“Origami!”
For some reason, the word stood out to Millie, a faint call in amongst the din of many people shouting, chatting and laughing in the crowd gathered for the university's cultural arts day. Millie wasn't much interested in art, she hadn't been since she was a kid, but her friend Danni had insisted that it would be fun and dragged her along.
Following behind Danni, not taking her eyes from the back of her red shirt and long flowing brown hair, Millie waved off an Indian girl offering to paint her hand with henna, shook her head at a dark-skinned boy offering to show her a patchwork quilt, and brushed past a group of students holding feathery masks in front of their faces and laughing. Danni stopped suddenly and spun to face her, a big smile on her face.
“You gotta do this one, at least,” she pleaded.
Millie had rolled her eyes when Danni asked her to do aboriginal dot painting and stepped away at the prospect of weaving dreamcatchers or making a death mask. Danni wasn’t one to do anything alone, so Millie had patiently waited beside her at each stall, actually enjoying watching, even if she had no desire to do it herself. Origami, though? There was a time when Millie had been interested in the Japanese art of paper folding.
Millie sighed and agreed to weave a paper fish along with Danni. As she was handed a square of green paper she began reading the instructions, confident in her ability to do it herself, as she had spent many of her younger years filling her house with paper cranes, butterflies and frogs. There was a skinny, black-haired Asian guy showing the eager crowd how to fold properly, and she glanced up at him as she fumbled with her paper. She was trying to work out how she’d managed to fold the her project into a triangle when the paper ornament was pulled out of her hands.
“No,” the guy said gently, “like this.”
Millie looked at the white spot in the corner of his black shirt rather than at what he was doing, and when he placed it back in her hands, he guided her to pull the strips together and straighten it out.
“Thanks,” Millie gave a small smile, masking her irritation. Though she was frustrated, she wasn’t going to be rude. She held the delicate object with both hands and smirked as the impatient guy grabbed Danni’s to help her finish as well. A tingling flutter in her hands made Millie look down at her fish again, and she saw the little paper creature waving its fins in the
air.
She stared for a second, horrified, as it started to work its way upright, as though waking up. She hurriedly shoved it into her jacket pocket.
Danni turned around, holding up her own masterpiece with pride.
Millie raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Uni bar?”
“Uni bar,” Danni agreed with a nod.
Millie and Danni weren't the only psych students having a post-fair drink. They met up and crowded around a small round table in the middle of the crowded bar. Of course it was busy. As university students, it was their duty to celebrate any and all events with beer.
Even after getting a few drinks into her system and joining in on chatting, Millie hadn't been able to force her attention away from the paper fish in her pocket. She excused herself from the gathering and headed to the bathroom.
The open bathroom wasn't enclosed enough, even though it was empty, and Millie pushed into the cubicle, locked the door and put the seat down, sitting and unzipping her pocket before reaching in and gingerly pulling out what really turned out to be a squirming paper creature. She held it in front of her face, watching it struggle to get out of her grip and barely believing what was right in front of her eyes. She let it go and it swam through the air like a real fish would swim in water, green paper fins flowing gently with its movements, slits that had opened like gills pushing in and out as though it was actually breathing. After a loop in the air, it hovered in front of Millie’s face.
It made no attempt to get away, and when Millie opened her hand slowly the fish settled there. Millie's hand shook and the paper brushed against her skin. She took a deep breath, and then another, willing herself to calm down.
As her breathing became more erratic, she stood and slammed her hand into the wall, palm hitting plastic with a thud. Dread reached her heart as she felt the crunching of tiny bones under her fingers – bones that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Life that shouldn't exist drained away from the small creature and Millie shuddered, removing her hand and watching normal, scrunched-up paper fall to the floor. She quickly left the cubicle, splashed her face with water at the sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She couldn’t tell if she was looking pale or if her face was always that white.
She returned to the group and downed the drink she had left unfinished, trying to calm her anxious shaking. It had no effect, and she grabbed her bag. “I’ve got to go, I’m not feeling well,” she declared. Fending off the concerned words and offers of company home, she turned from the curious looks of her friends and strode with confidence to the exit. As soon as she’d made it around the corner and out of their sight, she took off running for home in the evening light.
It was dark, and Millie was exhausted by the time she got back home. Once she had safely stepped over the threshold of her apartment, she slammed the door closed with her back, breathing erratically and looking around the room in a panic.
Running had the benefit of clearing out her mind of unnecessary thoughts, but she had had plenty of time to think on the bus ride, and now she was home and completely alone with her thoughts. Was she crazy? There was no way that fish had come to life in front of her, there was no way she had crushed tiny bones under her hands. There was just no way.
She focused on slowing down her breathing and paused her frantic gaze on her coffee table, piled high with notebooks for lecture notes and psychology textbooks, other random papers and her bible, open to where she had last been reading the night before. The sight of her familiar disarray calmed her and she pushed herself off the door, grabbing her favourite mug from its position nestled in the middle of the mess and heading for the kitchen. She paused on her way to frown and run her finger through the dust on her bookshelf. Her mother wouldn’t be happy if she knew how dirty her apartment was. She put the mug down and twisted the gold signet ring she had on; the peace that came from her normal surroundings was giving way to a nervous panic about the fish again.
Hoping the even more calming familiarity of her room would quieten her mind once more, Millie stepped in and straightened her crumpled sheets. The sheet swished against the carpet, and Millie had the sudden urge to pull out a box of her old things and look through it, something tugging at her memory. She sat on the floor and the box out into the middle of the floor, removing piles of photos and old journals to uncover a slightly lopsided clay dog. Picking him up gently, she pushed some papers and a packet of chewing gum on her bedside table to the side so she could place it flat next to the alarm clock, kneeling to watch closely.
“I must be crazy,” she mumbled after the digital number ticked over a third minute. She poked the dog and he fell over. “Definitely crazy.” She watched it for another few seconds until her stomach growled and she left the dog where it was to get something easy to eat.
With a plate of sandwiches and a cup of tea in her favourite mug, Millie sat on the couch and stared at the coffee table in front of her. Her stack of scrap paper made her think once more about the days when she had been fond of creating origami animals. She couldn’t seem to get the paper fish out of her mind, and averted her eyes to look at the dusty, blank screen of her small television as she chewed her ham sandwich. There was a line through the dust on the TV, a reminder of another time when she had the thought of dusting, but never got around to it.
As she finished her first sandwich, Millie’s eyes were drawn over and over to a stack of paper. She sighed as she realised that she wouldn’t be able to set her mind to anything else until she folded another paper fish and proved to herself that they did not come to life. Placing her plate on top of a textbook, she carefully tore an A4 page into a square. She fumbled again as she tried to remember the steps on the poster at the stall, but was disappointed that when she got to the last step she had done by herself just a few hours earlier, she forgot what came after.
It was the fault of the irritatingly impatient Asian guy. She pictured the set of instructions and reached out for her tea. It was a little cold and she gulped down the rest of it, then looked at the twisted and creased paper in front of her. There was no way she was going to remember how it was done. She’d tried and she’d failed to recreate that situation and in doing so had finally put her mind at rest. She picked up both her plate and her textbook and turned to the chapter they would go over in the lecture the next morning.
This is a story that I originally started writing as a uni assignment. I think I should probably keep writing it. The idea has been around since I was in high school, actually. And I think it could go to an interesting place. Or maybe it would be okay as a standalone.
So I looked that that first line so. many. times. And I really couldn't get it to work. It's terrible, I know. With an ending in mind, I might be able to re-write the beginning with some sort of foreshadowing, maybe? Because I accept that this is imperfect, I left it.
Comments are super welcome. Maybe you think I should continue, maybe you have some ideas about how to make this a proper standalone short story. Maybe you just want to critique my style or give me an idea of a better opening line :)