The Story of a Little Girl

Once on the road, I met a little girl. I say “little”, because she really was! Underneath the skin of a grown up woman, a cheerful spirit of a little girl was trapped. I could see her coming up once in a while then disappear in a blink of an eye, like she was pulled by an invisible elastic band and put back to sleep… 

One night, when we both were gazing at the stars, deep in our own thoughts, she told me that she had died in an accident few years back. In fact, she couldn’t exactly remember the date, but she said that she didn’t have those gray hairs before the accident…. “It must have been long time ago” she said. It was a train accident, as she recalled, in a station in the heart of a city far far away. She was sad, really sad, in fact, she was sad enough to go over the yellow line few seconds before the train approached the station…. and then she died. 

She had an old outdated phone she used to carry with her all the time. Once been bright and pink, the case had aged too! The wallpaper was a picture of a man, wearing a letter black jacket with metal thorns on the cuffs, yokes, and collar, and a black shirt underneath. He was staring at the camera with some sort of anger in his eyes, or maybe pride; I couldn’t tell! She used to spend hours looking at the phone, pressing the keys, touching  the screen over and over again, opening and closing the same old folders every time, sending messages to a name on the phone list, and wait and wait for an answer which was not going to come! 

She knew she was casted out there after the accident; she knew all the connections with the real world were gone; she knew the strange man in the picture, the name on the phone list, couldn’t reply to those messages; he couldn’t even read them to begin with, but she couldn’t stop herself! 

Sometimes, she really wanted to leave the phone on a bench in a park, and pretend that it was lost. Or on the bus, she once said. She could get off the bus; take three steps and all of a sudden would remember the phone. It would have been too late, and she could’ve become free! But she couldn’t get herself to do it! She used to think that the phone was part of the curse. The juice bottle was too! 

Long time ago, she had read in a book about how objects hold on to memories. A tree for instance remembers all those who have ever leaned on it. “The same is a bottle, it remembers the memories of those who picked it, held it in their hands, it even remembers the taste of their lips” she believed. 

   

She loved music. Almost any sound was reminding her of some sort of story lying in the past! Her favorite song was rain! She would stay up till really late, next to the open window, in her dark room to listen to the melody of the rain falling from the sky, hitting the roof, and pouring over the earth. She loved to walk in the rain too. She would go for a really long walk, and come back with red eyes! So red that could’ve been mistaken! You could have said that she had cried! Who would have believed that about a dead little girl?! 

Besides that, she was quiet in most part. She looked like she was always waiting for something to happen. She had to remind herself all the time that it had already been done.  She was already dead! What else could have possibly happened?! But then, maybe the distracting phone was confusing her! 

Some nights, she couldn’t sleep at all, some nights; she would wake up shaking calling someone’s name, sometimes she would scream in the middle of the night, or day! Once or twice even, I had to stop her from hitting herself! It must have been hard! She must have felt frustrated! Being alone, and dead, carrying a phone that wouldn’t send, or receive any message! With a picture of a man who was looking at her in anger! Poor little girl…..

One morning, when I came back from my walk, I couldn’t find her. She was gone! Without a word, or a letter, or even a sign that could help me find her…. But there was an old phone, with a worn out pink case left beside her bed in her room. I picked it up… It was working!