Prompt: rainy day
Time: 15 minutes
I.
Katniss breathed all shallow and light. Her fingers tangled in her mane of dark hair. Sweat clung to her forehead and the air smelled like morning dew and the rawness of rainwater. The TV blared softly behind her and she turned around to catch the remnants of a SpongeBob episode. Sheets of rain drummed against the tiled roof and her breath hitched in her throat. Any moment now—any moment now she would get the warning call. There was a haphazardly opened box of tangled Christmas lights at the foot of her canopy bed. Per tradition, Katniss liked to drape them around the bedposts and plug the lights into her outlets. It was like early Christmas in her bedroom all year round.
But something stopped her today.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to relax. Control your breathing. Slow down your breathing. Clench your fists and unfurl them. She tried to memorize the techniques she'd learned in her DBT and Mindfulness groups. Her dark eyes caught the sight of her blue stress ball nestled in her comforter. It was fall. Fall meant cold weather and sheets of pelting rain like ice needles. Fall meant crunchy vividly colored leaves of vermilion and splashes of tangerines and ocher.
She couldn't stop it though … all she'd wanted to do was successfully visit her father's grave. That's all she'd meant to do. She couldn't even do that though. She'd sat in her mother's silver Nissan and clenched her hands bone-knuckle-white against the armrests peering through raindrops at the whitewashed tombstone of her father. James Everdeen – loving father, devoted husband, admirable lawyer. 1964-2012. His life was reduced to the finality of that dash in between the years he'd come into the world and the year he'd exited it.
She couldn't do it . Not with her mom's incessant pleas ("Please Katniss, you're doing so well, making such progress, please sweetie. You have to face it sometime. I'll go with you. I'll place the daisies at the tombstone. Your father loved daisies. He loved getting his hands dirty when he gardened. And remember that time when you spent the whole afternoon planting with him? It was his therapy. It was your therapy. Just think of those happier times for me. Please Kat, do it for me?") No, no, no, no, no.
Relax.
She counted in her head backwards: Ten … starting from ten and downwards—slowly so as not to disorient and further upset the chaotic "balance" of her mind as her therapist referred to it. Speaking of—no, she didn't have to call Cinna this instant. She could quell this beast. She could stop it. Her hands were tremulous as she reached out and plucked her blue friend up from her bed. It would calm her. It always did.
Katniss had even taken to naming the ball—Charlie—after one of her favorite characters from one of her favorite books. She couldn't totally relate to Charlie because she'd never been sexually abused as a child and never ever hoped to be in her 16 sixteen years of life but … she could relate to his sadness and sense of being misunderstood. His wanting to not get too close to people—she could understand that. It was her need to get lost somewhere—even if it was in the soft plopping noises of falling rain descending on the earth.
Her fingers dug into the ball because if it wasn't the ball today it would've been her bruised and bloodied palms tomorrow. Half moon marks a testament to her suffering. Six … Five … when had she counted down to six? There was the frenetic pounding of bare feet coming up the stairs.
"The dramatic ascendance," as one of her favorite authors would've coined it.
Katniss moaned and bit her bottom lip. Good girl, good girl, relax, don't tense your shoulders. Automatically her shoulders jutted up like rocks bursting forth from the ground—like the shifting of tectonic plates—sudden and irreversible. It was nature's work … nature's way. Her breathing became shallower.
What if he comes in and sees—the quick jiggling and turning of the knob. The deep throaty voice turning muffled. "Kat … I'm coming in okay? Is that alright?" The envisioning of his body all lanky limbs and long torso ; his mop of unruly hair the color of sunflowers, his skin a tinge of baked bronze from spending more time climbing rock and earth than being in his Challenger. His Challenger—it smelled like him—like Irish Spring soap and the smell of clods of wet dirt and clay.
"I g-guess," when had her voice turned so tiny and faraway? It was like she was calling out from some far off chain of cliffs down to him. What if he sees me clenching this ball and … Four … Three … She exhaled shakily and her chest tightened. In her mind she saw a blood vessel rupturing , the flooding rush of hemoglobin and water … blood platelets … blood. She saw her father's eyes roll back to the starchy whiteness of his … saw him dying … gasping for breath … the incessant beep of the EKG monitor flat lining.
"Kat I'm not warning you now, I'm just going to come in…," the knob turning … hazel eyes a mixture of drizzled honey and mossy green. His eyes focused in on her. Zoomed in like the zoom function of one of those fancy Nikon cameras he had. The ones he used to take nature photography shots with. He was really good at it.
"Peeta … I …," and then she started collapsing into a fit of sharp gasps and her chest constricted tightly—painfully. It was like someone had twisted her stomach into a fit of tightened coiled wire and had let it contract—spring suddenly. Katniss rocked back and forth, pressed her heels together, leaned over until her stomach collected into rolls of skin and she counted out loud this time.
"Ten … nine … eight … seven … six," her world became a suffusion of sound and muffled colors. Tears fogged her vision and blurred it; she swiped hastily and furiously at her eyes and clawed at her palms.
"Mrs. Everdeen, she's starting to panic," And then he was all around her and on top of her and she smelled the clinging scent of Irish Spring saturated like tattoo ink into his skin. She inhaled the sharp tang of chemical components and artificial fragrances and dyes. She clung to his tattered thrift shop shirt. He'd cut the holes where the sleeves had been himself. It was flimsy rain soaked cotton. His overalls were two sizes too big and he wore a woven belt of various dyed leathers around his slender waist. Her palms rested against the nape of his neck. It was his warmth—what she craved.
And then he began the mantra he'd learned with her during a group session: A mindfulness technique that could be recited to her when she started to lose her sense of being grounded. It was something to ground her, something to keep her whole and aware and present. Stay present.
"It's okay; you're in your safe place … focus on the sounds of the raindrops against the pavement … against the roof around you. Focus on the smells around you, feel the warmth… you are here … in your safe place. Your room is your safe space. Your room is your safe space. Your home is your safe space," his voice sounded like there were bits of gravel being struck and dragged across sandpaper . It was rough and fractured around the edges.
The loosely curled bun of her mother's hair came into her focus. She smelled the shampoo in her mother's damp hair. A fluffy white towel was draped around her head but the soft curls still clung to her pale forehead.
"Oh god sweetie what happened?"
"She's panicking Mrs. Everdeen I'm trying to calm her down," the boy with the blue eyes—more of a man-boy really explained. He rubbed warmth into Katniss's knees, into her palms and elbows, into the pressure point pulsing against her neck—her carotid artery. Her mother set a dish of ice water by the bed and turned off on her daughter's phone. This was routine and ritual. Mother and boyfriend had walked through the mysterious door of their loved one's mind and had been locked inside with the complexities of her often irrational spasmodic thoughts.
"Mom I—I can't control it. I'm so sorry mom," Katniss forced spat out desperately and she clutched her boyfriend's hands urgently, feeling for the cuts and scrapes and scabs that made him natural and tangible and so felt and warm. She watched as her mother sat on the edge of the bed, continuously she rocked back and forth, her voice coming out in broken patches of hoarseness—fragile and torn from misuse. Katniss clutched onto Charlie for dear life, having pulled away from her boyfriend a while ago.
"Peeta," she breathed out and his eyes softened and he watched her with a tender expression, how a father would watch his peacefully sleeping baby. It was akin to that, yes.
"Katniss," he enunciated her name softly although it edged out with his characteristic sandpaper voice. And all she could do was rock back and forth. Rock back and forth, rhythmically, matching her pacing with the seemingly syncopated dropping of rain. Peeta placed his hands on her shoulder, warm and calloused from his days spent playing hide-and-go-seek in the woods.
"You're alright?"
"I'm alright," a small smile graced her lips and she breathed out and shook out the nervous energy out of her limbs, cracking her knuckles and shaking her tremulous legs.
"I'll make you some tea, alright? I mean I was gonna have you dip your hands in this ice water like Kathryn instructed us to but … no need. Good job Peeta, got her calmed down faster than I've been able to in months," Mrs. Everdeen's smile was small and sad and watery although her tears didn't fall. Death—it blanketed the room like some cold fog spreading like a mantle over rolling hills. It was some unwelcome visitor that descended on Katniss's safe space.
Safe space—haven—safe place—all terms coined by her wonderful therapist —really it was just a method for the panicked individual to ground themselves and take a mental note of their surroundings. It was a way to hit the 'pause' button and be cognizant of sharp sounds and smells, vivid colors and various patterns … things like that—sensory things.
"Tea would be good thanks," Katniss shuddered. She felt the squirming sickening sensation of bile rising up in her throat which was characteristic of the aftermaths of her panic attacks.
"Alright I'll make some chamomile—good for the nerves—get all that energy out of your system. Stay with her won't you?" Mrs. Everdeen suddenly looked tired and she passed her hands over her eyes, pulled taut by the faint crinkling of crow's feet. Age was wearing her skin paper thin and her veins and patience even thinner. Still, she fought through the urge to scream for her daughter—she tried to understand and sympathize because she couldn't lose someone else even if it was through … unnatural causes. She couldn't bear …
"I'll stay."
"Great, thanks and Kat," a nest of dark curly hair flopped backwards as piercing brown eyes watched her mother. They looked nothing alike. Katniss had gotten her exotic features—the pudgy cheeks splattered with light honey hued freckles, the amber hue of her eyes and the pout in her lower lip from her father. Peeta loved her ingenuity with oil paints, acrylics and oil pastels and he loved her passion for nature, art and hunting and sports. He loved her dorkiness. He loved her everything down to the moles on her toes and the imbalance in her brain. It was an imbalance in her brain. It was a chemical glitch in her brain.
"… Don't ever be sorry."
And her door shut with a sharp metallic click.