everything happens

by fan taser

cynthia was all packed and ready to go when it was still dark. she had hoped to get everything into one medium suitcase but ended with one large and one small one. everything happens, she thought. you think something is so far off it will never arrive, but it always does. like the year 2000. how impossibly far off it had seemed - a joke, now it was way past. she remembered thinking,as a child , i'm just a little person, someday i'll be a big person - in a million years. and then in school, in the first grade and later, the endless endless days, watching the clock, could each day ever end, let alone the school year? but somehow they ended, and the fifth grade gave way to the sixth grade, each eternal year following the other until she graduated. and even worse than school, even though it was only once a week - church on sunday. the preacher's sermons setting a whole new standard of will-this-ever-end? and the hymns at the end of each service - how many? fifteen, sixteen? they would never end, but they did. she had liked work at first, after finally finishing with school. she had actually felt a sense of freedom working as a file clerk and typist at mister johnson's little factory - and chatting with the other girls at coffee break. one thing about mister johnson - he never gave anybpdy a hard time about taking breaks. but these good times went when mister johnson went under, like the boring times in school and church. and then the job - the jobs - at intercontinental finance. the endless training, the boring but complicated jobs you could never describe to anybody who wasn't doing them themselves. you'd try to explain them and people would say. "oh you're a typist." and you'd explain some more and they'd say "you're a typist" but that wasn't so bad really and if she had stayed on she night have been eligible for a pension. instead she had married tony. he had some indescribable job too, at another big company. she met him after work at a thank god it's friday's. she had won a gift certificate to go there in a raffle at work. and they had three kids. she only worked part time then, until the kids almost finished school. some things were better left unthought about. they happened too, and then they were gone. she remembered thinking sometimes, at least i'm not one of those women who could never get a husband. what an idiot she'd been! cynthia got up from the little bed and looked out the window. it was just starting to get light. mrs delrosa wouldn't be around looking for her rent for at least three hours, maybe four. she wouldn't make a fuss - she'd never been one to make a fuss. she'd be long gone. she'd be a homeless person. the two and a half hours would go by and it would happen. what would it be like? she'd find out.

.