Liminal

An imaginative composed by Alex (Year 12 Advanced)

The end is near. 

The office smells of nothing, set up to accommodate all ages and their problems; a room tailored to everyone and no one at all, no room for mistakes or personal taste. There is no identity to cling to only accommodations, no person to analyse or study, just a liminal room in which to wait. Picking at a hangnail, the air conditioner induces cold tremors which work to match the pace of the anxious ones, her skin tears slowly along the cuticle and pain shoots through her hand. It was dusk, but whatever romance might have existed in the soft colours of the evening was snuffed out by the monotone collaboration of autumn's cloud coverage and the cluster of office buildings jutting up from the root-riddled pavement. 

Intention.

"Miss Sole?"

She was led to a smaller room, clutching her arms close to her chest. An instinct of nerves.. A plush lounge, a wooden box of tissues perched on the windowsill beside neglected pot plants yearning for sunlight, and an eye-catching poster resembling a fingerprint — abstractly. This room too had no true personality, it assumedly molded for the client, the mood, the light,  the weather. It must be quite the novelty, crafting such a space of liminal comfort. 

With little prompting her words pour into the stale air, wrapping themselves around the cheap aroma of air freshener and printer paper, they fill the space and hang there suspended in qualified scrutiny. Then they pile up one by one, sentence by sentence until her humanity sits between them, exposed on the gray carpet in a lump of awkward, too-real expression. The doctor remains placid and nice as she notes the quirks in her client’s brows, the way in which she laughs off the difficult topics and pauses all too often when she catches concern in the eyes meeting hers. Initiation.

The next session isn’t any easier. She wishes it were, though watching distantly alongside the clock on the wall, noting the notches in the fingerprint, tracing the lines, waiting to be done with the fidgety spillage of blood and relentless jaw clenching was agonising. Uncomfortably shifting on the too-soft cushion when the older woman did not share in the facade. The smiles falter and the inside of her sleeve is perpetually stained with spots of burgundy. Night felt smothering, a heavy blanket that found shadows in every corner of the office and fed them with ever-growing unease.

“You seem rather distant, perhaps we book a sooner appointment to make the most of this week,” The clipboard goes down, carefully hidden from view. “Hm?” 

Justification.

The regular sessions passed like this. Attempts are made to disassemble the pile of consciousness splayed out on the floor from the initial appointment but it cringes from touch and fails to hear take on criticism in this fragile state. As for the months, they rolled into the next as appointments tide her over, through the mental load of her own humanity.

“How have you been?” A soft smile.

 “Have you been journaling?” A critically raised brow.

 “Hope to see you again next week dear.” A gentle arm touch.

She watched as the waning moon was swallowed by infrastructure and smog, and as red tail lights painted the reflectors lining the road below. Like clockwork the sun fell out of sight, taking the warm edge it gave to winter chills as they set in and the darkness plastered itself to every crevice with evident intent. Miraculous transformation felt by the illusion of progress, finally she was doing something that worked, something which gave her purpose.

Just get to the next appointment.

“Sorry I can’t go out, I have therapy.”

Sometimes – constantly – she didn’t want to move on or grow. Sometimes – It’s all I feel – she felt sickly content – resigned – to take up residence with that moon in the night sky, avoid the arrival of the sun and subsequently evade the warm edge it gave her humanity. Perched atop the world, separate from this mortal plane and shrouded in the absence of existence, of humanity. The sessions composed themselves into a performance, a justification against change. 

Look how good I am. She thought desperately, bitterly. I went through it all, and now I put in the work. I participate. I get help, seek it. 

The framed fingerprint was less like art today and more like a maze — one she'd been running through blindly, always tracing her way back to the same dead end. 

The End (is near).