Inside Sophie

 Chapter One: The Home Storm

“Damn it, Sophie!” Rhett screamed, whirling around and chucking an empty glass bottle at her head. She ducked in time; fractals of glass exploded behind her like fireworks. “You drank my goddamn Mike’s!”

She stood straight as the sound of falling shards came to a rest, narrowing her eyes, pushing her anger outwards to fill what little space there was between her and her newly sworn enemy. “Are you finally embracing your inner gay?” She sneered, and not lightly. “Not only did you miss, but you throw like a girl. Which makes sense considering you drink like one too.”

Rhett scoffed. “You’re a fucking bitch.”

“You’re right,” she said with a snarky smile, feeling proud. “And I wonder who made me this way?”

“Burn in hell,” he declared monotonously. He then turned on his heel with his hand already on the loose basement door and descended down the stairs and back to his room.

Fitting, Sophie thought to herself. The devil is descending back into the underworld. She snorted out a breathy laugh through her nose, turning from the door and moving in the opposite direction towards her own room, cutting her foot along the way on the remnants of Rhett’s anger. “Fucker!” She screamed to the ceiling. “I’m not putting up with this shit, Rhett. Sweep up the kitchen for hell’s sake!”

From the closet in the hall a board slammed upwards, forcing the door open with a loud BANG! which echoed loudly within the sparsely decorated house. “That’s your own damn fault so why don’t you fucking deal with it, you bloody bleeder?”

Sophie lifted her foot into her hand and placed her fingers upon the red-stained glass, sliding out the large sliver, her anger eliminating all pain from the resistance. Once freed, she aimed her hand towards the ‘secret’ cut-out board, aiming the shard at Rhett’s head. The board slamed shut, the particle clinking upon the wood. “Damn it,” she whispered angrily.

“Missed me!” Rhett yelled out from below.

“Unfortunately,” Sophie grumbled, moving into the bathroom to bandage her foot and leaving a trail of bloody footprints along the way. She sat upon the edge of the tub thrusting her foot inward to allow the blood to drip down into the drain, watching in fascination as each drip mingled with leftover droplets of water from someone’s previous shower. Eventually she reached beside her and lifted up the bottle of rubbing alcohol; flipping open the cap she drained it over her foot, allowing herself to absorb the burning pain that would make anyone else cry. But not her as she and pain came to an understanding long ago. Now that understanding was proving to be useful.

She threw the bottle toward the trash bin beside the dirty toilet no one else cleaned besides her—since it was declared her job by the others, seeing as she was the only female—and reached for an ace bandage to wrap tightly over her wound. She sighed as she pined the wrap together above her ankle and moved into her room across the hall to smoke a much-needed bowl.

The flint of a lighter was struck, the flame thrown upwards when the front door opened and her boyfriend of four years entered, calling out her name sounding panicked. She lifted her thumb off the spark wheel. “In here, J.J.!” She called out.

The bedroom door opened and J.J. poked his head in, a large smile forming on his face as his eyes land upon his girlfriend, taking in her curly reddish hair, dark green eyes, and freckles. Then his eyes widen with worry as he notices her bandaged foot. “What happened, kiddo?”

She let out a grunt and rolled her eyes. “Did you see the kitchen?”

“Hard to miss,” he replied sounding amused. “Between the blood on the floor…the glass covering the kitchen…everything okay?”

“Let’s just say there’s a reason I’m about to four-twenty this shit at eleven in the damn morning. Rhett threw a goddamn Mike’s at me.”

“Bottle or can?”

A snarl forms upon her lips. “Bottle, dumbass.”

He crossed his arms, shooting her a gentle glare from the doorway. “Hey, I’m not the enemy here, alright?”

Sophie rolled her eyes again, though she knew he was right. “Sorry,” she said with a sigh. “Bad morning.”

“Same,” he replied roughly and sat down on the edge of the bed, his three-hundred pound body tilting the corner downwards.

“Right,” Sophie said with an apologetic smile. “How’s the new graveyard-shift treating you?”

“Damn rough, I’ll tell you that.”

She extended the loaded bowl towards him. “Wanna hit first?”

“Sure,” he said with a smile, taking the pipe from her in his hands larger than her face. “Then I’m going downstairs to play WoW with Rhett.”

Sophie scoffed loudly. “You’re seriously going to play with that son-of-a-douche? Are you insane?!”

“Why not?” J.J. asked innocently. “Do you need me up here?”

“I can walk just fine if that’s what you’re implying,” Sophie snapped. “No thanks to that asshole!”

“I’m sure it was just an accident,” her large Swedish lover insisted.

“Right. It was a slip-of-the-hand aimed right for my head. And it just coincidentally coincided with the fact I drank his bloody Mike’s.”

“You know better than that!” J.J. exclaimed with a frown. “You don’t just steal other people’s beers.”

“You’re right, this is my fault.” Sophie snapped cynically as she grabbed the pipe back for herself, receiving an exclamation of objection from her beau, which she ignored. “I changed my mind: I want to be alone.”

“Fine.” J.J. sniffed, folding his arms tightly across his chest, looking butt hurt.

Let him be, Sophie decided, the bed lifting as he rose; she watched him carefully as he left their bedroom in a huff.Screw them both. And she continued puffing away on her pipe, not caring she had work in less than an hour. At least this will make it interesting.

Chapter Two: Work Life

“Doce pulgadas?” Sophie asked a Hispanic customer. Translation: twelve inches?

“Si,” the customer replied, and Sophie sighed as she reached up to make her hundred-and thirtieth sandwich of the day, and she had only arrived a few hours ago. From all the work her back already ached, the arches of her feet burned, and she was more than ready for this day to end. Still, without giving a clue to her pain she turned back around to slice through the bread, keeping her strokes through the center precise. As manager, they had to be as precise as possible or her manager, Barry Stiles, would comment on it later after he watched the reply of the tapes on his computer.

“¿Jamón?” she asked. Ham. “Pescado del agua? El Sidchichón—?” Tuna? Salami?

“Todo,” her customer replies. All.

She placed the meets upon the bread carefully, making sure her scoops of tuna were evenly spread before placing the pepperoni, and topping it off with the ham, thinking about her so-called success. She was recently hired as Long Subs’ manager after working as a regular employee for only three months, completely new to the world of sandwiches. Now here she was, learning to be bilingual, trying to conjure up her memory of just a few years of high school Spanish she never paid attention to, while learning how to manage a store. And Barry Stiles was hardly any help. He didn’t know any other languages, and he was barely on site to help Sophie get her feet on the ground. He would only show up to occasionally make sure she was doing things right, and to put her in her place if she wasn’t.

A damn world of slackers, Sophie thought to herself as she pushedthe knife back into its cambro of ice. “¿Que vegetales?”

“Todo,” he repeated. “Pero no olivos.”

“Bueno,” she replied back, then smiled up at her customer. “No me gusta olivos, también.”

He chuckled, and she figured it’s due to her poor sentence structure. “Lo siento. Mi español es no bueno.”

“Psh,” he replied. “You Spanish es good.”

“Gracias,” she said with a pleased smile as she placed each vegetable down with meticulous accuracy, and without wasting a single second. Not that she could afford to. She was working alone and had been since she arrived, seeing as two of her employees flaked. It was just her luck too that she wasn’t able to reach anyone else.

“Mayonesa,” her customer said as soon as the last jalapeño slice was placed, moving Sophie’s thoughts back to her customer where they belonged.

She nodded and did as asked, then wrapped the sandwich quickly and with complete accuracy. She rang him up and bid him a good day, grateful to see him leave. He was her nicest customer of the day, but she was done waiting on people. This day could not get any crazier, she declared, grateful to have an empty store for once so she could get her other work done.

She grabbed a rag and started to work on cleaning the ceiling tiles above the oven, the rag turning orange as the ceiling turned white. She hopped down and began dusting the register when a bundle of customers walked in, and she rushed to serve them all with beautiful success, everyone now filling the once-empty seats. She was glad to have no one else in line, but having a restaurant filled with people still made her anxious. She bends down behind the register’s counter to continue her tasks, and to block out the people in her view. She cleared away trash, emptied the receipt bin into another bag to place on her desk to organize through later, but before she could stand to take a step to her backroom, customers began screaming all at once.

Sophie leapt to her feet, the blood rushing from her head, dizzy and confused when a customer runs to her. “Call nine-one-one!”

Chapter Three: Relaxed

She sat at the rusted glass table in the backyard home at last, grateful to be sitting down after her stressful day. Fortunately the car accident that occurred across the street from the store wasn’t as bad as her screaming customers feared, granted once the commotion of that died down, the lunch rush ran her energy right into the ground. But she was home. Work was behind her. Now she could stare out at the trees swaying against the blue sky and bask in the realization she was alone for once. 

J.J went off with their roommate’s brother, Tanner, a nearly identical version of his older brother Sid, both of whom were enlightened souls with an almost impenetrable bubble that allowed them to carry on through life as though they were epitomes for the song “Hakuna Matata”.  She needed some of their energy, but alas neither Ramsey boy was around considering Sid had gone off to work with Rhett.

Thank God, Sophie thought to herself as Rhett’s rude behavior was the last thing she wanted to deal with after a day like today. She forced herself to smile as she watched a cloud morph into a whale. Or perhaps it was more like a roaring lion? Eventually the smile solidified into something real, and Sophie found herself relaxing for the first time in over a year. She knew it wouldn’t last, but she could still bask in the sensation, at least for another few minutes.

Better yet…the smile on her face light up as she sat up suddenly straighter. Better yet, I can go drive somewhere where I can truly be alone.

Excited by this idea, Sophie grabbed her keys and purse leaving everything else behind and took off for her car and peeled out of the driveway. It was like she couldn’t get away fast enough.

Chapter Four: Reflecting

She stood in the silent graveyard which was hidden among the trees. She had to go way out of the city to find it but it was worth the drive as she stood on the edge of a cliff, staring down into the valley below, watching as cows and horses mingled on the farm rich lands between the endless groves of trees looming on either side, creeping up the hills.

She kicked off her shoes and stood in the soft freshly mowed grass, reflecting on her life and how she had come to be here.  

Over a year had been wasted in the storm that she called a home, and she had left her real home on such a sour note, only to walk into a far worse situation. How did she let herself get so whisked away by the romantic idea she would live with her prince J.J.? How had she been so unwilling to see he was part of the problem? He allowed Rhett to treat her the way he did, blamed his own princess, in fact.

  

I’ve been wrongly in love with a frog, she realized as a white stallion reared up onto its hind legs for a brief moment, the loud snort carrying up through the valley and over the cliff, resting in the fog forming along the graveyard floor. It was only a harsh reminder that there was no prince riding up to her on a white horse to carry her off to his kingdom. Because it’s up to me to get myself to my own kingdom, Sophie suddenly realized. Perhaps it was all this fresh air getting to her; she spent all her time either locked in a little store or in her smoke-infested house.

Chapter Five: Freedom

Standing on the cliff as the sun turned the sky into a golden-pink dreamland, Sophie felt as if she had been teleported into a different realm, realizing she had never felt so alive than she did in that moment, all too aware of the rotting headstones behind her. A nerving reminder of how short life was.  

She couldn’t keep up with this life! If she could even call it a life. Rhett’s anger was too much for her to handle. Barry’s incessant demands were repeatedly kicking her to the curb, and her job was doing that to her far too often already. If that wasn’t enough to make someone go mad, J.J. wasn’t the least bit supportive of her. In fact, she was sure he was always fighting for her opposing teams.

No more, she suddenly thought feeling free. No more, no more, no more! “I quit,” Sophie yelled out into the word, her heart racing with pride. “I’m releasing my frog! I’m quitting my job, and by this time tomorrow morning, dammit world, you can bet I’ll finally be a free woman. Screw being a princess. I’m going to be my own fucking queen!” 

Without hesitation she seized her phone readily from her back pocket and dialed everyone who was keeping her chained down:

“It’s Sophie and I…

“quit!” she said, leaving only this word to linger on Barry’s voicemail.

“am moving out,” she said to her landlord.

“think it’s finally time for us to call it quits,” she said firmly over the line to J.J.

After each call she hung up so no one else could try and convince her to do otherwise. This was her own plan, and it was time she listened to one voice that really mattered: Her own.

She held her arms out to the wind, and stared up at the colorful sky as if she were on the bow of the titanic. She was alone, homeless, and without a job, but she wasn’t afraid. In fact, she was free. In that moment, she was just Sophie.

Eventually night began to steadily fall over the cliff completely, crickets chirping loudly, the animals asleep and silent, the summer air dropping steadily in degrees. She took back her shoes, carrying them in her hand as she made it back into her car where she called her parents to make amends, realizing they were the ones she need, the ones belonged with. She hadn't even realized how painful their falling out was until she heard their voices, and then she wept and so they did. All three of them realized there was nothing more that they wanted than for her to return home. 

The conversation didn’t take long, as her parents had been more than ready for her to return, and soon Sophie was driving off into the setting sun, ready to return home and face life with her newly gained sense of freedom.

Written 14th May 2016 © Sabrina S.K. Regan