Today is my birthday. I find directly narrating my own experiences really, really annoying, and furthermore boring, so let’s say it’s not my birthday. It’s wholly different, something I imagined someone experiencing during this special day.
Today is my birthday. I lift my tired self up the floor and peer around. The sudden change of balance, along with the headache and drop in blood pressure left me temporarily dizzy and blind. I blinked and steadied myself before whispering down the fast-awaking hall.
The middle child of the family recently occupying the house shared the same birthday as me. She was a loud and energetic child, and I could hear her pair of fast, light feet running down the stairs and into her parent’s room. Surprised shouts, followed promptly by peals of laughter and light chuckling, lit the house up. I poke my head out of the small storage closet under the stairs, hearing the fading voice of the young girl debating between three candied fruit slices to put on her cake.
Birthdays are deemed as such a special day, I thought. People see the necessity of decorating this day for their loved ones with fancy cakes and special events and presents beyond count. It’s like something someone felt they had to do. But come to think, there isn’t anything fundamentally special about a birthday if people didn’t think that someone’s start of existence mattered, birthdays are just your average day after all.
Today is my two-hundred thirty-seventh birthday. And there was a celebration. It isn’t for me, though. I went along unnoticed and pretended that the big strawberry cake was also for me, that someone especially thought and planned out the small, beautiful party in the garden, with all ten children saying “happy birthday” to two instead of one. I pretended that it really was my birthday, and that I hadn’t stolen someone else’s. My birthday too, happy birthday to me too.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly; it was the most fun I’ve had in two centuries! I flourished invisibly and laughed and mingled with the attendees of the party without a response. I pretended to cut the cake and take the first bite even though I would never taste the sweetness of egg and flour again. Call it weird, but I’ve died long enough to please myself with only these.
There were actually some undiscovered benefits to celebrating my birthday this way, I discovered. I was a little bit of a timid animal, and the first seven birthdays where I was the only center of attention frightened me slightly. But this–I didn’t have the attention, but it’s nice to acknowledge that some celebration because of a birthday would come around during my own birthday.
So there it began, a strange symbiotic relationship, me and the girl’s birthday. I didn’t think much about the girl herself, though it was her birthday I was sharing, until her eleventh birthday.
“Oi- You’re STILL not up yet? I get that it’s 2022 and all, but can’t you at least give ME something to do???” I complained loudly at the snoring child on the bed. Being in spectator all the time is very annoying most times, and no matter how hard I hollered, there was no way she could hear me.
What happened next was surprising, to say the least. Cliche as it is, she woke with a start. “AHHHHH! ROBBERY! Who’s there!?” Her eyes locked on me. “Oh…What in the world-? I must still be dreaming. Pinch me, someone please do. Because there is a floating person in my room. A—a floating person in my room. In my own room.”
This situation was beyond a little unsettling. See, people say to keep calm in situations like this, but if you were me, you would see that it’s very hard to do so. So…
“AAAAAAH!” I yelled. She scrambled back, face pale and breathing hard. I’m surprised she hasn’t fainted yet—Someone magically appeared in her bedroom, after all. “This is freaky. You can see me. Have you always been able to?” The room is surrounded by a tenseness that somehow seems to mute everything. My nerves were shot.
She looks at my face, eyes wide, and flaps her jaw uselessly. Considering everything that happened this morning, she quite suddenly fainted.
No birthday, but well, this ought to be fun. Or terrifying.
Today is my birthday. I lift my tired self up the floor and peer around. The sudden change of balance, along with the headache and drop in blood pressure left me temporarily dizzy and blind. I blinked and steadied myself before whispering down the fast-awaking hall.
The middle child of the family recently occupying the house shared the same birthday as me. She was a loud and energetic child, and I could hear her pair of fast, light feet running down the stairs and into her parent’s room. Surprised shouts, followed promptly by peals of laughter and light chuckling, lit the house up. I poke my head out of the small storage closet under the stairs, hearing the fading voice of the young girl debating between three candied fruit slices to put on her cake.
Birthdays are deemed as such a special day, I thought. People see the necessity of decorating this day for their loved ones with fancy cakes and special events and presents beyond count. It’s like something someone felt they had to do. But come to think, there isn’t anything fundamentally special about a birthday if people didn’t think that someone’s start of existence mattered, birthdays are just your average day after all.
Today is my two-hundred thirty-seventh birthday. And there was a celebration. It isn’t for me, though. I went along unnoticed and pretended that the big strawberry cake was also for me, that someone especially thought and planned out the small, beautiful party in the garden, with all ten children saying “happy birthday” to two instead of one. I pretended that it really was my birthday, and that I hadn’t stolen someone else’s. My birthday too, happy birthday to me too.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly; it was the most fun I’ve had in two centuries! I flourished invisibly and laughed and mingled with the attendees of the party without a response. I pretended to cut the cake and take the first bite even though I would never taste the sweetness of egg and flour again. Call it weird, but I’ve died long enough to please myself with only these.
There were actually some undiscovered benefits to celebrating my birthday this way, I discovered. I was a little bit of a timid animal, and the first seven birthdays where I was the only center of attention frightened me slightly. But this–I didn’t have the attention, but it’s nice to acknowledge that some celebration because of a birthday would come around during my own birthday.
So there it began, a strange symbiotic relationship, me and the girl’s birthday. I didn’t think much about the girl herself, though it was her birthday I was sharing, until her eleventh birthday.
“Oi- You’re STILL not up yet? I get that it’s 2022 and all, but can’t you at least give ME something to do???” I complained loudly at the snoring child on the bed. Being in spectator all the time is very annoying most times, and no matter how hard I hollered, there was no way she could hear me.
What happened next was surprising, to say the least. Cliche as it is, she woke with a start. “AHHHHH! ROBBERY! Who’s there!?” Her eyes locked on me. “Oh…What in the world-? I must still be dreaming. Pinch me, someone please do. Because there is a floating person in my room. A—a floating person in my room. In my own room.”
This situation was beyond a little unsettling. See, people say to keep calm in situations like this, but if you were me, you would see that it’s very hard to do so. So…
“AAAAAAH!” I yelled. She scrambled back, face pale and breathing hard. I’m surprised she hasn’t fainted yet—Someone magically appeared in her bedroom, after all. “This is freaky. You can see me. Have you always been able to?” The room is surrounded by a tenseness that somehow seems to mute everything. My nerves were shot.
She looks at my face, eyes wide, and flaps her jaw uselessly. Considering everything that happened this morning, she quite suddenly fainted.
No birthday, but well, this ought to be fun. Or terrifying.
