The inner thoughts of a mortality-conscious being

Brittany Chang-Kit, 2T5 PB

The tips of her fingers aggressively rummaged through the hairs close to her scalp. She had showered that morning, yet she could feel a thin greasy film beginning to collect underneath her nails.

Her reflection was adequate. Besides the flecks of dirt and unattended dust that settled along the edges, the mirror was adequate too. She wasn’t aware of the time, but she had been in the bathroom for quite a while now. Very quickly the sky had darkened, and the yellow tinge of the overhead CFL bulb was growing more and more prominent with every minute that passed.

She was on a mission, and a very technical one indeed. Finally, with an inner aha! she plucked out the hair between her right index and thumb and began to examine it meticulously. Silvery, wispy, and relaxed. With her other hand, she pulled both ends until it was taut. Using one hand as an anchor, the other slowly wrapped the strand around her finger, pulling tightly until the underlying skin of her index was ever so slightly bulging out over the circumference of the hair.

How many dead cells are in this one hair? she asked herself, a thought fleeing as quickly as it came. How much of my hair is silver? was a more permanent contemplation. Acting promptly, she resumed foraging through her scalp, the silver hair now unwound and distressed, laying on the countertop in front as reference for new culprits.

Her vision was not the greatest, either. Near-sightedness and subsequently thick-rimmed glasses were common in her family. How many times in a given day did she clean her glasses? Two times? Three? No, it was definitely more than that. She now took off her glasses and ran them under cool water, and could see a barely perceptible fingerprint along the edge of the right lens. She dried them off with the corner of her towel. Blinking, she readjusted her glasses. A black smudge dashed into her sphere of vision and floated around. This often irritated her.

It started two summers ago, while she was hiking in the mountains with a friend. As she admired the elevated view before her, she quickly became aware of a foreign object invading the picturesque scenery. Was it dust from city pollution? A bird in the distance? No—it was a clump of protein inside her eye’s vitreous fluid, according to her doctor. Totally normal as you get older, the doctor said. But what was one floating dark speckle became two, and what was two became three. Just ignore it.

This speck of blackness in her vision demarcated the beginning of her slow death. She could feel the vitality being sucked from her, night after night. How she longed to rewind time and scold her 10-year-old self for reading incessantly under dim lights. How discouraged she felt when she realized that the painful throb behind her right knee was a permanent ailment and not a temporary phenomenon that would recover in a few days. How disappointed she was.

She was ready to sleep now. She tucked herself into clean bedsheets and rested her glasses on the adjacent nightstand. This was the hour of bliss, when her thoughts could simply melt away and the discomfort of physical sensations could cease to be. As she shut her eyes and began to imagine a world of love and light, her limbs began to relax, and her heart slowed from a flutter to a lull. I’m so tired.

She felt tethered to the earth, burnt by the overbearing auburn sun, and drenched in anxiety. Only sleep could quiet her worried soul. Within seconds, she was pulled under, exhaustion dissipating and dreams of vitality vividly dancing through her repose.