SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Amanda Walsh sat down at her desk tapping her pencil on the page from her note book. In her mind she knew that the page looked strange because as she looked at her computer screen it looked the same too. They were both blank.

It was a Sunday afternoon and she had been sitting in her chair for more than half the day in her pajamas.

Amanda dropped her pencil onto her desk and slumped over her keyboard groaning. Why did it have to be now of all times that she couldn't come up with anything at all. Now when she needed to prove herself to really prove herself. She had been sitting here from the moment she she got out of bed.

Her head turned to look into the kitchen, that could be a pantry, ( because it was before she 'remodeled' it), and stared longingly at the refrigerator.

" It wouldn't be right. I can't do it. I mustn't... Ohhhhh but I can't help it "

She lost to her self initiated struggle and stood from her chair to walk over to the refrigerator. She retrieved a tub of chocolate and strawberry ice cream and opened the drawers to take a dessert spoon. Amanda tiptoed away from the kitchen giggling like a little child that just got away with a bad deed.

She snuggled into her slightly worn out couch and turned on her television not really paying attention to what she was watching. Over the time she had moved out of her mother's house into her now humble abode, she found the sound of the television on while she ate or simply sat down to pass time a comfort it made the place she called home seem a little less lonely.

" Mmmmhhhh Strawberry and chocolate ... I may be breaking the girl code but you know how much I need you don't you?"

She spoke to a tub of ice cream, yes she knew it wouldn't answer her, but being alone for too long did that to you.

" I knew you'd understand!" happy with herself she scooped out a spoonful and savoured the taste of the creamy soft mush in her mouth. Her cute features of pink small and yet full lips and bright green-gray dou eyes, closed at the moment showing full contentment .' you really are a girls best friend ', she paused for a moment reconsidering her last thought, ' well one of a girls best friends anyway.'

....

An hour of sweet satisfied happiness later with an empty tub in her lap, Amanda looked out her window allowing her bubbly nature to be set aside for a while and letting realty have a touch on her soul.

All she had ever wanted to do in life was write. She could remember from the the time she was young how she had taken a quick liking to books. Amanda eventually picked out novels of fictional writers, romance, magical realism and many more in that line as her favourite of the lot. Even though she read outside of these categories with enthusiasm too, she found these to be the best of the lot.

In times when she was teased and pushed around by everyone she found time to escape from the harsh world around her into the magical places that pages could take you into.

Her mother of course did not support this at all. Amanda's optimistic and positive nature is what her mother referred to as her 'soon to be downfall', a dreamers mind.

She would say things like;

" Keep up with that sort of attitude and you'll definitely end up like your father! A dreamer. Wake up and start living in the real world."

" Why can't you be more like your older sister, she's responsible, smart, beautiful amd most importantly not a dreamer! Did she not work hard enough to set out a good example for you?"

Yes even now her mother's words still haunted her. Sometimes Amanda wondered how her mother and father met to begin with, Was her mother always the way she was now. Otherwise if she was how on earth did her and Amanda's father get along long enough to have two children with a two year gap in-between them both. Her and her older sister never heard their mother speak of their father unless it was to make an example off of him. She, personally remembered very little of him and never really knew what happened to him. She never dared ask her mother about it either or risk waking a force better left buried.

Looking around her four roomed apartment now, small but furnished well and tidy, she had only one regret, not standing up for what she really wanted to be, who she really was and that was a writer.

Amanda gathered herself off the couch and with a new resolve walked back to her desk and started typing, as at now she didn't care what, she just needed to get her fingers going and her mind up and running. She would figure out the rest as she went.