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No. 854
ID: 133efc
Marlee lay awake in bed in a dark room, alone, the room lit by early morning glow seeping in through the curtains. Her eyes were open.
After a few minutes, her phone beside the bed began to buzz and vibrate as her alarm went off. It read 6:15am, Monday. Marlee did not react. After a minute, the alarm shut itself off, and Marlee rolled over and closed her eyes tight.
Hours later, the room was now much brighter. Marlee was still awake, staring at nothing. The phone on her bedside table buzzed again as it received a message.
Contact: Work. Message: Where are you?
The time on the phone read 9:48am on Wednesday. Marlee barely noticed.
Marlee stood in the bathroom, skinny in her grey underwear and tank top. Her eyes were baggy and she looked in the mirror and touched her face as though she didn't recognize it. Her phone buzzed again.
Contact: Boss. Message: We need to talk ASAP. The time is 11:07am.
Marlee sat in the office across from her boss. Her boss was speaking in an angry voice, but Marlee wasn't listening. She was dressed decently, but her hair was just gathered in a messy ponytail. She was not looking at her boss, but at a pink form on the desk.
Marlee carried a box of miscellaneous things from her desk to her car. Her car was very old and rusty, and she knew she should not be driving it. She started it up and drove away from the office.
Marlee lay in bed. Her phone buzzed again.
Contact: Landlord. Message: Overdue rent. It was 11:35am on Friday.
Marlee is looking through her fridge. There is nothing in there that should be eaten. She puts on a sweatshirt, collects a set of keys from the table, and picks up her phone. There are six unanswered messages. It is Thursday.
Marlee drives to the supermarket, and picks all the small coins from her cup holder. She has about five dollars. In the supermarket, she selects a couple of bananas and some bread rolls. At the checkout, her total comes to $5:28. She scratches through the coins in her hand, and sees she does not have enough. She removes one banana and the clerk weighs them again. This time she only just has enough.
She drives home to find some stapled forms attached to her door. In orange highlighter: OVERDUE PAYMENTS - TENANT UNDER EVICTION. POSSESSIONS HELD AS COLLATERAL. She tries her keys, and they don't fit in the door anymore. She goes around to one side and lifts up an unlocked window, and climbs in.
Marlee rescues as much stuff as will fit into her car. Blankets, clothes, books, a backpack. Camera sees it all tossed into the back seat of the car.
Marlee climbs out and shuts the window behind her. She drives to a parking lot beside a park, lays her head against the window, and sleeps as it gets dark.
The next morning, she wakes up. A car is parked a short distance away. Marlee watches a mother and young boy fiddling with an RC car. The boy is steering it in circles around on the car park. She keeps watching. The boy passes the controller to his mother, and she points at the car, telling him to go fetch it. As he runs up to it, the mother drives it away from him and laughs. The boy chases after the car as the mother does laps around him with it.
As the mother and son sit on the boot of the car, pointing at birds, Marlee gets out of her car so she can find something in her back seat. She opens the back door of her car, and a bunch of her stuff spills out, along with her box of office things. She hears the young boy laughing, and looks over at him. The mother sees this and tells him not to laugh. Marlee stuffs the things back into her car, but as she picks up her box of office things, the bottom falls out of the box, and the contents falls on the ground. The boy laughs even harder. Marlee smiles. His mother tells him off again.
As she is putting her things back in the box, the boy comes over and picks up some things for her.
"My mum told me to say sorry that I laughed at you." The boy says sheepishly.
"It's alright." Marlee says. "It was kind of funny."
"How come you've got so much clothes in your car?" Asks the boy. "Are you a clown?
"No," says Marlee, surprised. "Why?"
"A clown came to my birthday party and he had lots of clothes. He tried to put them all on at once, and he got stuck. It was really funny. And he looked really sad like you."
Marlee put her box of things back into the car.
"He looked sad like me? Why was he sad?"
"Because he kept messing things up."
"Ah." said Marlee. She reached for a shirt on her back seat, and started putting it on over the one she already had on. "What else did the clown do that was funny?"
"Uh, he tried to do magic tricks, but kept dropping the cards."
Marlee reached for another shirt and started putting it on as well.
"He would get me to pick a card, then he would try to shuffle them and PFFFFT they would go everywhere."
Marlee grabbed a sweater and beanie and put those on too.
"And he would go 'oh no!' and start picking up all the cards, but he couldn't find them all, and when he turned around, the card I picked was stuck to his back."
Marlee tied a pair of jeans around her waist by the legs, and put some socks on her hands, then draped a scarf around her neck.
The boy started to laugh as he told his story. "And he had a little stuffed dog that said he had taught to play tricks, like 'Stay!' and 'Play dead!'"
Marlee wrapped her scarf around her face so her eyes were covered, and said "How do I look?"
The boy laughed. "You look silly."
"Silly? This is the peak of fashion!" She said, walking stiff limbed in a tight circle like a mummy or a zombie, and struck a pose.
The boy laughed even harder.
"You critics just can't handle a bold statement anymore." Marlee said as she began to remove her extra layers and put them back in the car. Marlee could see the boys mother watching. "You better go back to your mum, shes waiting."
"Okay." The boy said. "But if you wanna be a clown you should get a wig."
"Why's that?" asked Marlee.
"Because your hair doesn't look silly enough to be a clowns hair."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all week."
"Bye!" Said the kid as he headed back to his mother.
Marlee stood on a busy arcade in the center of a circle of people, mostly parents and young kids. She wore a black tuxedo jacket and red cravat, over a white shirt, black pants and low heels. Her messy grey wig stuck out beneath a black top hat, and her face was powdered, the corners of her mouth turned down with black liner. She carried a long pointed umbrella as she strutted flamboyantly in time to lively classical music.
She spotted a kid pointing at her, and immediately bowed in his direction, removing her hat, which the wig was attached to, which made the crowd laugh. She spun it in the air and caught it on her head. She danced a little, in a tap-ballet blend, tripped herself up and somersaulted back to her feet, as the crowd laughed again.
She struck a regal pose, leaning on her umbrella with her other hand on her hip. She let go of the umbrella to dust her jacket off, it tipped and almost fell over. She caught it, stood it up again, and spent a few moments steadying it carefully, until it stood on its own, then proudly stood straight and gestured to the sky with one hand on her hip. As the umbrella stayed still, she slowly tipped and fell over herself. She lay motionless on her side , still holding the pose, and smiling
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