Killing My First Person

• Jordana Arndt, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2008

I’m an eight year old in a seventeen year old body swinging my feet over the edge wondering of the exhilaration I may feel if I lean too far forward. I’m in your statistics, your percentages, your files and storage rooms. Just words on a blank piece of paper, consider me a subliminal. Subconsciously I’m repenting and I don’t know what for, I smash every mirror I see and use the face in the corner of my room to apply my make up, subconsciously I’m looking at myself. I’m an elephant with low self esteem, I never forget but you forget me.

This is the winter of my content and my favourite roll of film is a flash back. I sigh melodramatically on occasion and I sleep in foetal positions, clutching my knees wondering why mum, why?

Call me Electra, just don’t call me Oedipus.

I met my angel in a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pack of Winfield Reds. I took my angel’s hand in the form of smoking paraphernalia and I need not exhale my problems for my angel saw them displayed within my eyes. My angel took my hand and lay me down and played his fingers a long my waist line and leaned with a heavenly tease. My angel removed my foundation and revealed to me the basics. My angel held curiosity’s he could not read or write, but neither could Socrates. My angel showed me le petite mort and killed me on multiple occasions.

But they took my angel away in a paddy wagon; I guess he flew too high for comfort.
They took my angel away and called it a death in custody; I guess angels are statistics too.

Now my hands shake alone.

Now my body quivers alone and my land has been claimed and invaded by the memories of creeps and cretins, beasts and ghouls whom dine on children’s innocence and taint their bodies with adult realms. Now my emotions are purposely neglected by no longer my mother but myself and I look at myself, through the face in the corner and sob for anywhere the heart is. Alas, my aorta has been ruptured.

I can no longer deal with these grey skies and blank screens, I can no longer deal with these distractions that pull me away from the bigger picture. I can no longer deal with the face in the corner of my room.
I can no longer deal, I have no cards.

Today I stopped swinging my feet over the edge, I merely stood and peered over, looking at the bigger picture and the picture said not a thousand words, just one. Jump.

And the face disappeared.