The Girl in the Room of the House

Thought this up a couple days ago, but I was... distracted you might say by some upsetting news roundabout Tuesday evening. Y'know... that whole thing that actually ended up making me blow the dust off my blog and give a rant about.

Actually, there's been a couple versions of this buzzing around my brain for the past little while, so this is me finally unloading it I guess.

Unlike my accident story, this is fictional...

AS FAR AS YOU KNOW!!

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One... Two... Three...

In a house there is a room.

Seventy eight... Seventy nine... Eighty...

In the room there is a girl.

One hundred and twelve... One hundred and thirteen...

In the girl, there is an obsession.

Three hundred and ninety four... Three hundred and ninety five...

An obsession for counting. A drive. A need. But she'll never see a psychologist. She'll never be given pills to kill the need.

Because she knows. She knows that if she doesn't count every brick, the sun will not rise. If she doesn't count every tick of the clock, the seas will boil. If she doesn't count every word in every book on every shelf, men will go blind and mad and fill with blood-rage. If she does not count the change in her pockets, babies across the land will be still-born.

She has no name. She gets no sleep. She never eats a meal. Perhaps she has no need to, or perhaps these base instincts left her, overcome by her need to keep on counting.

Many, many years ago, she got confused and skipped a floorboard. The story is still told to horrified listeners around campfires. Not so long ago, she counted a face freckle twice. Even in her remote home she heard the sound of screaming, saw the empty void in the skies where the stars should have shone, out her one lone window.

One thousand, five hundred and twenty... twenty... twenty seven? Eight? Six? It get so hard to tell, which hairs she has and hasn't gotten to yet. But she shrugs it off and starts over. One... two... three... Oh well, people are resilient, she thinks. Some day they'll learn to do without cows.