23 September 2012
She felt trapped but safe, which may seem like an odd combination until you realise that she was sitting in a bubble. She’d been in there for a few years now, her imaginary bubble from childhood having, one day actually appeared as real as day in front of her eyes. A lot of strange things happened that day; Imaginary friends had appeared along with castles, dragons, unexplored realms and a lot of puppies and ponies. It was named by the press ‘The Childhood Imagination Apparition Day’ A little uninspired maybe but hey. Anyway most of the dragons had now been ‘humanely controlled’ and the unexplored realms, explored. Yet her bubble was still there, her parents had taken her to countless doctors, psychiatrists and even the odd chiropractor to try and find out why her childhood imagination apparition had remained. None had the answer and all she had to show for it was two pill bottles, three exercises per day and an emergency helpline number.
The bubble glowed with her emotions, fear was a deep purple with green lightning shooting through it, love was a soft dappled pink and nausea was bright orange flowers, yellow spots and green swirls, which as you can imagine, didn’t help things. Another irritating side-effect was that she because known as ‘Bubble Girl’, and thus often confused with a particular, yet completely unrelated character in the 2001 comedy film of a similar name. There was one other major problem; humans had a tendency to bounce off her bubble, making her somewhat unpopular on the dance floor and frustrating her parents when they couldn’t take the TV remote from her when she was supposed to be doing her homework. Secretly she knew why her bubble was there- since ‘The Incident’ she felt like she couldn’t trust anyone but she was not ready to deal with that part of her past so when asked she just smiled and shrugged as her bubble turned a deceitful grey and black swirl she had somehow convinced people meant deep contemplation.
One day she met a boy, a special boy with shiny brown hair and dreamy green eyes. Her bubble turned a colour she’d never seen it turn before; Magenta. She suddenly realised that it was lust and her bubble gained pale pink swirls of embarrassment to top off the look. Needless to say, she ran leaving the boy more than slightly confused. Eventually she was able to control her emotions enough to be able to talk to the boy and found out he was called Matt. Over the following months, she and Matt got closer, until a miraculous thing happened. He was able to step into the bubble with her. The first time it scared her so much her bubble reacted by violently flinging Matt across the room into wall. A short trip to ‘A an E’ for broken ribs and they were back on track. She had learned to trust somebody and for a while everything was perfect: she and Matt went everywhere together, to the movies, dances, and parties and even the occasional shopping spree, once his arm was twisted of course. One evening they were sitting on a hill and thought they saw a shooting star until they realised it was actually a once-imaginary rocket finally crashing back to earth.
Ultimately, things turned sour, as young love has an unfortunate habit of doing. Things came to a head on melodrama day (a great day for love as everything was rose petals and moonlight dances, yet a very bad day for hate as people started running around in capes with guns and shovels yelling ‘Muahahaha’ at the tops of their voices)
Their little scene played out as so...
Matt turned to the girl and dramatically exclaimed that he loved another, Bubble Girl’s hand flew to her face as she screamed and fainted. Once revived she burst into floods of overacted tears and took half an hour to calm down. At this point Matt lunged at her and took her metaphorical heart from her chest, it looked alarmingly real with its lifelike beating and distressing oozing red blood and Bubble girl fainted yet again. I feel it important to note at this point that nothing actually got done on Melodrama day as everyone was far too busy fainting and performing dramatic soliloquies to themselves instead of getting on with it. Now, back to the story...
Matt waited around yet again for her to wake up and then all of a sudden gained a vampire-esque black cape and moustache as he hurled her heart to the floor and pretty much pranced out of the story. Predictably by now, Bubble girl flung herself to the floor and burst into tears. Hours later, when she recovered just about enough to pick up her heart. Weepy violin music played in the background as she, with her mascara stained face and white, once chastely cut but now revealingly torn dress, put her heart into a big old wooden chest and locked it away vowing to never let another in. Another dull yet lengthy dramatic monologue ensued focusing, unsurprisingly on the devilish nature of men and the world in general. The scene of course ended with thunder, lightning and Bubble girl, arms agape, screaming at the sky. Time passed, Melodrama day ended, ‘frolicking pixie day’ came and went without a single smile coming to her face. Even ‘Pigs do fly’ day didn’t heighten her mood, though with many people having to do the unpleasant tasks they had hereto managed to avoid, no-one was particularly happy that day. Her bubble had changed too; to the outside it looked an almost opaque black and now had steel like sheen. People didn’t bounce off it, as much as ricochet into space. Her friends started to avoid her and her family tried to keep out of her way. She was lonelier then ever but her stubborn nature made it impossible for her to take back the words she had said on that, horrifying, ghastly, fateful day.
Oops... must have been an echo from melodrama day- that happens sometimes, please excuse me for a moment.
***
There we are- all better now. Where was I? Ah yes...
Years went by (yes I know a lot of time elapses during this story but please bear with me) and she stayed in the bubble. By now she was the only person who still had their childhood imaginary apparition. TV people came and made a documentary about her and she visited many more shrinks, took many more pills and even went to see a lawyer because her parents thought that by now they should be able to sue somebody.
Eventually, despite her best efforts she started to heal, she got over Matt and as she healed her bubble became less steel-like and more like the bubble of old. People started rejoicing and praising the Lord (well it was hymn singing day but that’s not the point) and she herself underwent a radical transformation, she began to hope. She started believing there was life for her after Matt and ‘The Incident’, and previously unthinkable, the possibility of life without the bubble, I mean, crazier things had happened... take the “Pigs Do Fly’ day for example. She grew up, became a woman frustrated at the media’s determination to still name her ‘bubble girl’ and wrote a book (It was so awful that no publisher would read more than the first paragraph but at least she tried). She moved on with her life, living as normally as a woman trapped in a bubble could. She even got married and had kids, how I’m not exactly sure but she managed it. She even managed to come to terms with ‘the incident’- see it’s even lost its capital letters (and I know you’re wondering what ‘the incident’ was, me too if I’m honest- she always refused to tell).
Finally one day, as cats and dogs fell from the sky, her bubble disappeared. Unfortunately for her it was just as a huge and rather surprised Rottweiler plummeted towards her head. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
The moral of the story? Be wary- Life loves to kick you in the butt just when things are looking up. Oh and watch out for huge falling Rottweilers.
Bubble Girl (The Story) • Opuss № I