Whiplash

Eina Tubadeza

Prologue

To celebrate my twentieth year of life, I like to exacerbate my insecurities by looking at my reflection constantly. Compared to when I was younger, my face is long, and my arm hair is thick. At least my boobs are bigger—my glow-up, finally.

However, there is this young girl that pops into the frame. She has straight jet-black hair compared to this frizzy mess on my head, a button nose—a lot cuter than mine, and doe-like eyes that glisten with innocence compared to my tired, blurry eyeballs. I ask her, ‘what’s your secret?’, to which she tentatively replies, ‘I’ve said bad words before.’

photo of the man in the mirror

It’s a mystery, how she appeared. I haven’t seen her for a while, at least this overtly. Before, she would crawl around me like a raccoon, and I would observe her tiny, curious gaze from afar, spying on what I had been doing, even if it was as menial as working on an upcoming assignment or brushing my hair. It was cute, until she started to get on my nerves—opening and closing my closet door until the creaks penetrate my earphones; jumping on my freshly-cleaned bedsheets, tickling my toes from under my desk, and everything else that makes me want to pull my hair out.

She never used to be so annoying. When we were younger, we were inseparable—twins. We used to binge-play ‘Pixel Gun’ at 11pm on a school night, dance around the living room with dance moves we saw on TV, and wrap a blanket around our shoulders, jump off the couch, and try to fly, only for our knees to hit the floorboards. And when we needed a refuge from yelling inside the house, we would run to my bedroom, cover ourselves with blankets, and cuddle together as the blue light from the iPad illuminated our soft, smiling faces. The pink blanket’s texture tickled our skin, so we liked to run our face against the lime green stitches bordering the edges. God, how we cried when the stitch came undone.

We were each other’s escape from reality. A bubble floating from all our worries. A home within a house, warped from rage and misery.

However, I can’t be indulging her schemes anymore. It’s about time I started to grow up, to be wise, independent, and unbroken. I have better things to do than helping her write stories about Kreighton and Harry. ‘They’re plushies for god sake,’ I say to her, though she blatantly ignores me. She’s too involved in creating their love story. ‘I’m too old for this.’

Here’s to my decade of being mature and graceful.

*

Noodle Schmoodle

photo of the girl disturbing my meal

I must wake up early for university if I am to get there on time, but my cravings call for steaming kimchi noodles. After pouring it into my bowl I place it on my table and turn on my phone, homing in on any over analytical YouTube video to mute the silence. I feel the bench under my butt being pulled as the girl settles in next to me. Her gaze shifts towards every menial entity she sees, a glass flowerpot, an army of aphids on the withering flowers, and a grain of dried rice. She presses her finger down on the grain, and when she lifts her finger, it sticks onto her skin. When she moves her wrist too much it falls off, creating a thin elliptic mark redder than the rest of her fingertip. She does it again, experimenting with the many ways she could transform the grain. If she rolls it around, tiny particles will shave off and rest in the wooden crevices of the table, a fate befallen many a grain in the past. If she presses down hard with her fingernail, the grain will split into asymmetrical halves, bouncing along the crevices of the table.

The grains bounce like tossed rocks on calm water—how many times will they leap before they stop?

A fun distraction. A useless observation.

I sweep away the grain before she flicks it into my noodles.

*

Gelatina kabina

Walking to Building 80 is a trip I frequently take. To bask in the feeling of not wanting to be there I plug my earphones in and walk with the crowd. Blend in, you’re one of them now. Part of the student cycle. Walk past the KFC with no cravings. Brush off the noodle restaurant’s menu with no regrets.

                                            Slither past the



gelato store





    without staring.

photo of the girl really wanting an icecream, get a grip girl

Stay focused.

*

Curse of the Mahalasos

‘What have you been up to lately?’ a classmate asks. Now, let’s deduce what the best answer is: one, tell them about work and how much you don’t want to be there to sound stable; two, tell them what you cooked last night to sound proficient; and three, tell them about a, hey-

‘Shoo!’ I say, though I know the critter will never listen. I look back to my peers. They smile, but their eyes spell confusion, and embarrassment.

*

The Fallout

You need to leave me alone.
What? Why?

I can’t keep playing these games with you
when I have better things to do.
But you do anyway!

We had fun when I was younger.
I don’t need you anymore.
Yeah you do. You just said you wanted
to play Minecraft yesterday!

That was you putting your ideas
 in my head.
Nuh uh. You’re lying. You literally wore
your Minecraft shirt yesterday.

I don’t need you anymore!
Yeah? Well, I don’t need you either
ugly dumb.

I’m ugly? You’re literally me.
Yeah, before you turned ugly!

You know what? Fine. Go away.
Fine! You ugly!

Fine!

should i have said those things?

*

The Feeling

I miss her.

It’s so quiet.

It’s so lonely.

There’s a hollowness in the shape of her bulbous eyeballs and skinny, disproportionate limbs inside. She gives my days colour, and I washed it all away.

She’s not in the closet, under my bedsheets, or under my desk. I must go back and find her, back where it all began.

*

I take the 898 down to the oval, jump off, and return to where I first saw her– a small park near our house on Moss Drive. It was around 15 years ago. Back when I was just starting to understand out world. A young girl, identical to me, peeked out from behind a tree. I told her to get out from behind that tree because an evil snake would bite her from the bush behind (a story I made up). We didn’t need to tell our names, who we were, what we were doing there. It felt as if I already knew her, and she already knew me. We were identical after all.

We loved ripping the white rose petals in half and pretending they were fairies. Riding our scooter down the path when at the time seemed like it extended beyond the fences. Then after, settling down on the bench in the middle of the park, and watching the gum leaves above sway. Everything was so valuable. Everything is so valuable.

When I step into the park it feels like a bubbled world. Time doesn’t move here. The rail of that fence to the left still slants out of place. The roses still blossom white petals in the spring, the gum trees still stand tall, the wild irises and leather-like leaves still poke out. The same wooden bench, covered in dried clumps of pastel green mold, rests on the pavement to the right of the walking path.

As I walk down the path I see the girl. She fits in this scenery like a puzzle piece, or a painting created with the most intentional brushstrokes. Even if she brushed her hand through the thorns, it wouldn’t hurt her.

            Pretty roses. Untouchable innocence.            

The girl fingers the satin textures of the petals, feeling where the tiniest indents are and following the invisible lines of the petals. She’ll brush off brown specks of dirt she finds and pluck a petal, bringing it close to her eye, and witness the tiny vein-like lines that appear when sunlight hits the back. The string-like rivers extending across the petal intrigue her, she wonders if she keeps following their flow where they’ll take her. Then, she splits it in half, not all the way, but enough that it turns into a pair of fairy wings. She thrusts the petals into the air and watches them flutter towards the pavement.

A fleeting fantasy.

We sit on the bench together, under the gum leaves above. I become fiddly and start to pick away at the crusts of the pastel green mold clusters. The girl says they look like splattered paint, and I must agree, they do. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her, ‘I didn’t mean what I said.’

She doesn’t reply. Instead she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

Hello—
Shhh.

Oh, okay.

Just, feel.

         So, we close our eyelids and let ourselves,

feel.

Isn’t that nice?

Yeah, it’s good. Haven’t felt that nice
in a while.

Yeah, it’s nice not hearing your voice.

Hey.

I down the air here like water, a refreshing presence I haven’t felt for some time. It clears and soothes my chest like a lozenge (grape flavoured because we like grape). The breeze lifts our fingers then rests our palms. The distant rumble of cars disappears amongst the smooth breeze of the park. We only hear the rustle of the gum leaves above us, waving to us as if saying ‘Welcome back.’ We both wave.

A leaf falls. I pick it up and feel its leather texture between my pointer and thumb. The veins follow my finger’s imprints. There are tiny yellowish bumps scattered across the surface– the girl says in school they taught her they’re caterpillar eggs. She looked at me with curious eyes, so I hand her the leaf. She rips the leaf from the margin to the midrib in one-point-five centimetres gap so it resembles a feather. Then she throws it up into the air shouting ‘Fly!’ as it makes a quick descent to the cement. We giggle.

We sit there for as long as we need to.

The End is just the beginning

photo of us in our natural habitat

 
 

Eina Nicole Tubadeza (she/her) is a Filipino queer writer born in Australia. She currently resides in the South Eastern suburbs and is studying a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at RMIT. She has a love for film and enjoys exploring various art mediums, as well as integrating it with the written form. For future projects, she aspires to delve into screenwriting and graphic novels.