Extremes Of Orderliness

• Grace Robinson, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2011

The room was neat. Too neat. Clinically white walls adorned only by thin mist of anti-bacterial spray framed the perfectly square room in matching shades of surgical neutrals. A row of shelving ran along the perimeter of the room in perfect parallel to the carpet, holding nothing but four neatly aligned books, their spines rigidly parallel to one another. An overwhelming smell of bleach penetrated the rooms, piercing the air with its thick and undeniable scent. This was no normal house.
Over in the far corner sat Jane. Her dark, chocolate hair was pulled back into a tight, sleek bun, the light reflecting off its shiny surface. A clean, neat, black dress clung to her frail figure, illuminating her relentlessly tensed muscles. Her bony hands bore signs of damage with burning blisters that seemed to cover her hands like permanent gloves. Jane leaned her head against the wall and began to contemplate her day’s tasks. Wondering over to the kitchen, Jane picked up a freshly printed recipe, its warmth still radiating through the paper and warming her blistered hands. Reading the recipe, Jane discovered that she needed seven apples. Jane knew that wouldn’t work. Seven was a terrible number. It had no symmetry, it was a prime number and worse still, it did not even have any multiples of four. Jane did not even have to consciously decide what to do. Her natural instinct took control as she placed a mere four apples in the pan without a second glance. Jane then set about to cleaning the floor with bleach. The first three times did not seem to yield any results however on the fourth wash the floors seemed to reach to Jane’s hygienic standards. The chemical substance seemed to burn the air, burning Jane’s porcelain nose as she inhaled the harsh gas. The bleach was going to her head but Jane enjoyed it, enjoyed the idea that not a single bacterium would be able to survive this treacherous fume. Jane felt peculiar, it was not just the bleach, she felt something was wrong, very wrong. It was stopping her from sleeping and she knew she must fix it but she had been unable to identify the issue until now. Jane peered critically around the room. Walking over to her bookshelf she noticed a book was at a slight angle and not perfectly perpendicular making the whole room out of sync and causing her anxiety. Straightening it, Jane felt a wave of relief wash over her, as her frantic worries drowned beneath the waves.
Her family had told her that there was something wrong with her. They had described an illness called something Jane didn’t care to remember. It had only three words. How could she be affected by an illness so messy and dirty that it only had three words? Sometimes Jane wondered whether she was the only one with any common sense. Jane continued to walk over to her shrine, the place where she felt that she as cleanest, the bathroom. Pearly crystal tiles lined the walls in perfect symmetry, framing her one and true love. An immaculately cleaned tap and basin stood in the centre of the bathroom, light seemed to radiate from its pristine surface, bouncing off the surrounding tiles. Jane took a steady breath and began completing her ritual. As Jane washed her hands for the fourth time, as the first three had not been sufficient enough, she exposed an odd feeling. Again she felt annoyed, incomplete. She could not shake off her core feeling, the feeling that something was missing. She tried again to wash hands but it wouldn’t help. Jane scanned the house, attempting to recognize the dilemma when an unexpected jolt of enlightenment hit Jane with the force of high powered train. It was crystal clear, an illuminating light to her misery of incompletion. Jane sat and pondered the possibilities that lied ahead and decided to act. After all, there was no time like the present.
Jane arrived home, giving four anticlockwise turns before entering the house and gave a sigh of relief before turned on the evening news. “The body of Peter Jurnamy was found inside his home in Firlishtown. Four stab wounds were present in parallel lines across his torso. Police are still searching for both the motive and the murderer.” Jane turned off the television, the newsreader was annoying her with his dirty fingernails and overgrown beard. She did not feel any regret for killing that stranger only a few hours previously. It had bugged her, like the misaligned book, that she had killed only three people. Three was not an even number, four was better, neater. Jane did not worry. She would start a new life somewhere else, somewhere neater. After all, her name wasn’t even J-a-n-e.