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NOTES:

OPEN SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2008/2009
FIRST PLACE

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This story text appears exactly as sent in by the writer. No changes or corrections have been made; however, all stories to be included in the published Anthology will be edited for grammar and punctuation before printing.

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"The List Maker"

by Debbie Roome - Christchurch, New Zealand

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Debbie Roome: "I was born and raised in Zimbabwe and later spent fifteen years in South Africa. In 2006 I moved to New Zealand with my husband and five children. Writing has been my passion since the age of six and I love to write stories that touch people's lives and turn them towards God. After fifteen years of owning a toy store, I am now working full time at my writing and have never been more fulfilled. My major writing achievements include the trophy for Runner up to the Writer of the Year, South Africa, 2004, placing second out of 8000 in the FaithWriters.com Best of the Best contest for 2007 and receiving the trophy from the South African Writers' Circle for the best self-published book of 2007. My writing has also opened doors for public speaking and I’m often asked to share my life story and experiences as a writer."
To visit Debbie Roome's website, click here
To visit Debbie's Blog, click here

COMMENTS FROM JUDGES:

1. Interesting idea, not badly written, but somewhat pedestrianly carried out. Ending too predictable for really high marks.

2. Artfully told sequence of OCD, its viciousness carefully hidden in the apparently perfectly logical reasonings of a mind becoming slowly unhinged. Gently spoken, cruelly administered, excellent piece of writing. Nicely rounded ending, with the punch of irony; however, the ending was somewhat predictable as the story unfolded.

THE STORY:

I missed the bus. It was a simple error, a miscalculation, a mistake. Until then I’d coped well for a shy, young farm-girl. My family had always called me Mouse. Quiet, timid, nervous. I was new to city life, working at my first proper job and on the sixteenth of May 2004, I missed the bus. Mrs Cooper served me a slice of tart words. “Melanie. Time keeping is very important in our firm. If you want to make anything of yourself, this mustn’t happen again.”

Reliant on public transport, I vowed to learn how the system worked. That night I gathered a fist-full of timetables and went home to study. Home was a tiny rental cottage. A quaint weatherboard box complete with roses that rambled over a split-log fence. Outside the cottage was a bus stop that serviced several routes, its shelter a gaunt skeleton of metal ribs and frosted glass.

From my front room, I had an expansive view of Bailey Street. I jiggled Dad’s old recliner into position by the window and started watching the buses, timetable in hand. It was a comforting sound, the deep throated rumble as they took off, grinding to a higher pitch as gears climbed. I liked to gaze out on those winter mornings when streets were washed in darkness, when passengers would huddle in the shelter, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands, when buses accelerated, leaving dragon puffs suspended in cold air.

That weekend, I started riding the buses. Catching them outside my home and riding them round their routes. I carried notebook and pencil and scribbled notes to myself, working out which buses I could catch to work, noting where they stopped and how often they stopped, following it on my timetables. Within a month, I was an expert. I knew every route in the city and told anyone who would listen. The girls at work laughed at me; called me Little Miss Timetable. I didn’t care. I was in control. I wouldn’t be late again.

Every weekend I would ride the buses. After a few months I knew many of the drivers by name. “Morning Carl. So how’s 33 doing today?” I would question. “Engine sounds a little rough if you ask me.” Then I would walk to the back and sit by the window, running my hands over velvety seats, patterned with multi-coloured splashes and swirls. I was enraged when people damaged the buses. When teenagers etched diagrams into the windows and scrawled graffiti over the back of seats. I often phoned the bus company. “The window seat in row three on bus 24 is torn.” Or “The bell in bus 13 is faulty.”  Sometimes they listened, sometimes they didn’t.

I was promoted in 2005 and given a more responsible position. I thanked the buses for my success, after all they got me to work on time every day. However, with my promotion came more pressure and my nerves were stretched tight. One Friday morning, bus 45 never arrived. I found out later the engine had caught fire. It was a devastating experience and although I managed to get to work on time, my confidence was shattered. I made my first list that night. It was an experiment more than anything. Just a list of what time the buses came past, what order they came in, whether they could be trusted.

The experiment slowly grew into an obsession. I would sit by the front window and write lists in the morning, lists in the evening. Lists of times and dates and bus numbers and if one was late, I would write to the bus company. Angry letters of outrage and accusations.  Slowly my social life dried up. I was reluctant to go out, reluctant even to ride the buses. I was more comfortable sitting in my recliner, making notes as they throbbed and rumbled outside my window. I began to refuse invitations from the girls. Shunned their coffee evenings, the monthly dances and movies. They still came round to visit but slowly my resentment pushed them away; my bitter anger at the disruption of my routines.

After six months, I refused to open the door.  I was embarrassed by the accumulation of paper. The lists that dangled from overstuffed drawers and the clumsy stacks that obscured every working surface. Yet still I scribbled. Dates and times were no longer enough. I’d begun noting other details. Two passengers alighted, one boarded. Two boys loitering in the bus shelter. The bus knelt to accommodate an old woman. There were hundreds of pages of detailed notes; line after line of them. I even listed mechanical faults. Bus 34 jerks in first gear. Bus 17 has a hole in the exhaust. I knew those buses better than the mechanics who serviced them.

By year end, my social life had shrivelled completely. Life was measured in hours. How many hours I spent out of home. How many buses would pass in those hours. How many hours I spent sleeping. It was a compulsion, an addiction that I couldn’t control. My life shrank to work, buying food and writing my lists. My friends gave up on me and I even brushed my parents off. “I’m busy.” I would tell them. “Maybe I’ll come up at Easter.”

Around that time, I went through a brief season of anxiety. A niggling doubt over my lists, about my obsession with the buses. I even saw a therapist for a while, fitting the appointments into my lunch break. Dr Wilson was a sedate English woman with whipped-cream hair and half-moon glasses. It took several sessions before I admitted my real concerns. She nodded, neutral, unfazed, professional. “So Melanie.” she questioned as she made tiny scratchings in my file. “What would happen if you stopped writing these notes? If you stopped watching the buses?” I was too scared to find out so I cancelled my next appointment. She left several messages on my answering machine but I never went back.

By 2007, I was in deeper than I had thought possible. My life revolved around the buses, around my front window. I was compelled to record every movement, every minute detail. If I cooked, it was a matter of tossing a pie in the microwave. More often, I had takeout delivered to my door. I couldn’t leave my spot by the window for longer than a few minutes. The lists grew in number and size and I started boxing the old ones, stacking them up in my bedroom and the passage way. For some reason I couldn’t part with them. They were vitally important to my well-being; hoards of information that was the focus of my life.

The buses stopped at midnight and that was when I would do my shopping. Squeaking down Bailey Street on my bicycle. Pedalling from one street lamp to the next, their cinnamon cones of light illuminating my way, never allowing darkness to shroud me. At the second corner, I would turn left by the broad oak and then right into the car park. The twenty-four hour sign flickered incessantly, reminding people they could shop anytime. Luring in weary travellers and thirsty party-goers. My basket contained only bread, milk and microwave meals.

At 6am I was up again, watching the buses as they rumbled to life. Delivering shift workers to the suburbs, bleary-eyed, stubble-cheeked men, stumbling down the street, longing for a pillow under their heads. Later, the school children would filter out, clumping together by the metal shelter, basking in the early sun, chattering and laughing until the bus arrived. I would continue scribbling until the last moment, only abandoning my work as bus 45 crawled over the hill.

The lifestyle and bad diet began to affect me. Healthy skin paled and I broke out in greasy lumps of acne. My hair lost its bounce and hung in lank ribbons, unkempt and untrimmed. I woke up with terrible flu that winter. Feverish, nauseous, dizzy, thick-headed. “I’m sick.” I rasped to Mrs Cooper. “I won’t be in for the rest of the week.” I spent the first day huddled in a blanket watching the buses. In spite of feeling ill, I managed to fill nine pages with information. It was exhilarating, liberating, the best week of my life. Cold fingers of depression snaked into my soul on returning to work.

I called in sick again and it became a pattern. A powerful drug in my system. A desperate need to make my lists. Mrs Cooper called me into her office that Christmas. She was diplomatic, concerned. “We’ve noticed you haven’t been looking well. Are you having personal problems? Is it anything we can help you with?”  Then she showed me the record of my absences. Told me my sick leave was finished. Undeterred, I started taking normal leave. A day here, a day there, until that too was exhausted.

By March 2008, I was in trouble. I’d been unable to concentrate at work and refused to tell them why; refused to seek help. After several written warnings I was told my job was finished. I remember sitting in the bus that evening. Trickles of fear niggled in the background but ecstasy prevailed. No more constraints on my time. No more wasted hours

I locked the doors and devoted myself to record keeping. Page after page flowed from my pen. I ignored the phone, ignored the door bell and only shopped when necessary. The mirror told me I didn’t look good. Matted strings of hair, filthy, rumpled clothes, furry teeth. I forgot to bath most days. My funds ran out after two months and the landlord let himself through the door. “If you don’t pay rent next week, you’ll lose your bond and I’ll have to evict you.” he said.  I spent the next few days frantically recording list after list.

He forced his way back into the cottage. Cut the safety chain with heavy bolt cutters. I was busy in my chair, making notes about bus 18. He stood there, a short, stout man in his fifties. I vaguely remember him wearing denims and a green jersey, running a hand through buzz-cut hair as he looked round. As he took in piled-up pizza boxes and grayish-green crusts, the mugs with globs of congealed coffee and soup. As he registered the heaped stacks of junk mail, the boxes of lists, the overflowing drawers and filthy kitchen. He looked at it for a long time. Then looked at me, suspicious, almost fearful. Then backed out slowly, carefully.

He came back later with a public health official. I ignored them, busy, busy with my lists. They called my family and that evening Dad and Mom arrived. It was a tense meeting. Dad eventually closed the curtains and forced me to listen to them. I have fuzzy memories of us fighting, of the mention of OCD and psychiatric problems. I sat there while Dad phoned around. As he discussed the situation with the man from public health; as he made arrangements to help me.   Mom cleaned up, filling bag after bag with filth. I was ashamed of the mess but couldn’t help her. I remember throwing myself across my boxes, screams boiling up from primal places as they carried my lists out for recycling.

That evening, they drove me to a private clinic. A place where they worked with people like myself. It was hard going at first. That antiseptic haven with pallid walls and humourless staff. I yearned for the familiarity of my buses, the bright metallic flashes as they rumbled past, the security of sitting by my window and making my lists. They wouldn’t allow me paper and pen the first month so I would try and scratch lists onto the wall.

Eventually, clarity came back to my mind. The doctors hit on the right combination of therapy and drugs. I had to stand in front of the group and confront my problems. Air my dirty laundry for all to hear. They counselled me endlessly, dissecting and probing, like scientists studying a deformed insect. It took months but at last I was pronounced cured. There was one condition on my release. I was not to live in a place that was on a bus route. The doctors feared the temptation might be too much. Hearing the familiar sounds, inhaling the fumes, sitting in the bus shelters.

Mom wanted me to move home, to help out on the farm, but I resisted, appealing to Dad. “Please let me stay in the city. There’s more opportunity here. Please Dad.” He wasn’t happy but gave me a little run-about. A car to get me to work and back. Made me promise not to go near the buses.

At first I lived in a hostel, a giant boarding house that creaked in the sun and leaked in the rain. A place where there were curfews and rules, little privacy and bland food. I tired of it quickly and asked Dad if I could go flatting. He was cautious, unsure, set boundaries and conditions to protect me. It took me three weeks to find the perfect place.  Dad spoke to them on the phone, diplomatic, careful with my secret. “So there’s no bus stop nearby, eh? No worries. Melanie has a car. There’s parking for it is there? And she’ll have her own room? Right. You make sure she pulls her weight, does her share around the place.”

I was ecstatic as I lugged stuff into my room. A pink and white cube in the back of the house. My furniture fitted well. My bed, a roomy wardrobe, a pine chest of drawers and a scarred wooden chest. Next to the bay window I positioned a light-oak table with a plump, padded chair. I carefully unpacked my clothing, my underwear, a few books and photographs. The last items were a thick pad of paper and a brand new pen. Almost reverently, I placed them on the table by the window. Just then the house started to vibrate, quivering in harmony with the hissing monster a few metres below. I watched with rapt attention as a commuter train pulled into the station.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Debbie Roome - do not reproduce
without the author's written permission!

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