1 Away From Home
Shanghai, 2016 - as Ellise opens her eyes, she hears no sound, sees nothing but darkness. It's the everyday situation for someone who sleeps inside a closet. Her eight inches mattress, top with a futon was shoved inside a wardrobe, bared with shelves and drawers. Ellise has trouble sleeping, and accidentally found out in one of her drunken states that she sleeps better inside a frigging closet.
It's not like she wanted to be inside a closet, it just happened that after so many nights partying in Shanghai party district, she came home and had the thought of taking a hot shower, to remove the reeking odor of alcohol, and God knows what else in her body before going to bed. But instead of going to the bathroom she opens the closet, curls up and gets the best sleep she ever had and from then on continues this quirky sleeping situation.
But with her gaming, partying all night and day for the past week, she now hardly remembers the last time she had a good sleep. The memory of the morning, from last week, when she had one of another fight with DT has been simply waking up with a terrible feeling of lack of sleep, and in dire need of coffee.
Finding herself in China is something Ellise never thought will happen in her lifetime. She knows nothing of China, besides what just like everybody reads in the news and a faint memory of a boy's shadow speaking in Chinese in Gardermoen Airport.
She was born in London, England from a German mother and an English father she unfortunately never met. Every time a situation arises about her father, however packed a room is, it turns icy cold in silent contempt, hence she draws an image of her father as a commoner not suitable with her great-grandparents curated lifestyle.The only thing she knows about her father is what's written in her birth certificate. Her father is just a few letters, and nothing more.
She grew up in Oslo, and Berlin for all her life. Chauffeured around from boarding schools, vacations, and the rare occasion of being at home. Which isn't much of a home, anyway. It's either her great-grandparents villa outside the city, her grandparents mansion in the middle of Oslo, or her mother's always empty apartment overlooking a sad lake, that makes the building a prime estate. But most of the time, her great-grandparents' villa is the worst of them all.
The quiet hallways, and vast land surrounding the estate, with its all spoken and unspoken thousands rules, which is the source of never ending disappointment on everybody's faces in the ballroom, for apparently she breaks them all. Which she vehemently denied anyway. Whether she breaks them or not, she's always at fault. Another excuse why she is being educated in another country's boarding school.
Brandenburg International School, a prestigious boarding school, with its hundred-acre land, thick walls, hushed voices and immaculate monotone uniform, kicked her out even before she finished her elementary education. The memory of it stills keeps a sour taste in her mouth.
Her all girls proper Junior high school in Oslo was just as bad. The only difference was she can get out of the juvenile cage, called school, every last ring of the bell. She can attend her long list of after school activities. Her grandparents love them, especially her Grandmama, and not because of how diligent she is with her studies, but because those extra curricular activities keep her outside longer.
It's clear since young, that nobody in her family wants her. Not the father, she never saw, not the mother who breathed and lived for her husband's life and works. Neither the grandparents who just hide her from the questioning eyes of society.
On the outside, she looks like one hell of a lucky girl. A pretty face, accompanied with a bank card that looks like the Pacific ocean that knows no end. The people she met last night, drove the city the whole night to buy whatever using her card, to find out if it will be declined. So far, someone from last night, got a new apartment within the same building where she's staying, another guy she can't remember the name went home with a Jaguar. The girls, all she barely knows, couldn't carry all the shopping bags from known high-end brands.
They're so noisy that she has to go home even when she doesn't have a plan to.
She hears gurgling sounds that her stomach is making. She doesn't want to get out of this dark and icy cold bed. She would love to go back to sleep, but her stomach is strongly protesting. So is her guts that demands in a rush to be vomited, fast!
She throws the heavy blanket and pushes the door of the closet, and rolls over to her side to get out. Face down on another cold floor, she tries to breathe out, and inhales the cold air. She always likes the cold. The cold makes hunkering down easier and acceptable. To make her feel smaller, and unseen. She's old enough to know that it doesn't actually help but it became a habit she unconsciously does when she's alone.
Lying with her face glued on to the floor, silence once again welcomes her to the awake world. She hates the silence, yet cling to it as a lifeline. Her head never knows quiet in any way.
As the strong bile comes upon her throat, she instantly crunches on her feet and arms, shoots straight to the waiting toilet bowl to release the alcohol consumed like water from the previous night. A cold sweat breaks out of her face, from that big puke of bitter water from her stomach; she reaches the button to flush out her puke, drops her back to the tile wall, never daring to open her eyes, not to trigger another gush of bitter bile to come up from her esophagus.
She hates how she could smell it, while it's travelling from her stomach to her throat. She hates how the bitterness of it stays in her mouth for a certain amount of time. She knows she has to gargle some water to remove the taste but her legs have no strength for her to stand to reach the lavatory. As she contemplates which one she hates between triggering another vomit, or having the disgusting taste of it from her mouth. Which one she could give up to get rid of the other. At the back of her head, washing her mouth is slowly winning, when a warm thing touches her face.
