Glasswheel

By May Ville

A story about epilepsy, friendship, imagination, and Angels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326474089

Book preview

Glasswheel

GLASSWHEEL

____________

by Mayville Finnstrom, 2008.

A Story About Epilepsy, Loss, Death, Friendship, Imagination, And Angels.

CHAPTER 1

__________

"On the field of carnage

Where I lay

Broken and crushed.

Did I die a

Warrior's death?

Is there even

Such a thing

Anymore?

I see my valkyr

Gliding down.

Sunlight on her

Wings.

Promises of

Better things."

Mayville woke up late, which was totally out of character for her. Normally she woke up at 3:59 AM literally on the minute. It was a truly strange phenomenon, which had led to a sort of comedy ritual between her and the alarm clock, which she set for 4:00 AM. She would wake up one minute before the alarm clock and feel triumphant as it beeped forlornly, second place in the wake-up race again.

But today she woke up at almost 4:40 AM, and felt genuinely worried that this might be a health problem, causing her to oversleep to such a huge extent. She glanced over at the alarm clock again, and couldn't help feeling it was regarding her with an expression of supreme smugness. Not only had it awoken before her by forty minutes, but the cheerful victory beeps had even failed to raise her from slumber.

There had to be something wrong with her, she fretted, as she showered fast and tugged on her work clothes. She always wore black, everything. Black underclothes and black smart office gear, finished with mirror-shiny black button-down shoes. She was one of those people who dressed inexpensively but who would sooner die than look her neatest and sharpest.

She took the time, just a few moments, to stand by her window and look at the small window-box with bluebells growing in it. Bluebells had always been her favourite flower, for their colour and shape, and that they signified the arrival of Spring. Winters really made her even more ill than usual, and she always greeted the first bluebells with an Olympic goldmedal euphoria that bordered on delirium. She also loved the word 'bluebell' itself, for some reason it seemed such a semantically crisp and elegant word. Beyond the happy bluebells she could see the city skyline, at this height mainly other tower blocks, still dark now at this time of morning but slowly being touched by a lilac and amber glow from the horizon.

Mayville liked living in high-rise tower blocks, partly for the unobstructed view of the stars and moon set against inky blue sky on clear nights. Partly too, because she had really hated the one ground-level house she had rented, on a terraced street here in the city. That terraced street had a permanent orchestra of car-alarms, set off by cats usually and often ignored for hours by the car owners. Mayville did not drive, but she would hate to inconvenience other people by leaving a car-alarm screeching for hours. The car-alarms on that street had annoyed Mayville to the point of borderline psychotic bloodlust, with their relentless air-raid siren effect.

She shrugged, packed her little black work-bag, and hurried out of her flat.

See Mayville, as she hurries down eight flights of stairs from her flat, which was quicker than waiting for the ancient clanking lift. She is radiating genuine shame at being late for work, her long black hair tied into a tight ponytail, the same way it had been since primary school. She is thirty-five years of age, and has worked in the same office since leaving technical college with high marks in the subjects Psychology and Japanese. She had hoped to move to Tokyo and somehow find a niche there with her peculiar 'gift' as her mother called it, but instead she had become a junior office worker in a stationery company. And while she actually loved pencils and pens and rulers, because in a strange way she found them comforting, the joke she had said at the start of the job that her life was now 'stationary' was not funny any longer. Not funny at all.

She made it to the bus-stop just as her bus pulled in, which was a mercy. Sitting near the front as usual, she opened her cherished fifteen minutes bus-ride time like an ornately decorated Easter Egg. Bus-journey time was her only real free time for mind-wandering. Today, after the unsettling morning shock of waking up late, she chose to ponder her life situation. This was something she generally avoided doing.

Mayville was born in Stockholm, to a real Angel of a mother with blonde hair the colour of cornfields in the summertime, and deep blue eyes which glittered in a way that seemed too celestial for this tainted Earth. Mayville's father was a Thai doctor known to everyone as Nobu. Her mother had met Nobu on a holiday to Bangkok. It had been very daring for a single lady to travel across Asia alone in those days, but Mayville's mother was made of granite and was equally stubborn.

Nobu had been disco-dancing very badly in front of big crackly speakers in some fashionable Bangkok bar, and Mayville's mother had been instantly and hopelessly smitten. As the last notes of Staying Alive ebbed away, and Nobu performed another courageous but amateurish twirl, Mayville's mother grabbed his arm, pulled him forcefully to the bar and proceeded to drink him under it. The two of them travelled back to Stockholm together, and married within a month.

Mayville's mother, whose name was Anita, had said that Nobu was the most gentle human being she had ever met. Mayville's own memories of her father were of a small humble man, with a doctor's caring manner and two huge eyes you could drown in.

Mayville had