Ultimatum

A person's thoughts after a startling confession- and the slow process of how he is going to respond.

I stare at her.

She stares at me.

Or does she still count as a "she" if there is no gender from where she is from? 

The hours and hours we've spent in the past of our voices filling the room with sound, are now replaced with the immeasurable expanse of time with an eerily quiet drone of the two of us simply staring at one another.

And looking.

And waiting.

I thought I could trust her. She seemed to believe she could trust me. I wish she didn't.

 But when I had been told there was a secret, (something that woud make my mind run as fast as my legs on my morning runs), I hadn't fully believed her. In my life before, the biggest news I'd received was my mother's surprise pregnancy with my little brother. But even that had only made an uncomfortably warm shiver shimmy up and down my body, and I stared at my mother differently, realizing that she was no longer just herself, but a person growing a person.

When she told me she had to tell me something, I smiled and waited for her to continue. What had I possibly been thinking she was about to say? I had had an overwhelming sense of calm. Too much calm. I had looked at her, prepared to listen, while also counting in my head the amount of cash I had left in my wallet, and making a mental grocery list.

If I had known the news- would I have wasted my time thinking about brands of whole grain bread? 

Regardless, should I have been letting my mind wander, even if I HAD thought her news would be of little importance- since she seemed to be feeling so uneasy and serious?

Maybe I'm just not understanding enough. I wasn't open to the idea of anything new squeezing into my life of normalcy and regularity. She had seemed so utterly normal- that's what probably attracted me to her. Her absence of quirks and odd habits. But it is those very qualities that should have been off-putting.

Doesn't everyone have their own little idiosyncrasies? Yet it seemed to me that someone had found me just the right person for me- an inhuman human.

But they hadn't, had they?

She taps her mid-length fingernails on the table that sits in between us, a barrier both physically and mentally. I glance at them to break eye contact for at least a brief moment (contact I used to so constantly crave), and am reminded that her nails are always the same as well- a faultless French manicure with just enough professionalism and everyday-ness to satisfy her. 

We had worked side by side. Everything had been falling slowly into place, and every piece of our lives had been perfectly aligned with the national statistics, just as I'd wanted it. Our joint checks, the amount of television we watch, the length of time we had to date before considering engagement.

But with this confession, all the bits of immaculate, photogenic life had been wiped away and replaced with a jagged, broken picture frame, and two very different bodies behind the glass. One, is her- a soul that does not belong in this home, from town, to state, to country, to planet. The other is me- one who belongs so wholeheartedly, but in searching for the Utopian partner, finds the polar opposite without any indication until it's too late.

So she stares at me.

And I stare at her.

She is waiting for an answer. 

And I wait for an answer to magically appear. With her confession came a proposition. One with almost as much weight as her exposed secret, but one that required me to give a heavy answer as well.

She had to leave. Would I go with her?

As we stared, I looked at her eyes. And her skin. Her lips, her hair, her chin. 

Was any of it real? She had told me she had attached a disguise. To defer any attention she may have gotten. Anything underneath her mask was as foreign to me as the world she was born into. 

And I am a fan of normal.

And in the end, I am the only normal I have. Even she has failed me.

But as I decide to tell her I cannot go, she stops staring back at me. Her eyes begin to tilt upwards, as she reaches her head to the sky. Then she slowly turns to look at me- look, not stare- and gives a forlorn smile.

And I realize the irony of loving normalcy, only within seconds of becoming a delicacy to her people. 

She had given me an ultimatum- to live here, among all the people who have their own strange, unique faults.

Or become her homecoming dinner.

But in the end I never really had a choice.

Author's Note

Any thoughts appreciated :)

Reviews

[Gary Stringer]

First a few technical issues:
* `The hours and hours of our voices filling the room with sound has now dulled to the eerily quiet drone of the two of us simply staring.`
* Not quite getting the sense of that line. Have the hours dulled? The sound? I think either way it's a mixed metaphor.
* `But when I had been told...morning runs. I hadn't fully believed her.`
I think you need to make the full stop (period) into the comma, to link them together. Otherwise the first sentence isn't actually a sentence. It's trying to say `But when I had been told [abc], [xyz] happened` but as it stands it never actually get to the [xyz].
* `...while also counting in my head the amount of cash I had left in my wallet, and made a mental grocery list.`
You've shifted tenses there. If its `counting` then it should be `making`.
* `What was real of any of it?`
That sentence isn't working. I suggest either losing the first `of` and splitting it in two, or if you're going to keep it as one, I'd reword it to something simple, like `Was any of it real?`

In story terms, I think the ending comes out of nowhere and I'm not sure it fits with some of the earlier lines like `She thought she could trust me`.

Hope that helps.

[Mia Steele]

Thank you very much!! I've gone back and edited the story, taking your criticism highly into consideration. This was extremely useful to me.

[Archos]

Really nice read. In my opinion, although I understand it is supposed to be brief, I think it could use some more information here and there. Or perhaps you could work a little on transition between subjects, because it feels a bit chaotic. Those are just some of my thoughts, hope it helps. Thanks for sharing!

[Mia Steele]

Thank you very much for your thoughts! It helps a lot. I can see where you're coming from regarding not transitioning well and the chaos (I'm sure one helped to cause the other). Thank you for the criticism, and for taking the time to read and review this!