Παρασκευή 16 Μαΐου 2014

RELEASED MEMORY – by Angeliki Bouliari

What if... 

I didn’t sleep well. I woke up several times during the night only to find out in desperation that I had tight teeth and fists and it would still take long for the dawn. So about an hour before the alarm clock would sound, I decided to end this torture myself. I got up, had breakfast and got ready to go. It would be my first day at work.
I followed my friend’s, Ismini’s, instructions and went to the gas station, opposite the General Clinic and waited for Tony, her friend and my colleague in the near future, to pick me up and get me to School. It was very early in the morning and an unfamiliar chill made me think that I should have put on warmer clothes than this simple, grey, woolen suit. Few people and cars were on the street. I felt strangely cut off from the rest of the world, wrapped in a dreary, familiar silence.
What if nobody ever came to pick me up?

Sunday morning, after the Church. Four years old. I have well brushed brown, curly hair, decorated with a big, white bow tie, I am wearing a grey coat, black glossy leather shoes and white knee socks. I am outside a huge, shut door of a house. “Now, I’ll ring the bell and the door will open after a moment and Grandpa will come and take you inside. I’ll come back in the afternoon outside here to get you”, says Mum. 
Me and Mum live elsewhere, far from here. Alone. Dad is always away. He visits us sometimes, but he doesn’t stay with us, as it happens with the other children. Mum says he travels a lot for his business and that one day we’ll live altogether and I’ll have a baby sister. And Grandpa is very angry with Mum, but he loves his only little girl. 
Mum is very beautiful, with her dark long hair and the white-pearl necklace. As she bends to give me a kiss, her hair touches my cool face, tickling tenderly my cheek. I reach up and idly caress for a while the all round and shiny white pearls.Then, she takes her warm hand from mine, she rings the door-bell and flees, the street corner swallows her up. Grandpa delays, the huge shut door scares me and I start biting my nails.


What if this door never opens?












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Παρασκευή 9 Μαΐου 2014

THE HAMSTER - A monologue, by Angeliki Bouliari


A teenager of about eighteen years old is sitting on the sofa and looking at a cage with a hamster riding on a wheel, set on the table in front of him. His mother a little farther is quietly washing the dishes.
“Mother, this must come to an end. Really, it’s high time it stopped. I can’t take it anymore. Ok, I know, you are worried, you are anxious, you are afraid. But I am young, I want to live, I want to feel alive. This isn’t living. Can’t you see? I am worse than this stupid hamster you brought me as a present! At least, this silly thing doesn’t think, doesn’t feel, has absolutely no idea what the world outside is about. Its universe is just this cage, it is happy with a little food and with this spinning wheel, which, I tell you, is driving me crazy!
It’s not my fault if you see enemies and dangers everywhere, if you’re afraid of your very shadow, if you dare not live. Look at your miserable life. Do you call this a life? Cleaning stairs and washing clothes and dishes. No man, no friend, no laugh. Tell me honestly are you pleased? No, I don’t care what you think, I just don’t want to end up like you!”
His mother stops for a moment what she is doing, her hands in the air, her back tense, eyes staring the white wall tiles above the sink, but she doesn’t turn or say a word. Then she gets back to her work.
“Listen to me, Mother! The illness is over. I am not an ill person anymore. Ok, I have to take some medicine for the rest of my life and follow a certain way of living, but no doctor said not to live at all. I was there, mum, with you - remember? - when they told us about the illness and the treatment and what to do and all this stuff. Normal life, they said. Go out with friends, go to a party, on a date, on a trip. Yes, normal life. Look around you, mother! Do you think this life, this prison, is normal?
Mother! I’m talking to you! Can’t you just stop washing these damned dishes and look at me? Why do you keep ignoring what I say, how I feel?”
As there is still no reaction from her part, the teenager gets up, goes to the kitchen, opens a kitchen drawer and takes a meat knife. His mother hears the sounds, stays motionless, but still doesn’t turn.
“Mother, look at me! You don’t want to lose this sight, I swear! Guess what! I am going to start by stabbing your pretty little hamster right in the heart!”










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