Avon Calling

The world twists and squirms by her with each passing moment. Each blurry face in the every crowd stares at her as she stares past them. People and more people, always they haunt Jane’s mind, bringing her back to the moment she decided to retreat inside. The day her life ended and became the miserable existence that she struggles through now.

Walking door to door, handing out flyers and pamphlets, she was just another of the many deluded, politically driven college students, a soldier of the Army of the Lost Cause. Her charity of choice this week was how the pharmaceutical companies were testing their many chemicals and drugs on harmless animals. It didn’t matter that these drugs had been tested and verified as safe, or that these animals were rarely harmed or mistreated in any way. Only the idea was enough to launch a costly and tree sacrificing campaign to save the bunny rabbits. Ironic, Jane thought now, in order to save the animals, they were willing to cut down their homes to make the flyers and pamphlets. In the end, they saved the animals, only for them to go back to their homes to find the trees cut down and the hillsides barren. Collateral Damage in the war against the mistreatment of animals, alive until starvation or the cruelty of Mother Nature claims them.

Jane walks slowly through each building making sure she finds every door, every home. Pleading her case, illuminating the plight of the forest creatures forced to pop pills and wear mascara. Coming across a door without a flyer, she places one rolled up tube of propaganda between the wood and the knob. She notices that the entire hallway is without flyers. Curious, she heads down the hallway, affixing more flyers in place and following the trail created by the void of information packets. Only a few feet away, she hears the rustle of paper against metal. Rushing forward, she finds her culprit. Some woman dressed in a suit and carrying a case with writing stenciled across the front stood over a trash can, tossing a pile of semi-rolled paper into it. Jane and the other woman stared at each other for a moment, the parent looking at the child with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar. Without a second though, or even a first, Jane stalked toward the woman, the anger and rage bubbling up into her face. Visions of her father drunkenly passed out in the living room with her mother crying on the floor in front of a static filled TV. The memory of her brother ripping up the art she created and loved from the moment it was conceived, his laughter ringing in her ears. Her mother’s tear filled good-bye as she walks out the door, never turning around to look at her screaming daughter, begging to go with her. All that and the poor, poor chipmunks, screaming in her mind, echoing in her ears, and racing across her vision, injustices worldwide needed answering for, right here, right now.

When the swelling, painful noise stopped, the cosmetics salesperson is lying on the ground, her face beaten and swollen. Her make-up is smeared across her face, in her eyes, nose, and mouth. Jane looks at her hands and sees a menagerie of color: Sienna, Uptown Pink, Divine Wine, and Terracotta. Mixed throughout is a sticky red mud. She nearly becomes sick with realization as she dashes out of the building and inhales the clean, unspoiled air. Each breath brings salvation, but soon the illusion is broken with the wailing sounds of true justice closing in from a distance.

Jane wipes a tear from her eyes as she adjusts her head against the glass and metal of the bus. She can’t look at the flashes of humanity, or bear them looking at her. With the recollection, each new face, each quick glance, their eyes are increasingly accusing, maddeningly knowledgeable of her transgressions. Burrowing her head down, curling up into her protective ball, she closes her eyes and hopes the next time she opens them, everyone will be gone. She would be back in the safety of her room, forever trapped and safe. Only the humming of the engine stops her from believing her comfortable lie. The squeal of the wheels of the bus jerks her forward, forcing her to feel her surroundings, and the broken rhythm of feet on leathery plastic flooring pound away at her shell of protective oblivion.

As inspired by this photo by Scott James Prebble.

I hope it will suffice.