Page 21 - Demo

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26th of October, 2018
The soft breeze from the window could barely waft through the room. The mounds of heavy dictionaries exercise surprisingly clean of what most likely caused by her frequent usage. The fresh breath of air, corrupted by the complicated structure of the pile of books, turned turbid in one’s breath.
“What more do you want from me?”
The desperate soft scream of protest was accompanied by scribbles of pencil on paper, the glorious music a parent longs to hear the most — the pathway to success. The pencil danced violently yet so robotic. The hand that wielded the wand of knowledge, was swollen from its tight grip. A single tear slid down and off her face, diluting the hideous grey on the paper as if a faint cry of opposition.
“What more do you want?”
The voice grew faint, but no longer as strong-willed as before. It was a tight scream; a near-death gasp of horror; a painful call of help stretched, skinned, ripped from one’s flesh and bones; yet a final, bloodied call of surrender from deep within the soul. Her lips parted then clamped shut. They quivered as gently as the first flutter of a butterfly.
She set the pencil aside, the weapon she held proudly her whole life — her mightiest qualities, left now silent next to an enormous stash of books next to the wall. The wall she had built to fool herself from the world, to secure her faint hope of paternal love. The wall she had built to support herself from failure. The wall she had built with her bare hands book by book. The wall. The culprit for the destruction of her beliefs, her hopes.
Suddenly, the room was no longer polluted by the air swollen with dust and filth, but alive and flush with fresh wind from the wide, too widely-opened window. Wait. It was just the wind. The edges of the briefly disturbed books drifted back down gently. She quit.