“Schizophrenia For A Day” – Part I

Author’s Note: The title is not set. “Schizophrenia For A Day” was the first thing I could think of when I came up with this story idea, and I’ve been unable to think of something better ever since. For now, it is a working title. I’ll update it if ever I think of something different.

Author’s Note^2: So today, something’s wrong with my right leg. There was something wrong with it yesterday, too, but I managed–figured it was just a pulled muscle. This morning, it’s all I can do to hobble around the house and not fall over. It’s gotta be a muscle thing. I must’ve overworked it. But you know what this means? I’ll be sitting down a lot today. Not that I don’t already sit down a lot, but moreso now. Hopefully this will lead to some productive writing instead of me browsing social media and playing games.

Author’s NoteNoteNote: I’m posting this here so I’ll feel guilty enough to keep writing on it, and hopefully finish it. I’m really good at starting things, then throwing them in a random file somewhere and forgetting they exist. But this story needs to be finished, simply because it has the potential of being exceptionally funny.

“Schizophrenia For A Day” – Part I

Darla Leanna Miers stood with her face towards the wind, overlooking a cliff. Her almost dark hair (it would have been black if not for a red tint, probably from some hair dye) fluttered gently and she shifted her weight to her left leg. She had twisted her right knee during a game of volleyball several days ago, and it hadn’t completely healed. A small, black backpack, the kind you’d see walking around the mall and not out in the wilderness, hung from from her shoulders, while black, wide sunglasses perched atop her head.

Darla sighed and looked down at the clay urn in her arms. Inside it rested the ashes of her late grandmother. She couldn’t say she felt particularly sad about the old woman’s passing, though; she had never been very connected to or loved by either of her father’s parents. And yet, here she was, out of place and out of options on this mountain cliff, the only relative with enough respect for familial ties to dump the deceased’s remains in a pleasant area.

Even considering the lack of emotional support from either grandparent, Darla had to admit they had given the best gifts. On her 16^th birthday, they had given her a used car; on her 18^th, 2 thousand dollars, and only last Christmas her grandmother had sent her two hundred dollars and a diamond studded watch. She had worn it ever since—mostly for the prestige and bragging rights.

It seemed odd to Darla that such rich old people should want their ashes to float around some thicket in the mountains, rather than, say, Bill Gate’s backyard. Perhaps they wanted to “become one with nature” in their final days.

She didn’t care, if she was being honest. She had seen nature and lost no love of it—especially when she learned about spiders. As far as Darla was concerned, she would toss the ashes off a cliff near a hiking trail and trot her little city-self home.

She unscrewed the cap of the urn and held it out in front of her, searched for some final phrase that might be sappy and motivational at the same time. She thought, and thought, then realized there wasn’t much to be said.

She tipped the urn over and the ashes spilled out.

It would have made a fantastic cinematic shot: a woman standing on the edge of a cliff, releasing the remains of a loved one to be scattered by the wind . . . had the wind not been a little twerp who couldn’t take stage directions and blown every bit of ash straight back into Darla.

Darla coughed and gagged, retreating from the cloud of sentient person-dust intent on suffocating her. Her designer blouse looked like a bag of dry cement had been thrown at it and she sat the urn down with a clunk, hurrying to brush the remains of her grandmother from her clothes. Darla fought a gag reflex when she thought of how she was literally covered in old woman cells. She coughed and spat some more, gave her clothes a final swat, the kicked the urn savagely. It shattered the second her foot hit it and pieces of pottery went flying over the edge of the cliff into the trees below.

She felt no remorse. It had only been a few dollars at a rinky-dink flea market on the side of the road. Nobody cared about that old woman anyway! She had died alone, all because she couldn’t be bothered to spend time with her family or friends. It served her right to be spat out and scattered haphazardly on the ground, where everyone from the hiking trail would trample her.

Darla scuffed her shoes in the grass before heading for home. She glanced down at her clothes and the diamond studded watch on her wrist, and missed with the obliviousness of the young and bitter, the telltale sign of her grandmother’s love.

***

“Where in the name of all that is holy am I?”

Darla awoke with a start. She sat bolt upright in bed, hair frizzed to the max and her nightgown slipping off one shoulder. Beside her, Jeremy, her fiance, shifted.

She peered down at him; where had that voice come from? She glanced around the room for her phone. It sat on her bedstand, as usual, but, also as usual, it was turned off. No crazy old lady voices could be emanating from it.
It must have been a dream. Darla laid back down, punching her pillow twice for good measure. She had just closed her eyes, when:

“Why is it so dark in here?”

Back into a sitting position. Darla’s eyes were wide and she had unwittingly stopped breathing. She slid a hand across the sheets and poked the lump next to her.

“Jeremy,” she whispered.

Jeremy grunted. She poked harder.

Finally he woke up. He rolled over and Darla leaned away from his halitosis when he yawned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Darla kept her voice at a whisper, wishing he would take the hint and do the same. “I think there’s an old lady in the house.”

“Of course, hon . . . that’s you.”

This was not the time for jokes. Darla smacked his arm. “Jeremy. I’m serious.”

Jeremy had already closed his eyes. His voice came on in a nearly incoherent mumble. “If it’s just a little old lady you can handle it, right?”

Darla started to reply, but Jeremy had already dozed off. She poked him again. Out cold. She threw back her covers viciously and slipped on her house shoes. After grabbing her phone, she stalked to the bedroom door and pulled it open. The voice came back.

“Honestly, I thought heaven would be a little brighter than this.”

Darla crept to the hallway closet and took a baseball bat from inside, then slowly patrolled the rest of the house. She came to the kitchen without an infraction and turned on a light.

“Ah, that’s better. But why am I in a kitchen? It’s not even my kitchen.”

Darla tensed. “Who’s there?”

[End Part One]