Accounts of Melancholy – An Anthology

The Bargain

She came from the dirt quivering. Reaching up from beneath the ground as if asking for help. Mud flaked her eyebrows and clung to her hair. Eyes flashed black in the night. He needed her, though was taken back and surprised by the beauty of the thing. Of her in that moment. Reaching out to free her from the earth she clinched his arm with a bewildering strength. Stumbling and falling back he would lay there underneath her in the moonlight wondering if he had made the right decision. She never blinked, never smiled, never took a breath. He knew what was coming. He knew he’d been correct. In the haze and delusion of the moment that seemed to last for hours, she rose finally. Seemingly remembering why she was there. Reaching into his sack to recover a yellow dress, she covered herself in the midst of the trees and silent wildlife peering out from the border. She gave him a smile, and he was content as he sunk beneath the ground.

The Mother

She had been a lover of the green. The bark and the roots and the foliage. In the mornings she would walk through her house, carefully tending to each potted escape from reality that vined and blossomed along each window seal and every table. She saved his for last, always taking pride and comfort in the careful pruning and shaping of the little sapling. It required constant attention. Not too dry, not too wet. It needed special soil and a south-facing window. She would plant it near him when it was strong enough. Remembering his smile and laughter as she sat in its shade during a summer day. The bottle of gin rested on its permanent mount next to the little tree. Staring at her as she cared for the latter day after day, she would eventually feel guilty for neglecting the liquid amnesia. Until the day came she refused to ignore her friend. She gave a sip of attention, reminiscing on fond memories of the two of them together. She reminisced until the sun slept and with one swift flick of her wrist severed the young trunk from its roots.

The Hole

He couldn’t remember why he started it or why he could not finish. The deeper he dug the shallower he felt. Was it the fight they had got in, the accident that followed, or was all that fiction he had dreamed up one of the nights spent down in the wet dirt? He would starve soon. Or dehydrate first. For four days and four nights, he ground away, needing to work harder, needing to go deeper. His clothes weighed him down, blood-soaked and now buried in some forgotten pile of discarded earth. His hands shredded from the splintering shaft of his now only and last possession. He knew he needed to rest, if only for a few minutes. If he rested just a short while he could regain a sliver of energy, dig harder, dig faster. Hunched over his tool he rested his eyes, giving in to cascading waves of a humble euphoric calm that seemed to engulf his self-made grave.

Birthday

“You made it!” a girl ecstatically screaming from across the bar. Rushing over to embrace her as though they hadn’t seen each other for years. “Shots! Someone get this girl a shot!” She had only tried alcohol once before this cycle and didn’t much care for the lack of control and tricks it played on her psyche. But it was her birthday, her twenty-first birthday for the countless time, and tradition IS tradition. She found herself immediately tossed into an ongoing conversation about topics she knew nothing about. Sex, relationships, someone named Amanda who had apparently gotten fat. More sex. She was homeschooled all this life and only by pure unintentional coincidence met her energetic host. Gripping a shot of tequila with a cut of lime wedged on the brim she studied the movements and the gestures of her new blonde acquaintance. She noticed her shirt only reached her ribcage, her hair curled in long waves covered by a Kansas City Royals ball cap, and her shorts looked as though she had cut them herself and were missing the top button. Smiling politely and nodding when she felt it appropriate, she could smell them all too well. They smelt of sweat, liquor, fear, and anxiety. What seemed to most as a confident beautiful young woman would without doubt be known to her as the pinnacle of carefully masked melancholy mediocracy of the masses she has seen in all her years past. Every decade is the same, every gathering of party girls, great galas of elites, pop-up tent communities temporarily sheltering the underprivileged. The only thing that seemed to noticeably change was the taste. The processed food they piled down their gullets, the trickling radiation building up in their cells, polluted air, and contaminated water. She still had to eat of course, though she enjoyed it less and less. These thoughts and many more on the changing, yet aggravatingly stagnant world around her that made her feel as though she could not keep up “did she even want to?”, would be going through her mind as she so graciously offered her new intoxicated girlfriend a ride home, where she could safely sleep off a long night of debauchery and be devoured alive.

***

Anthony lives in the Midwest. A barber by trait, writing is a moderately newfound hobby, but they have found it to be a constructive and expressive outlet.