Written 2007
Marcelle left her apartment at 4:30 in the morning, and walked quickly along the sidewalk.
The hood of her red sweatshirt was up, shielding the sky from view of her apathetic eyes.
Her rain boots tromped along the dry pavement, causing Marcelle to often stumble because these boots were much too large for her. Her knee-length skirt was wrinkled and speckled with acrylic paint, a detail Marcelle put there to give herself the appearance of an “intellectual artsy type.” The street lamps illuminated her path with an orange hue, which was reflected in the city’s cloudy sky.
Marcelle is an emaciated 23 year old with an addiction to sleeping pills, caffeine, and pretentiousness. She steals her absent-minded neighbor’s Adderall and stays up all night watching infomercials, drinking coffee with doxylamine and diphenhydramine pills, grinding her teeth, and giving herself magic-marker tattoos which smear when she sweats because she can’t afford to run the air conditioner. She doesn’t have any close friends so she uses her phone primarily for making lewd calls to strangers when she gets bored, which is usually around two in the morning. This is a lie; she is always bored.
Marcelle kicked a stranger’s car on the way to the diner because she wanted the alarm to go off but it didn’t. No, she actually kicked it because she disagreed with its bumper sticker. Disappointed, she quickly forgot her failure and continued on. She turned into the diner with extremely bright, fluorescent lights. This is Marcelle’s favorite diner, because of how bright the lights are, and how the walls and floors are white, and how it all looks so sterile like a hospital. Upon entering, her mannerisms changed so that she acted daintier, taking care not to stomp and setting her purse gently on the chair beside her. She did all of this while carefully watching the hostess.
Marcelle stayed in the diner, drinking six cups of coffee and staring at the seventh until
7:45 in the morning when she smiled and thanked the server and exited, leaving a twenty dollar bill on the table.
In the street, Marcelle met an acquaintance of hers, Alexei, who lived on the same floor of her apartment building.
Alexei greeted Marcelle, walking quickly to meet her.
“I’m jealous you have time to go out for breakfast,” he said, smiling amicably. The truth was that Alexei found Marcelle attractive, if a little bit conceited, and wanted to spend some minutes talking with her before completing his journey to wherever. “I heard they have nice pastries there.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Andrei, I only went for caffe e rilassamento,” replied Marcelle, with a good dose of vexation. Her blunt annoyance caught her off guard, and she tried to recover coolly. “Where are you going?”
Alexei paused for a moment, considered correcting Marcelle on his proper name, but could tell by her sunken, lack-luster eyes and spiteful response that she was perhaps not feeling well. “Marcelle, are you okay? Did you get any sleep last night? You look sick.”
Marcelle looked thoughtfully at Alexei, touched by the sincerity in his voice, but caught herself. She suddenly began to laugh, as if his remarks were completely unexpected and extremely amusing.
“Andrei. You’re so sweet.” She paused, smiling sincerely at the confused boy. “I’m fine. I hope you have a nice day.” She gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder and began to walk away. Alexei, still taken aback and unsure of what had just happened, smiled uneasily and said goodbye, but did not move for some time, his hopeful expression deteriorating quickly.
Marcelle walked quickly away, and then began to skip, but the skipping made her tired and her muscles ache, though it’s true there was not much muscle to her. So she stopped her skipping and sat for some time on a bus stop bench next to a wrinkled old man with a dirty suit and dry skin. She pulled 1200mg worth of encapsulated caffeine and put it in her mouth. She swallowed them with some Tussionex, justifying this action with Alexei’s remark on her potential sickness.
“Isn’t it too early for a headache?” asked the old man, beaming at Marcelle with his cataract eyes and toothless smile.
“It’s never too early for a headache,” Marcelle stated quite bluntly.
The old man laughed. “I’m going to visit my grandson.”
Marcelle didn’t care, and decided the old man had a foul odor. “Arrivederci, old man,” she said, and stood up to go. The elder said nothing, because he didn’t understand, but continued to smile, watching Marcelle walk away with his milky eyes.
Marcelle stomped along with her rain boots some more, and arrived at her apartment building at 8:15 in the morning. She began the five story ascent to her apartment, but was worn out by the third floor. She sat on the stairs and took 600mg more of caffeine dry to help her finish the journey, before pulling out a cigarette and blowing smoke rings at the No Smoking sign.
“Stronzata,” she said, and thought of Andrei, though she vaguely felt that perhaps Andrei wasn’t his name. Abram, Alexander, Abe….?
She stood up slowly once again, pulling her rain boots off because they were hard to climb stairs in. As she passed the fourth landing, she thought about the man who died there a few days ago. A suicide, they had said: intentional overdose and self-mutilation. She stopped for a moment and opened the door to look down the hall at his apartment. The police tape was gone, but it was still vacant. He had apparently been dead several days before anybody found him.
Marcelle shut the door and continued, thinking, “This building reeks, anyway. It’s no wonder nobody noticed.” She let herself into her apartment and threw the boots into a corner, dropping her hood and heading into the kitchen. It smelled like sour milk and perfume. She made a mental note to only buy non-perishables. She looked into her empty refrigerator, rubbed her nose once, and then shut it. She pulled at her hair for some time, staring at the linoleum and unconsciously grinding her teeth.
At 9:30 in the morning, Marcelle, feeling hungry, snorted 25mg of her neighbor’s Adderall and then went to a desk and grabbed a notebook and pen because she wanted to write a letter to her sister, Ana. She stared blankly at the sheet of paper for a very long time, or maybe only a minute, before writing Ana’s name at the top, and her own at the bottom. Feeling satisfied, she stared smugly at the wall in front of her.
At 11:00 in the morning, Marcelle left her apartment in sandals, having absent mindedly drunk another 4 cups of coffee in an attempt to obtain some inspiration for her letter. She had also downed some benzos when the shaking made it impossible to write legibly, and finally abandoned the communication effort when she realized she had filled the page with thoughtless doodles. She was going to the bookstore downtown to look for a copy of Dostoevsky’s “The Double” because she liked the idea of it, and she liked to tease the male barista with the awkward smile.
Marcelle preferred to walk to where she was going, even if it was miles away, because she liked to watch the people pass her by, and because she wanted to stay fit and thin and healthy. Sometimes, the people made her laugh, or else they made her feel very serious.
At 11:30 a.m., Marcelle’s thoughts began to run very quickly and less coherently. People she walked by stared because she was really only bones and yellowish skin, had several bruises on her face, and her nose had begun to bleed and she did not seem aware of it or of them at all. At 11:32 in the morning, Marcelle stopped walking and was staring blankly in front of her, speaking in a combination of English and Italian, and though she felt invigorated and alive and happy, it seemed as if she were slowly being crushed by the weight of gravity against her tiny frame.
“I’m so glad I could see the sun rise today! It was beautiful, and I think Andrei, or Alex, or I really can’t remember his name, he is beautiful. Sorella, how are you? How long it has been since I have seen you, how I have missed you… perché avete… andato? So beautiful, you missed…. Alexei.”
It had been 9 days since Marcelle had last slept.
At 11:35 in the morning, Marcelle fell into convulsions and did not get up. At this moment, an unending stream of traffic was just going over the bridge.
j.k. armstrong 