Elsa Antonia

She sat, alert, trying to ignore the sounds. Elsa Antonia had been awake the whole night. She was not happy, nor sad. She was deep into work. Work that required her best attention.

Elsa had always found her attention peaking in the nightime. She wasn't sure if it was her medication, or hyperactive nature, or just her. But she knew whatever it is was helping for the moment.

The sounds were of the birds. God how she hated them. She could hear every slithering note, every secondary sound, the branches rustling as they stood on and off them. It was a nightmare and the 'great noise' was coming to get her. But she knew better.

Looking again at her chessboard, positioned in front of her on the bed she plotted her next move. She was nude except for some sparse nightclothes. Clothes were, at best, tolerable and at worst impossible. They clung, they dragged along skin, they made her sweat and their material and her did not mesh. It was a pale discomfort. It was like being touched, but all the time. It made her itch and cover her arms more, to keep them from feeling the air.

Air or Cloth, it did not matter, she hated the feeling.

She was nearing the endgame now. Her imaginary opponent was running out of ideas, but so was she.

Its going to be a stalemate, I think.

She looked with dread to the sky outside the window. The country was gorgeous and she had to work not to get lost in the wind and the waves of wheat. Then, bored with this, she imagined a giant chessboard. Which piece would she be?

Princess? That isn't a piece. Queen it was then, but she didn't feel up to it. She ran her hand perpendicularly across her stomach. She was getting mentally stimulated. The thought of a giant chessboard! She was already feeling giddy. Her arms forced themselves down by her sides and her eyes focused, if that was the right word, on the tree at the other end of the field.

I could sit on that tree and watch the game. Me and Dad! We can play and the field could have a board carved into it!

Then she imaged some of her favourite checkmates. It was becoming intense to think about and she felt the weight in her arms, which only drove her on. The best ones involved the enemy pieces, where the king is stopped by his own men. She was drinking these thoughts in, the field as a backdrop. She was getting hyper off the feeling of scale and depth as the pieces stood watching.

But as the bird once again snapped her from her loss of the world, she felt tired all too completely. She really really did not want to sleep. But stalemates were boring and the sky was forming a warm colour.

She was always afraid of it. The sun coming up. She relished winters days, where the nights were long and the days short. Days meant riding her bike across the dirt road where every bump was memorised. She wanted to power forward but had to wait for her Mother, her Mothers friend and the other two children she lived across from. Even here, in the countryside, she had to socialise, it seemed. But in truth she liked them. They were a brother and sister pair of differing interests. But they liked to tussle, playfully and so did Elsa. Elsa could only tolerate touch as long as she knew she could force it off of her. When she was even younger, she had been a violent child, lashing out at everything she couldn't comprehend.

She thought of all this that was ahead of her, knocking several chess pieces over. Coming to, she yawned and accepted her defeat. Every night she sat up willing the sun to never come and every night it eventually showed. She didn't want to be awake when that happened. This was too nice. Her muscles were relaxed, her back was sore but that was her fault, from hunching. She loved being alone. Not having to worry about picking her nose or looking interested in other peoples things all the time. Her face could relax, her mind could ease and she could experience the world through her own compensating filters when she was faced with something foreboding.

She climbed down the short ladder of her raised bed and with chess pieces and board, set about placing them all very carefully into their place. The brown desk had her globe and various bits of things from past adventures. She found her memory lacking whenever she did anything outdoors, so she took to collecting interesting objects if she could; anything from stealing pens to chalk, coloured rocks on beaches or a walking stick to balloons (Though she hated helium balloons) toy guns and anything purple. These brought her back to a particular point in the past, and she could relive it again for a moment. She always liked doing that. The past was not yet dark.

She spent several minutes putting the pieces in the right places. Her eyes were by now long suited to the dark. Finally satisfied, she lay again on her bed, and heard again the bird, the wind passing her window, the click of the clock in the hallway outside her room.

She damned her ears. Damned them. They were so sensitive. It had its uses. She was never lost to conversations in a distance and she could always tell what it was her parents were talking about. She knew if her mother was in good spirits or bad and could decipher by tone alone if her Mother was stressed. Yet if one approached Elsa and spoke to her, she would be very careful at listening. Words were her one ally. She wasn't sure but people had all sorts of rules about speaking that troubled her and though she wasn't sure why, she missed alot from whatever was said to her.

"You cant just say no to someone, dear. You have to be nice"

Nice. That word. It meant so many things that it hurt Elsa's head to use it. All she could think about was how many ways it could be used. Some people looked nice, some people were nice, some people are nice, some things feel nice and some actions are nice.

Elsa was getting bored of herself now and the clock was ticking mercilessly forward. Why was she wasting her time confusing herself more about the rules of other people? Her otherness was not always so pleasant when other people were about and it was stifling to have it on her mind when she was alone.

She could hear the clock. She tried to make it go away or at least seem softer and she almost succeeded. But when she tried to sleep, there it was again. It seemed the sound was the same each time, but to Elsa there may as well have been a machine gun chewing up and spitting out bullets like someone chomping on pistachio nuts.

It would not stop.

It was all she could think about. So, she decided after a moments thought, to carry herself out of bed, once again exhausted. She opened her cupboard over the course of two minutes, for fear of waking up anyone else. Her general light-weighted-ness and taut feet were a help. It was night time so dark colours were needed. She knew if she was caught she would have to blend in with the dirt road amongst the stones and glass-like muck that beheld rocks. But she had nothing in brown. Black it was then.

The jacket was waterproof, which was good. She wouldn't have worn it otherwise. Such coats had nothing to grab or fiddle with. She liked to have something to play with and preferably chew.

"Dont chew your zipper. See, this is why you run out of clothes so much, Elsa."

Trackies on and not bothering with underwear, as the night looked warm, she crept slowly out of her room, speeding up the opening of the door just before every creak. Upon opening her door, the clock got louder but more defined. She could hear the low buzz of the fridge being a fridge in the room 10 feet down the hall on her left and the compact little sounds of dripping from the bathroom to her right. She took a minute to handle it. Her brain always took everything in, necessary or not. She concentrated on the red door that lead to the outside. She was fortunate; the back garden steps were on the other side and her room sat opposite it. And every other member of the household was sleeping on the other side of the building. It was great having a building with no stairs.

Now accustomed to these new sounds and the different smells, Elsa took one step, picking it out amongst the floor for silence.

Regulate breathe. Dont breath too much, or it might be loud.

Elsa Antonia was going for a 4 am walk.