Swan Dive - Chapter 2 Blearily opening one eye she tried to decide if it was safe to get out of bed today or if it was all going to go wrong again. The whole process of debating bed sores and starvation against getting her butt out of bed took until her alarm clock had given up trying to wake her up and had vibrated itself off the table and into a crusty bowl of pasta on the floor. She dozed off again, dribbling into her pillow as she did. 15 minutes later and a scatter of cats and she was rushing to get dressed. She wondered for the umpteenth time why...just why did she get up in the mornings to travel for over an hour to a job she hated. Slamming the door a little too hard and making the frame rattle she dragged her cardigan round her and stomped off to the train station. Catching the train to work was a fine art that Tia prided herself on perfecting. You had to switch off the majority of your brain and ignore anything that happened around you. Looking too long at someone lead to them snorting and purposefully shoving their newspaper in front of their face to block you out. Worrying about bumping into someone at the station generally led you to panic and scuttle along the wall like a beetle. If you just switched off you became one of the crowd and got sucked along in the grey swirls of suit wearing commuters and then burst from the other end of the journey dazed and only vaguely aware of how you got there. Looking through a half opened slit of an eye her brain slowly acknowledged the fact that this was her stop and some action was likely to be required so she didn�t end up in London. She leapt from her seat and hurtled to the closing doors, brushing her arms against tutting commuters as she stumbled out into the blaring light on the platform. Staggering slightly she made her way to work, realising a little too late that she had also managed to put her top on inside out with the outsized bargain label clearly reflecting all the morning light. Standing up swiftly to open the cold toilet seat that she�d managed to perch herself on, counting her blessings that she hadn�t started to pee, she decided that today wasn�t the day that it was all about to turn itself round. Tia had started off life in a pretty unfortunate way, for a start her name was Tiamet Nebullazza Smith. Tiamet was the name of a fat water monster goddess from Babylonian mythology. Nebullazza appeared to be the last few letters in the bag of a game of scrabble! Her parents were reasonably straight laced despite their minor penchant for nasty names. They were called Judith and Harold Smith so seemed to want to lose the curse of appallingly boring names (her sister Bedazzle Hawthorn - or Bea for short - and brother Thor Trebuchet - or T-man (don�t ask!) had got of lightly!). Brought up in a pretty depressing suburb near Hemel Hempstead she was more or less ignored by her parents and peers. She was fed the basics, clothed in the basics and told she was a nothing, a wisp of a human. Her life wasn�t the most stimulating of stories until about 2000. She�d plodded through school achieving mediocre grades, plodded through college and then University. Never standing out from the crowd on purpose she had perfected the art of wearing non descript clothes and saying non descript things. This all changed in 2000. Well that�s a little dramatic, that should really be...Then something happened that, a lot later on would prove to be the thing that changed everything...but that doesn�t sound as good! In the meeting that she was currently enduring her mind was wandering. She was aware that, to onlookers, she probably looked as if her IQ were 5. Her mouth was slightly ajar and her eyes glazed over. She was daydreaming about flying over the rooftops and over the glittering sea far out to a palm tree covered island. Just as she landed in front of the impossibly gorgeous man who was just about to serve up a HUGE cocktail her boss brought her shuddering and dribbling back to the overheating office in England. �...and Tia will explain that all to you now...Tia?�. Glancing round and trying to see what was on the paper in front of her colleagues she squealed her chair back across the floor as she stood up. She gulped, swallowing the drool that was trying to escape her previously slack mouth and ummed a bit. �This is all about....um.....� on the other side of the room her colleague was flapping a book and imitating cuddling it. She was confused more than she was before. �um...it�s fundamentally concerning....� she twigged with a sudden �ahh�. �Bookkeeping...that�s what it is...book-keeping� she declared, triumphantly. Her bosses lemon-suckers mouth pursed more and she briefly wondered over the similarity between her mouth and a cats bum. �Bookkeeping has always been an old fashioned subject...� she began as she reeled off a perfect monologue about the product she had been developing. She silently congratulated herself as she bored her colleagues into a stupour with her boring job. Sploshing her coffee over her feet in her haste to leave the dull meeting room she trundled back to her desk to pore over page after page of accountancy books that all seemed to blend into one in her mind. As she compared lists of numbers she allowed her mind to wander back over her past. Blinking in the sunlight outside a shopping centre in 2000 Tia fished her brick heavy phone from her handbag and tried to hide it and call her boyfriend at the same time. Arranging a time and a place she smiled as she manhandled the brick back into her bag. Her heavy plastic shoes clunked on the floor as she headed home to pick up her bike. Wind lashing back her hair she felt free as she flew down the hill on her bike. His house was a steep ride back but a great ride there! Slamming her brakes on (as they were a little loose) she squealed her way round the corner and into Neils garden. His bike was slung on the lawn as usual and she reminded herself to tell him off when she got in. She slipped down the sideway and began locking up her bike, checking her watch as she did and seeing she was over half an hour early. He hated it when she was early but tough luck buster - she was! Taking care not to step on the wobbly drain cover (for fear of falling down the hole into a pile of steaming pooh) she made her way to the back of the house and let herself in. The house was cool and shady and silent. She closed her eyes and clicked her neck as she stretched in the kitchen. She walked out through the lounge and up to Neils room where he would no doubt be playing Playstation. In her head she listed things she needed Neil to decide on before she could book their holiday. Hearing the familiar groans of Neil playing playstation she pushed his door aside. Riding her boyfriend like he was a bucking bronco was her flat mate. Naked as the day they were born apart from a pair of handcuffs on Neil chaining him to the bed, they seemed not to have noticed her entrance. Tia stood, mouth open and frozen to the spot until Neil opened his eyes at the peak of their bucking bronco contest and gasped. Kate turned her head, screamed and leapt from Neil to the corner of the room, dragging a sheet with her in one fluid, impressive movement - if it hadn�t been her boyfriend she�d dismounted! Tia ran blindly down the steps, hot salty tears making it impossible to see. Charging out the front door she cursed herself for locking up her bike and glanced Neils on the grass. Higher than hers she tried to mount the seat and failed opting to stand and pedal as she pushed hard to get herself up the hill and away from those two. Swerving left and right she steamed up the hill and onto the flat. The wind blowing her tears back into her hair. She reached a crossroads and saw a car heading over it, slamming her brakes on she realised that one - the seat was higher and so she wasn�t sitting two - his brakes were better than hers and three - there was a bolt on the front of the frame that, when rushing forward, met her smack bang in the lady bits. Stars, pulsing red and yellow stars, pain, PAIN!! She was lying on the road with her bits throbbing like a cartoon smacked thumb. PAIN PAIN PAIN her mind screamed as someone outside her little section of pain seemed to be calling an ambulance for her. �What�s your name?� said a friendly concerned voice. � Pain� Tia said � pain pain ow ow ow I broke my lady bits�. She focused on the face �Tia, Tia Smith� she said just before she drifted into unconsciousness.
Copyright © 2006 Briony Carvalho |