Puppet Feelings

It was a regular Tuesday in school when Soul realized she wasn't human.

The class was physics, but she had forgotten her notebook at home, and was scribbling away at the back of her math one. The symbols looked like hieroglyphs and magic and a bit close to the doodles her little sister had made of milk and fruit loops that morning. She had transcended the mortal plane, something that occurred often when it was maths and physics and logic. She was floating through a cloud that smelled like cinnamon with an undercurrent of something deliciously sharp when a searing hot pain shot through her spine. At once, a lasso rose up to the heavens, wrapped around and yanked a poor unsuspecting Soul back to Earth by the ankle.

Earth was a small classroom with around twenty students in varied states of their own high. Beside her, Dhara had a glassy look in her eyes and a pencil in hand that looped through the page a stunning artwork Soul wasn't sure she even noticed. The teacher walked up and down the aisle between their seats. Every once in a while, he would lock eyes with someone and another mind would break through its fog. For now, though, Soul was safe.

As the lecture waded into dangerous waters of something called drift velocity, Soul found her mind drifting once again, through the ceiling and up to where even the burdens of body could be shrugged off. That is, until the lasso tugged on her ankle again. Frowning, she looked down. A red thread, so thin it could snap between her fingers, was wrapped around her pale skin, snaking under the grey school trousers she wore.

She tugged at it, bent forward on the desk with her ass on the uncomfortable plastic chair, head on the table as if she was dozing. Eyes in darkness as one hand supported her face, she kept lacing another finger through the thread, looping it around and around until she was sure their blood circulation had stopped. Still, the thread did not break, or come away from her clothes. She sat up again.

The teacher was writing something on the board, squiggly lines he kept having to undo on the smartboard until they were perfect. The red thread, now a jumbled mess on the tiles below her feet, looked like a pool of blood. Soul peeked at Dhara, who had taken to sighing every five minutes, as if expressing her displeasure could nudge time into hyperspeed. In front of her, the two goth boys gave no indication of something amiss, their eyes trained on the fan.

She lifted her foot, her knee to her chest, praying her classroom crush would not look back and suddenly catch her in her weird antics. He was sitting just in front of the goths--- his broad form hunched over his desk, head dangerously bobbing up and down from micro-second long naps. Soul ground her teeth and yanked sharply, painfully. An angry line into her skin stared defiantly back. She had had enough.

She turned to shake Dhara into consciousness, but stopped short. She had always hated her fingers. They were short and stubby, like a child's are--- too rounded despite the skeletal feature the rest of her body was. They were not attractive the way hands were supposed to be attractive, but that was something she had resigned herself to at the beginning of the year. No, what Soul stopped at was the white thread that slithered out of her shirt's sleeve, intertwining with her fingers like grapevines.

She stared at the fraying white thread, feeling a strange realisation take root. She touched her chest and, underneath her wrinkled uniform, she felt the oddest texture greet her senses.

Wool. Spools and spools of wool spun into the puppet she was.

The threads from earlier weren't just around her---- they were her. She tugged the white between her fingertips, marveling at how it slowly unraveled. She held her hand up, against the harsh light of the overhead tubelight, and saw only half an index finger curl under her command. The rest of her finger had turned a white noodle. Blood rushed to her brain, and all she could hear was its roar upstream.

Sould pushed up her sleeve, where the white merged into a blue coloured thread. She kept going, rolling it up until the fabric was bunched against her shoulders. The classroom was forgotten. All that existed was her--- a very colourful her. She pulled at her uniform, looking down her undershirt to a flat chest. Thick ropes of blue ran along it, and below was a sea of purple. Even though she could not see much beyond, she knew somewhere down it would turn red and bleed out to her ankle.

She wasn't just threads and a fabric; not a canvas of monotony forsaking its colours into different shades. She was a tapestry. Gentle strokes of beautiful and scanty and dirty and pious imagery was etched into her body, each picture a memory. Her fingertips brushed the one at the hollow of her neck. She could not see what it was, excpet that it was--- whiter still than the one in her hand. She gasped as the world fell away, the only existance where her skin made contact with the memory.

The world was fresh, blurred at the edges and slowly lighting into existance. At first, there was a ceiling, then a fan on the ceiling, then a smooth cloth around her body, and, finally, a smiling face. Soul's mother gazed fondly at her baby, who had yet to be named Soul. Seven years down the line, on her birthday, they would tell her they originally planned to name her Jinny, but decided not to out of respect for her.

Baby Soul looked around the world and the universe that lay beyond its window. Everything was so pristine. Pure. Maybe she was, and so her surroundings molded to her naive eyes. There was something else too--- a weightlessness that had her clutching her mother's finger tightly, lest the wind pick her up. A white tether floated around her, but no one else seemed to notice. In front of her eyes, it sank into her soft, supple skin.

A small whimper of protest worked out Soul's chest as the memory fell away. Gravity pulled all her organs to her legs and stomach, and she was so uncomfortably heavy. She thumbed the thread at her fingers. It glowed faintly, throwing out a yellow that blinded the world and reinvented it.

It was a school, but not the one she currently studied in. She had left this one when she was to be a freshmen; They had changed houses, and the commute became too long and too lonely.

A three year old Soul tagged behind her parents in the hallway--- on the way to her new classroom. Faces in the hallway blurred together. Everyone was too tall for her to really make out their features, not that it would matter much. Little Soul had yet to develop a long-term memory.

She would always remember the smell though--- phenyl from when a sixth-grader puked his breakfast out, and perfumes and colognes of the older students. She wore a lovely outfit--- a white top that had small strawberries on it, some with glasses and some with their thumbs up. Her plain red skirt swished between her tiny legs, and her tinier sandals were red to match. The class was silent when she entered, half hidden behind her father.

"Everyone, this is your new classmate. Her name is Soul. Say hello to Soul." The teacher was an ethereal creature, offering an open palm to Soul, who accepted it a beat later. Squeaky voices chirruped an ugly greeting to her, as was with anything kids said. Some did not bother, busy in their own worlds. As soon as she was given a seat somewhere in the middle, Soul felt a pebble lodge in her throat.

Some kids stared at her openly, fixated on her long pigtails that looked pullable, going as far as to sit backwards in their chairs. Wave, nod, smile? In the end, Soul kept her head down the entire day. A girl waved at her when she was going back to her car though, so all for the better in the end.

On and on, memories rushed through Soul as she traced her hands along her collarbones, her shoulder blades, the side of her stomach. Everything she had forgotten and wanted to forget lifted her out of her reality, because even if each new place was lived in, it was better than the insane mundanity of her classroom.

She stopped, though--- touch hovering just below the belt, where red seeped into the purple of her art-can-make-a-living-in-the-real-world phase. The thread pulsated with energy, like it had a heartbeat in its sinews. The air warped around the tiny space and waves of anitcipation thrummed out to Soul, who felt it an unwelcome mysticism. Yet, despite her hesitation, the memory wrapped her in its violation. She could feel its glee as the haze through her mind dissipated, and she found herself on the roof of her house.

A bitter taste filled her mouth, though the metallic edge suggested she had bitten through her cheek too. Despite the tight coil of her intestines that premonished trouble, she found her face tipping up to the stars. Her house was at the edge of the city, a township that was still developing and had fewer lights. The result was a sky not many got to see. It was black and broken up by fleets of stars that had all become something to Soul for the many nights she had spent under them.

That one, the closest, with its shine the brightest. It had been just above the house when a thirteen year old Soul had first tried night photography. The camera was cheap, and so the pictures had come out ink blotches. Now it blazed a bit further from the house. Its glint was obscured by a fifteen-year old Soul, who stood at the ledge, looking down. Her body trembled, though Soul--- the senior-in-school-Soul--- knew the tears had run out hours ago.

It had been so trivial. A party she missed for a friend she did not like. In fact, she hated her. They had been in a silent academic battle the entire school year, and it would be so much better when she was gone. Still.

They had read about flash floods in geography. How sometimes, during rains, the excess water storage in dams demands a release of every drop back downstream, and it causes its failure.

As she grew up, Soul's inability of understanding a raise of an eyebrow, a shrug that could mean flirtation or indifference, every facet a child could never attempt hiding---- all of it made an ugly creature of need. A year to start talking, a year to become friends, then a year to become friends who invited each other to birthdays. Soul was an unfurling spool of wool that refused to thread through its needle, much less the fabric that awaited.

She had always known, in the nook of her heart and where the muscles connected with bones, she was not meant to live a complete life.

She stood on the ledge, fingers white-knuckled as she leaned too far into the rusted railing bars. The air was cold and she was not wearing a jacket. On the ground was the lawn and, in it, the washing machine. Young Soul could see the laundry her mother had put out for the next day. It was a shame her blood would make them unwearable, at least until a trip to a very thorough laundormat.

A dog howled in the distance, and both Souls startled. Another one joined, until animal cries warmed the air. Younger Soul closed her eyes, and dug her open palm into her stomach. Then she backed from the ledge. It would be stupid to die amid a dog piss war.

Soul followed herself downstairs to the living room, which was adjoined to the kitchen. Her younger self kept whipping her head to the left. Soul knew what she heard, even if she could not hear it herself, even if there was no sound at all---- a buzz, a hum of the atoms that made up the world and quivered with each breath. An anxiety that was eating away at the cells in her body.

Younger Soul rubbbed her chest, each breath going heavier inside. She had not died, and now she had to bear its insurmountable misery.

She did not want to follow herself to her bedroom, but a white tether connected them--- wound around her ankles and into her mirror self's ribcage. Young Soul locked the bathroom door behind them and took a deep, shallow breath. The blade was precise, untrembling into her skin. She started a little above her elbow, and drew to just beneathe her shoulder. Beads of blood ran down her arms and into the sink. Where they fell on the thread connecting them, they stained the Souls a bold, dying red.

"Soul? Soul? Soul!"

Her younger self faded, replaced by turned heads and an eerily silent class. Dhara dug her elbow into Soul's arm, and phantom pain flared molten under her skin. She bolted upright. Dhara leaned ever so subtly into her. "Get up. He's been calling you for the past ten minutes."

The teacher stared at her, an emotion flickering in his eyes and the set of his jaw Soul had no name for. Come to think of it, she had no name for any. Watchful eyes tracked her as she stood up, the height over everything making her floozy. Someone whispered something to their deskmate, two seats to her left and three forward. She swallowed.

"Yes sir?" Soul had many voices. All of them were weak.

She glanced at Dhara, who was trying to mouth something to her with the least engagement of face-muscles as possible. She tried not to look at him---- the very singular, very unique him who was suddenly wide awake. Vibrant, even; Like all the energy in the world had been supplied to him in a cosmic miracle. He kept whipping his head back and forth, alternating between Soul and the teacher. It would have been comical if Soul wasn't trying to actively avoid eye contact with all the six-feet-something-folded-into-a-chair of him.

"Did you not hear my question, Ma'am? The one I've been asking for the past ten minutes now?" He asked, voice a lash on her pride. No, Soul wanted to answer, I did not. Would you kindly repeat it?

"How did the midterm exams go for you again, if the lecture is worth so little of your attention?"

It was her classmates' turn to avoid gaze with her now. Backs were straight, shoulders a stiff line, yet heads bent the tiniest angle forward or turned away just in the slightest. Some, though, stared deep into her, shamefully soaking in her humiliation.

"I know I could have done better, sir," Soul told him truthfully. His brows furrowed for the smallest of seconds, trying to guage her quiet rebellion, or compliance. Soul had no idea what he found.

"How was your physics score? Out of eighty, fifty-one? Or was it higher?"

"Thirty-seven."

Two months after her first cut, which soon crossed into several more that adorned her arms and inner thighs, her parents had caught her. They had called her to their room while her siblings had gone off to school. She was the oldest.

"Why?" Her mother had asked, grabbing hold of her arms and pushing up her sleeves to show her father. The freshest cut, the one that had betrayed her to her family, looked like paint against her skin. Her father had said nothing. For days to come, he said nothing.

"And I suppose that is a good enough score to not need the teacher anymore, right?" Soul's cheeks burned. She probably looked like an inflamed tomato.

The truth was, she did not care much about being good enough. She knew she wasn't. She was accepting of it. Her father had asked her, for the first time in days since the incident no one talked about anymore, why she had decided to cut herself. "I just felt out of control. I wasn't getting good enough marks, and they had been the one thing that made being unathletic and unpopular and repulsive okay. But I let go of even that."

The truth was, she did not know why she woke up one day wanting to die. Maybe it was a cry for attention, maybe it was to feel alive. But they still did not feel true to think. They seemed like reasons people posted on Reddit, survivors realising why they had been dying. Not her.

"I... I did not..." Words fell the consistency of glue on her tongue. She suddenly had the urge to cross her arms over her body. She did not know if they could see her as she now saw herself--- a patchwork creature of threads and events sewed into a passable humane creation. Could they see each story stiched into her body--- read her from the top to the bottom till there was nothing left to see?

Her throat closed up as she looked in turn at everyone in the classroom. Her ears rang with a defeaning static. He was saying something again--- the teacher---- but his words could not work their way to her brain. She glaced down to her arm and its still rolled up sleeve. What she had not noticed before in her awe she now found.

For all the ugliness that existed inside and on Soul, her scars were the most heinous. When she had been cutting, the focus was to mar as much skin as possible. When she stopped, their sheer lack of appeal had a violently physical sickness over her. Now though, they were no more just visual manifestation of her incapacity.

Tattered fabric and slashed pieces of wool dangled off the nearest woven memory. In the chasm they hung over, blackness took over everything. Not just her arms though. Her stomach had a gaping section to it, and a bit of her shirt had folded itself into its emptiness. Times she had slapped herself till the veins in her cheeks had near burst, when she pinched her wrist until the skin had almost split, when she refused to talk to anyone. Being unkind to one's self is only gratifying behind closed doors. Hers had become a screaming display.

"What will it be, then? You can't be a senior in school, months away from going to college, and be weeping at someone rightfully calling out your nonsense. Ma'am, I know you live with your parents and feel very idealistic, but that's not how it'll float outside. Staying at the bottom-most rung of the ladder eventually gets you underwater. It's a truth you better face here than outside, with no training wheels."

Soul tried to blink away her tears. At herself, her body, her life, her teacher. She did not want to look at her friend. Pity from classmates she often forgot the names of was one thing, she could not see it in Dhara's eyes. Dhara, who was sitting beside her and had the clearest view of her shameful existence. And Vedant, the one she had been pining for since he joined school last year, with whom she had not talked once despite sharing classes both years. He was looking at her. For the life of her, she could not understand what that face meant.

Just before they locked the coffin on the incident, her father had come to talk to her.

"You stopped, right?" He asked tightly. Cutting. He could not say it. Soul nodded, not wishing the conversation to go further. "I hope this is the last of this that will happen with you, with anyone in this family. You get me, right. Why a father would not want his kids to hurt themselves?" Another nod.

Her father took a deep breath, and turned away. When he spoke, he was talking to the TV, which was running an underwear commercial. "What we do, everything we are, we carry with ourselves till our death. The colour we like in our childhood, the first party we decide to attend in middle school. Our history never leave us--- the good or the bad. What you have done," a wince,"is not something that will stay in the hours you drove that blade into your skin, the moments you tugged down your sleeve to avoid suspicion from us. They will come for you, and that is what scares me."

The conversation had ended there. Just like that. Then it had never been brought up again by its sole two witnesses.

Now, though, Soul wished she had asked. What do you do to escape yourself?

Perhaps it was why people killed themselves, or loved, or lived.

She pinched the end of the white thread. The teacher had begun walking towards her, concerned over her lack of response. She pulled, and more of her came undone. A part of the blue came away, and she felt, somewhere down, the red loosen up. Her past would always be with her, and she could only atone from her roots.

As she unmade, Soul finally had her answer, or perhaps it was a dying wish. We never escape ourselves. To do so is to unravel, to begin again with the birth of the universe and the creation of grief into fate. It is to believe we exist with our spite, and that it does not come back to ruin us. Even when it does.