Home.

               In a small English flat, an old woman sat comfortably in a beige couch. Her body was circled by a meowing cat and surrounded by family photographs. She stared at the reflective images of smiling daughters, their serious husbands and the hyperactive grandchildren, but her eyes stopped at the photograph of her standing by her husband, now five years dead, in a hospital wheelchair. Elisha Smith suddenly thought to herself: “I am next in line to die.” The realization made her heart jump a little, but being positive as she was, she looked down at the purring cat, smiled and warmly, yet with a hint of dreaminess said to it: “I have nothing to regret, all my choices have been good.”  

                She slowly lifted herself from the couch and settled herself by a sewing desk. There, she stared at a paper – her will. She had a decent amount of furniture, jewellery and books already divided between her family members. What about her mind? She never bothered to write a diary and given the doubtlessly limited amount of time she has now, she cannot possibly complete a memoire now. Nobody is interested in an incomplete memoire! She thought of Anna Frank’s diary. Of course, that is a completely different matter, different situation and all. Its incomplete form is what makes the fate of the poor girl all the more intriguing. She frowned. “What about myself?” she wondered. In comparison with the young Jew’s life, her own seemed worthless, boring. Nothing.

                “I have nothing to regret, all my choices have been good.” The words seemed to echo through the small room. Looking around it, glancing at all the different objects in it, she began doubting her words. Does she truly not regret anything, were all the choices she made the best? Her mind drifted back to the days of childhood. She remembered her favourite plush toy – Ears was its name, it was a bunny with chequered shorts. She carried it around with her everywhere, be it day-care, grocery shop or back yard. One day, she left it in the garden. What could have been an hour or two extended to a whole month. Small Elisha was too taken away by the birth of her little brother, she forgot about small bunny. It then was a beautiful sunny day, and the whole family decided to picnic in the garden. One can imagine the horror in Elisha’s face when she suddenly found Ears, but in a completely destroyed state. Tempest, rain, mud, they, like age, made Ears lose his initial fresh look and the beautiful beads he had for eyes were torn out, probably by magpies – the thin threads that stuck out of the sockets haunted her dreams for the next few days. For her sanity’s sake, the parents threw Ears into the bin and Elisha did not regret it – as it was not Ears’ clean appearance stuck in her mind, but the rancid one. 

                Her memory flash-forwarded to her young years – and her first boy. Henry, was it? Yes, Henry, the self-centred nit! Elisha smirked to herself. She remembers that they dated for an entire year, then came that hot summer evening when she let him take away her virginity. “What was I only thinking, him, out of all people, having me first?” Elisha thought to herself in disbelief during the next years, as she remembered how she passively laid there on the bed in his dirty, messy room, looking up at that pig face that twisted and frowned in ecstasy without once looking at his lover... Until that moment he arrived and slid off Elisha’s alabaster body, so clean and innocent in comparison to his sweaty one that probably did not receive a shower for a day or two, given the stink. It took a while before Henry noticed the thin, almost invisible layer of virgin blood on the top of his still erect organ of lust – “the tip of the iceberg!” Elisha giggles – and began panicking about infections and his bed spread becoming dirtier. “If such a thing was even possible!” Elisha later laughed with her girlfriends. Similar commentaries were made in attempt to hide her inner regret and disappointment caused by a cold, animalistic first time that not at all resembled the heart-felt, fervid ones she dreamed and read about… “However, one has to kiss a few frogs before finding her prince” Elisha smiles, as years later, after more partner choice mistakes, Elisha married a young accountant named Jonathan Aplin. Her Johnny.  

                Behind closed eyelids, Elisha recalls the end of her first year at university. She is writing one of her final exams, and as the economic situation was worsening and so did her family’s financial status, she needed quite badly to receive a decent mark from her English Literature paper to receive scholarship. Yet she was bad at writing, biology was her home and this paper was a compulsory one. So they were to choose any topic in connection to Blake’s infamous Tyger. Elisha just read a very enriching book on colour psychology and while a part of her wanted to play it on the safe side and simply go for analyzing themes present in the poem, the other desired to go out of the ordinary – this was Cambridge, after all! – as to prove her worth. She hands sweated as she made a plan of both essays on the extra sheet of paper and her eyes then ricocheted in growing anxiety between the two brainstorms, one of which held the key to the future more than the other. A Russian roulette! Being insecure and under huge pressure, she went for the ordinary – and got shot. She spent a year working, earning money to pay for school fees.

                It was during this gap year when Elisha met Johnny. After finishing university, they got married and eventually conceived and raised twin daughters. Both Katherine and Betty were healthy, but it was after they moved out that Johnny was diagnosed with cancer and Elisha’s world turned around. Seeing her beloved husband literally wither away before her eyes was a torment and growing old and weary herself, the daughters decided to give themselves as well as Elisha the “relief” of making Johnny stay at the hospital during the terminal stage of his disease. Elisha however was heart-broken by the thought of Johnny spending nights alone with nothing but the mutating cells in his body for company – and one afternoon, Johnny said to Elisha in a low, weak voice: “Dearest, I fear this is my last day. Take me home.” Elisha did, for the night – and he died, in his sleep, in his own bed, in this very apartment where Elisha sat at the table. Home.

            The doorbell rang. Nobody opened it, so the visitor used her key. “Mom?” the middle-aged brunette called out. “It’s me, I’ve decided to bring you cake, the chocolate sponge one that you like, it’s from Danny’s work party. You know that I’m on a diet now, so just please eat it quickly, or I’ll snatch it from you…” She took off her coat and took the small paper box with the caloric treat into the kitchen. With a growing tone of urgency, she repeated herself: “Mom?” After she put the box onto the counter, she turned around… and saw Elisha’s motionless body by the table on whose cheek was a not-yet evaporated train of tears and on her wrinkled face a smile that cannot be moved.