Confession

This is the last installment from my first semester of creative writing. Throughout the semester we maintained fictional personalities on Twitter. The prompt for this paper was to review our Twitter posts, consider what we have learned about the character behind the posts, and write a 1-3 page monologue in which that character confesses something he/she has never divulged before.
My “tweeter” was named 3&3/4, after the number of circuits runners take around the track in the 1500 meter event. They were intended to be the tweets my not so sympathetic main character saw in the main portion of the narrative.

“Confession”

I don’t have any stuffed animals. It says that I do in my profile. It says that I am a stuffed animal collector but I’m not. I don’t own a single one. I said that I did because I wanted to look like a normal girl, and I thought that normal girls do things like collect plushy bears and giant dogs that their boyfriends won at the fair or something. I don’t understand why they would do that. I guess they are trying to achieve a specific aesthetic in their bedroom, or maybe they like to hug soft things, but I guess I don’t really identify with that. I mean, stuffed animals are an extremely inefficient use of space, and besides, teddy bears don’t even remotely look like bears.

I digress.

I don’t run the 1500 meter. I know, I know, that’s the whole point of my name, right? 3&3/4 laps on the track, 1500 meters in four and a half minutes, I’m an athlete, rah rah. Except I’m not. I haven’t participated in organized sports since that pee-wee soccer season that my mom made me do. I was an average player for my team, but we were so horrible that we didn’t win a single game. I guess PE counts, maybe, but technically I said soccer was the last thing I participated in, and you could hardly call my activities in high school PE participatory. I passed, because if they failed me for a bad attitude they’d have had to fail half the class along with me, and no one wanted to see Marvin Schumaker’s pimply face repeat a year.

Why say I was an athlete? Why track, why that event? Well, that’s what she is; I guess that’s the obvious reason. That’s why I claimed it in the first place, but when I thought about it I liked the idea for more than that. It takes a specific kind of person to be an athlete, especially on a college level. They have to be disciplined with their diet and their time and their bodies; they are in control of all of their faculties. They have ambition, a focus, as if nothing is going to get in the way of what they want. They will do anything to be victorious, they will run and wrestle and devour their enemy, and I see myself in that. That’s why I played up the athlete bit a little more than was strictly necessary.

I’m not a girl, either, that’s the biggest deception. I don’t collect stuffed animals, I don’t run track and I’m not a girl, but she is. I mean, she’s a girl and she runs track. I’m not sure about the stuffed animals, though. I completely made that up, just like I made stuff up about all the others, like the bartender I pretended was a Salvador Dali fan and hated cashews, or the DMV girl who enjoyed fishing and singing along with the radio, but couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Maybe she was those things, but I don’t know. Those were harmless details, to give them a little personality. I’d see them, they would fall in love with me, but nothing would ever come of it. It couldn’t, it was just chance meetings, that’s all. But for her, my track runner, we did meet again. That’s what was different.

After she came, it all got mixed up. At first I tried to let her come to me on her own, but she wouldn’t. I had to be her instead, to give me the opportunity to sweep her off her feet because she wasn’t letting me do it on her own, and now look what happened. She said she loved me but she didn’t act like it because she didn’t say it. I said it, but I was her when I said it which made me think that she did and I knew she didn’t but I didn’t want to know. Instead I just listened to her, I let her seduce me and I got excited. She was leading me on, and then I got upset, angry at her even, but only a little. I never meant to hurt her, I just wanted her to admit to what she should have been saying all along, but she wouldn’t. I guess, thinking about it now, she didn’t understand what was going on. I don’t know why I expected her to, she was never smart to begin with.

Now I wonder how she really felt about me that whole time. How does she feel about me now? Do you think she will understand that it was all her fault? No, I don’t think so either, and I can’t tolerate the thought of seeing the accusation in her beautiful, perfect eyes when I take the stand. I should have run the moment she did. I should have gotten out, changed my name, moved a few states away and started a new life. I should have known she wouldn’t understand, that she’d send them after me. That she’d blame me, even if it was her stupidity and stubbornness that got us into this. If she had just gone with it I could have made her happy.

Running would have been the smart thing, but I can’t now. Red and blue lights are flashing outside my window, and the uniforms are coming to my door. I have a gun. I could drop them and make a run for it, but it’s too late for that, a delaying of the inevitable. Once you kill a cop they never stop coming after you. I’m just going to get it over with, here and now. No questions, no investigation, no due process or day in court.

Goodbye, sweet Persephone. I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done.