, used tissue and some other nasty stuff. However, her plants are managing to survive, her bed is decent and her teddy is washed. It looks like Nina’s bubble is getting smaller and smaller; it is becoming a trap. Natasha worries. If her person is gone she will be gone too.

She sits her chin on her hand and looks at Nina. Nina is dazed; she woke up not long ago and is in her head, as most times. She is smoking and staring out the window. She looks lifeless; like a zombie but somehow still graceful.

Natasha looks at Nina’s blank expression until she restlessly starts pacing around the room.

“I need to do something” she thinks to herself. “I am the bad bitch, that’s why she made me. I need to look out for her too but this girl can’t even call me anymore. She made me a protector but didn’t teach me how to look after her. I’m not caring; I don’t know what to do.”

Natasha goes back to the window and lights her own smoke.

“What are we going to do Nina?”

“Nothing”

“How do you mean nothing?”

Nina smokes some more and doesn’t say anything for a while.

“I have no energy, Natasha. I have no anything right now, no motivation. I don’t know how to get out of this. Everything is just too much.”

“It’s going to pass, how much have you been through already? This is nothing different and you’ll get through it. You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself”

“I don’t even have energy to do that”, Nina says with the same expressionless face.

“What is going on in your head, what do you spin in there all day?”

“You should know, that’s where you come from”, Nina says sarcastically.

“I see you’re learning from me”

“No, you are. I made you sarcastic, remember?”

“Ok, so she can talk. And no, I don’t go strolling around your mind, are you mad? I would get lost forever. So where do you go? What is happening?”

“I’m just hiding from everything and everything is hiding from me.”

Natasha lets out a sigh. “Ok, expand.”

“Like I said, I’m just hiding; going to my lonely far away planet.”

“Oh, you have your own planet now?” laughs Natasha. “Nice, are you having fun there?”

“Leave me alone, Natasha. I’m tired”

“Listen, you need to wake up Nina! At least let me see these things you talk about.”

“I don’t know how to show you anything, just leave me alone!”

Natasha sits back down on the pile and reflects on her person. She is determined to do something, anything she can, given her questionable existence. Nina just ignores her and goes on to repeat the previous process; smokes again and thinks and smokes, looking out the window and at the smoke floating out of her mouth, like echoes of her never ending thoughts.

Natasha does not move from her pile, today she is standing by her person. Nina goes back to lay on the bed and stares at the wall humming to herself, daydreaming. She often imagines the stories she hears from when she was younger. She sees her uncles sitting in a circle, teaching her how to walk. One holds the back of her shirt as she wobbles to the next one, ready to catch her. It’s warm but a breeze is moving the grass tips around them. Her laugh mingles with that of other village kids on the road and the animals in people’s gardens.

All of a sudden she is there now, only the wind sounds hollow. It is only mother nature wailing around ghosted houses and unwalked country roads. She is standing at the top of the hill by her first childhood house, the last house on the road before the hills and the forest start. She is looking at half of her road, now empty of people and it is getting dark. Nature has taken over the hills all the way close to her old house as nobody looks after the land anymore. She can feel the tall grass tickling her elbows and hear bushes rustling with nature. The light is fading quicker and quicker and she tries to walk down the hill. As she does, the grass is slowly growing bigger around her and bushes and spines are intertwining out of the dark green lying ahead. The trees are all moving in the wind like giants about to start walking. She cannot see properly and she feels cobwebs as she tries to move and step over the unexpected. She panics as the hill now seems to never end and the house is not getting closer. She is paralysed to look behind and her chest is getting heavy. Out of the wilderness, she hears her name called in a stern male voice and she is stunned, unable to move or look behind her. Her body is shaking and she wishes she could run away but she cannot move. She closes her eyes hoping to be somewhere else but the grass and spines are growing taller and taller around her; she is trapped.

“Nina! Nina!”

She hears Natasha shouting her name and when she opens her eyes she can see her in the distance wearing a white dress.

“I’m here! I found you! So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know!” shouts Nina back in frustration though she is extremely relieved for Natasha’s disruption.

Since Natasha appeared, stars started coming up on the night sky and the grass stopped growing. Nina is still too scared to look behind but has managed to slightly move forward, towards Natasha. With the corner of her eye she can see a growing light to her left.

“Can you see that? What is it?” she asks Natasha.

“Erm it just looks like a star that is growing bigger and bigger. Well more like coming closer to you. It looks strange.”

“Nina looks up to her left and sees the star. It seemed like the sky moved closer but at the same time not. As she feels this strange pull she reaches for the star and somehow can pull it down. Then a string of stars follow, grouping themselves in what seems to be a capricorn goat with it’s long fish tail.

“Is that our way out of here?” Natasha bursts out laughing.

“It’s my star sign” says Nina with a side look. “Let’s just get on I guess”

“You guess? You did not call it?”

“Nope”

“But it is YOUR mind..”

“ Yes and it plays tricks on me. How great if I could control every thought that goes around or the little lurking demons.”

“Well some part of you does”

“Shut up'' grunts Nina. “What’s with that ghostly white dress anyways? Everything else was creepy enough”

“Again, you tell me.”

“What’s the point of you if I still have to answer everything?” Nina says, rolling her eyes.

“Like you said, you made me sarcastic” smiles Natasha.

As the capricorn goes further up into the night sky the girls can see the village getting smaller and smaller until it becomes a little glass ball floating around.

“So was that this planet you talk about?”

“No, just some childhood memory.”

“I see.” Says Natsha looking around at all the weird floating objects and things in the distance.”Strange place I come from “.

As Nina opens her mouth to answer back she can see a meteor storm coming towards them.

“There are some rocks coming right towards us and I don’t actually know how to make this goat change course. I’ve just let it go to where it knows we need to go.”

“Look at that speed though, I bet it’s your anger” laughs Natasha.

“Stop laughing, you’re on this flying space goat too.”

“Yeah but I’m not real, nothing can happen”. As Natasha says that, the rocks have fully reached them. As they are being hit the flying goat dismembers and the stars start shooting in every direction, blinding them with light. They are being thrown around, screaming, until eventually everything goes dark.

Nina starts to hear faded sounds and she can feel her body shivering. She starts to make up Natasha's voice and slowly opens her eyes. Natasha is cursing and gesticulating over her while looking slightly bluish.

“Is this your fucking planet?”

“Listen, it’s all a metaphor anyways. Yes, no…maybe”

“Omg Nina! Honestly, by this point I need to think if you need a straight jacket or are worth trying for first of all! What is this barren cold land? Are you going to say your heart, your soul, or some other shit like this?”

“Yes Natasha! It’s just like my cold and dry existence!” Nina shouts.

“Of course”, she says sarcastically. “There is nothing here though..it’s cold and I have this grey sand everywhere in my clothes. It’s all the same colour, you cannot even tell where the sky is.”

“Everytime it looks kind of different. But it never looked like this before, it never looked so confusing.” says Nina, looking around.

As they start walking, they can feel vibrations in the ground and start following the direction. Nina starts walking quicker and quicker, as if trying to run away from something but with her next step she falls through a spiral whole underneath the sand, like a long and twisty slide. Natasha looks down but cannot see any trace of her person.

“Well…now I have no choice and at least we love rides”. Says Natasha, jumping joyfully in the whole.

After a long and twisted ride they reach the other end a little dizzy. The place they reach looks quite big just by the size of things as they can only see a few incredibly tall trees in front of them and the sky which is permanently half obscured by another planet.

“Oh this is strange. I thought we went inside the planet. But now this looks like the outside, we can see the sky. Could we go back if we wanted to? “ asks Natasha.

“Stupid question Natasha! Probably not. I’ll keep going down wormhole to wormhole until I find myself if there is myself and realise whatever it is I need to realise which is probably that there is nothing to realise or if there is, it changes nothing”

“Ok, calm down Nina. I don’t understand you people.

“People are not meant to be understood” says Nina blankly.

“Ok, miss wise. What now then?”

“We start searching. I have a feeling the fun is only beginning.

“Of course, I know, but what exactly are we looking for?”

“Whatever keeps me up at night, inside my room and outside of everyone else’s. Whatever broke my wings and keeps me small. I’m looking for all that pain that I don’t know what to do with, I don’t know how to handle and I don’t know how to contain. I’m looking for those little demons which are stealing my light away.”

“Well, now I’m actually scared”

“Let’s go”

As they walk, a little purple yellow bird is following them around. After a few minutes the little bird flies and sits on Nina’s shoulder. She takes the bird into her hand and admires its colours.

“I dreamt once that someone gifted me a bird” says Nina.

“Yes, and what happened? “

Nina closes her eyes. When she opens them, she is holding something in her hand, saying thank you. When she looks down she can see a small cage with a little bird inside. She had received a few presents for her nameday. Nina wanted to keep the bird close for some reason so she put the cage on her bedside table. As she tries to sleep Nina keeps turning around, restlessly. She can then hear her bird moving quickly around the cage. As she looks towards it, she can see there is a cat by the door. Nina likes cats but this one is insistingly eyeing her bird and looking slightly mean. She suddenly realises how strange that the cat is in her room…the door is closed. For some reason she cannot get up to take the cat out, her body cannot get off the bed; so she grabs the bird and holds it underneath her chest, trying not to fall asleep on it. The cat now has company and more cats seem to scratch at the door. Nina is trapped in her bed, holding her bird while more and more cats are trying to prey, to bite, to scratch. Nina holds her bird tighter, closing her eyes tightly, hoping the cats will go away but they are not; they are patiently waiting for her to fall asleep and eat her bird, this bird she must protect at all cost. She is moving around the bed, moving her hands, trying to shoo the cats. Until she finally wakes up in a pool of sweat, with even less energy than before. She finally woke up.

“This fucking bird dream again though, I need to look it up. I have to go back there again”, says Nina to herself.