The Jabberwock

Pandora no longer saw her bright pink sprinkled birthday cake as a bright pink sprinkled birthday cake. Each bite was a slice of sin. Each time she sank her teeth into the nonpareils, her stomach dropped down to her toes. Her birthday marked the 1-year anniversary of losing “Ange de L’arbre de Noël 92”, the biggest ballet competition of her young life, where she placed 8th overall. Though her mother tended to talk of those French judges as if they were stuck up and completely insane, Pandora knew as much as anyone that there was little hope for her in the upcoming years.

“Won’t you blow out your candles, Pandora?” her mother had said with a perfervid tone.

“I’m stuck making a wish, give me five more minutes”, she responded, pushing her mother’s hands off of her shoulders.

“In five minutes, the one will be all burnt out, you wouldn’t like to be turning zero, no, would you?” Her mother replied with the same joyful tone as before, as if she didn’t see the anguish within Pandora’s smile. Pandora held her hands together tightly, as if all of her hope lay within the crate she made with her fingers. She thought to herself that wishing was never this hard a couple of years ago, when she still had a winning face. Now everything she wanted stuck to her brain like a tack, filling up her mind with desires that would need a thousand candles to grant. 

She knew she sounded. 

Pandora reached inside of her bag, lined with roseate ribbons and tiny girls with tutus. Inside lay 17 magazines, the ones Mieux Square had handed out to passersby. 

Three weeks before her birthday, Pandora made her way to Mieux Square alone. The area was filled with a barrage of ads, newspaper headlines, and buses with posters stuck to the outside. She walked straight to a light blue domicile stuck in the middle of the crowded town. They handed out small magazines of women that seemed as if they had a much higher chance of winning “Ange de L’arbre de Noël 92” than she ever did. They all sported light blonde hair that cascaded down their gaunt cheeks, with collar bones popping out of their chest, and almost never not smiling.  

It was only 2 years ago when they looked a lot more like Pandora herself. At that point, she would enter the Mieux with her head held high, so vainglorious that her rare losses in competitions were like water off a duck’s back.  Things have greatly changed since then, not the way of the world, but more so the way Pandora fit into it. Her mother lost her job as a flight attendant and became something much less demanding, a mortician. Worst of all, Pandora herself lost her chance to become a great ballerina, a profession deemed by most to be a visual job, at the age of 9. Now, she was ugly, talentless, and ten. 

“Pandora, honey, the frosting melting”, her mother said in such a honey-suckle tone that it made Pandora bitter.

“Fine, fine, I’ll make my wish, I just have a lot of things to ask for,” Pandora said, she talked all tough through the gap in her teeth, she didn’t understand how her mother was seemingly so secure even after she had been traded out for a newer, prettier model.

She didn’t understand how this was any time for cake, or pleasantries, or anything but unbridled animosity. Pandora was lost, things had changed on her the way Algific Lake gets trampled by the spring’s sun. Things had changed for her mother; the same,  it just seemed like Pandora was the only one who stood on the lake, adrift, as she fell through the cracking ice into the piquant waters. Desperate for the time she had remembered, for six more weeks of winter, but everyone moved on.  Pandora wanted to fly; she wanted her legs, thin or thick, to float through the air and spin through the illuminations that would warm her biscuit tan face. Her hold on passion had slipped out her meaty hands like the blade from a killer’s grip. 

The smoke swept through the air, and the half-melted candle wax drizzled like another layer of icing. Her mother began to cut up eight slices, one extra big for the birthday girl, but Pandora denies it.  She grabs a light crimson bag, bedazzled with warm-toned pearls and a couple of her ballet awards and badges. Just the ones that judges didn’t bother to take away. 

“I need to head to Miuex, I gotta get a gift card that runs out today” Pandora said with half her foot already leading her out the door.

“Well, come back quickly. I set up a couple party games for us” her mother said ambivalently, letting her go. 

“Yeah I will, give me like half an hour” Pandora said as the door of her house fell shut. 

Miuex was only 8 minutes (or less) away from everyone. It had grown to colossal sizes in the last decade, filling up  a significant amount of the town.  It was a bit of its own tourist attraction, constantly striving to be relevant and promoting upcoming trends.

In the town square, she saw a short woman with her hands full of papers and her eyes full of tears. The woman bit her lower lip and gave a great sigh. It was her peers mother, Ms. Torres, getting fired from her job as a teacher. A teacher had been the newest visual job as announced by the board last Sunday. It was impressive that Ms. Torres, having dark brown skin and short black hair, lasted as long as Monday. When it came to ballet, Pandora didn’t stay winning competitions an hour after the standard began to switch. 

 The biggest billboard changed by the hour, when Pandora stumbled by it, it had a woman pulling on the band of her jeans to show just how much weight she has lost with the help of the only spot in Mieux Pandora has never seen someone come out of.  The “4 the better” clinic. That light blue oasis located in the ardent lights that reflected off each advertising that surrounded Miuex. She had pulled her falling bag strap on her bulky shoulders and crested at the waist to duck her head in the door.  

Inside, she saw a box made out of plexiglass mirrors with roses bloomed out of the apparent cracks in them. A tall, lanky woman sat down at the counter. Her back curved as if it was to offset how straight each line was in the building. She held a cigarette in one hand, its tip glowing faintly in the midst of the ash. She tapped it on the side of the desk and read a magazine. She looked uniquely fragile,  with her ripped tights, shorts and a large grey t-shirt. 

“What’s the deal with you?” She said, in a breathy voice that seemed separate from her chords. 

“I saw the ad, the one that was up a second ago. I’m interested” Pandora sounded meeker than ever, tilting her head to her toes. 

She wore a smock of jealousy whenever she saw a girl that seemed as if they had a better chance of pursuing her passion than Pandora did herself. When they fit the current standard, a part of Pandora’s brain was given to them, categorizing them, sorting them.

“Yeah, that one’s good. Stella made it. She’s in the wheel right now if you wanna thank her.” Her voice was still dismembered but the spunky and slightly dry personality you assumed she would have came through. 

“I will, I’ll make sure of it. Can I sign up for a membership here?”, Pandora asked, reaching her hands to the top of the counter.

“Well, maybe try to figure out whatever it is that will sell first. I wouldn’t be so trusting,, The secretary told Pandora, never looking her straight in the eye as if she didn’t want to feel empathy.

“Right, I won’t be,”  Pandora said. Her eyes didn’t once look up from the cold titles lined with pink caulk and glazed over with shining resin. They walked into a bright white room where everyone’s backs were turned down to the floor. In that room, the sound of metal screeching played over and over like a record skip. There was no music, or support or even workout tapes telling you when and how to move. Instead, the room was bitter and chilling with 5 human-sized hamster wheels set in a row.

“This is where you’ll start. It’s where everyone starts.” Her voice never connected with her. Everything she said was beside herself,no matter how much feeling she forced into it. Pandora simply nodded her head, looking at the blistering feet of those dashing inside of those metal circles. 

“It’s kinda how you prove yourself. In fraternities, they make you run naked around campus or something, but here you just run on these wheels for around 5 hours”, the woman said, fixing up her nail beds.

“5 hours is a lot, no?” , Pandora asked with her hands placed on her chin in confusion. 

“Sure, it’s a struggle, but after hour 3 it gets fun, or at least numb”, the desk woman said with the word numb echoing through Pandora’s head. I need to start feeling numb,  she thought, like every issue isn’t a gash in my temples but instead a papercut to my palm. 

They walked over to a cafe looking room, eerily devoid of people genuinely eating anything. A slightly chubby Asian woman rubbed her hands together, letting her palms make that sound of the water hitting the sand. She acted on the advisory  board,  like someone told her it was much better to space out half the time than to care about everything around her. In fact, no one seemed concerned or curious. They all had various tics, like rolling their knuckles down to their wrist or ripping scraps of newspaper into perfect squares. 

“Are they alright?”, Pandora said. 

In the crowd of women doing small things to keep busy, she saw her aunt. Her aunt had the most impressively long curly auburn hair. Her eyes pointed up at the ends and her hips stood out from her legs.

Before the standard was changed, she adorned all of Mieux, each corner was extensively covered with the prettiest face. Now she lay on the table, pulling her fingers until they cracked. 

“They’ll be ok. After the wheel – oh, and the tape – they just forget how to do anything that would harm them. Don’t they look peaceful?”, the desk woman responded. 

“I think that’s my aunty”, Pandora said, advancing to the auburn-haired woman. The desk woman pulled her back and patted her on the shoulder. Her hand was so light and airy it might as well have been a specter. 

“Don’t talk to her! She’s only been behaving for a week, god, she used to be so defiant.” The desk woman said, shocked that Pandora would suggest such a thing.

“What do you mean defiant?” Pandora asked.

“Oh yes. Our little selling point is the tape. It’s a persuasive little device used to promote the job standard. Right now, it says little helpful points on how to get a bit skinnier, how to lighten your hair and skin, how to look like you just cried, and a couple of other things,” The desk woman said like an ethereal infomercial. 

“My aunt didn’t want to listen to it?” Pandora asked.

The desk woman nodded her head slowly and let her hair hang down.

“Well, her modeling agency sent her over here,” The desk woman said, using all the might in her frail hand to turn Pandora around.

A small note is shown on the TV that is mounted up top of the front desk.

It reads: A new visual job has been created, and geneticists must now be well adapted to the current version of beauty. If not, there is an infinitely higher chance of getting replaced. The desk woman wrote that down on her yellowish notepad. She pushed it into her front shirt pocket and turned Pandora around again after she had gone to look at her weak and feeble aunt.

“The tapes are only 10 dollars,” the desk woman said, “Extremely affordable for the results you’ll gain”. 

Pandora just nodded as she saw her aunt’s sunken eyes fill her brain like a white-capped wave moistening the sand. Pandora had forgotten their sort of unspoken motto to be calm and collected about everything. She hadn’t learned the trade secret to being ok when only judged on your appearance; she succumbed to it, but she was left out of the group understanding that it should not faze you. 

Her aunt was dazed and unmoving like everyone else, but she stood out like a tombstone in a playground. Pandora supposed it was because she had seen her so alive that now she was at the clinic, she seemed phantasmal. 

“Does the TV tell you of every visual job, every time they are released?” Pandora asked.

“No, with the rate they’re produced, the whole screen would blow out. Just the big time jobs, the broader the category the better,” The desk woman answered. 

Pandora responded with a slight murmur as if it dawned on her.  She sat down on the rose-filled bench and watched the screen for some time. The desk woman sat down next to her like it was a screening for her favorite movie. “New visual job”,  the screen read, “Another visual job”. It seemed like after one announcement began another was budding. Pandora looked in astonishment; the cruel message always came with a soft twinkling sound effect. It felt gruesome as each time they flashed on the screen, a red-eyed zombie-looking woman marched in and waited in line letting the TV potentiate their thoughts. 

“You’ve let me waste so much time off my feet,, the desk woman said.

Pandora nodded and slid all the money from her bag.

“May I have a tape?”She asked the woman with her eyes all wide.

“Oh, yes. Let me fetch one for you.” She said, running towards a baby blue door with an employee’s only sign on it. The cursive took Pandora much too long to read. 

Pandora lifted her head off of her chest and soiled shoes. She found herself yearning for her exuberant, iridescent aunt. The one that sat down like a half-dead ragdoll, stuck listening to a tape over and over.  She had made her decision to be as childish as a child should be. 

Pandora ran her mud prints all over the spotted tile and then the carpeted, easy-staining material of the cafeteria floor.  She goes up to her aunt and waves her hands to her face. Her aunt didn’t give her the time of day. Pandora then grabbed the tape and jumped on it. Vigorously, up and down like a big, harrowing muddy puddle. 

Her aunt stared at her then hugged her like she was cradling a baby, she didn’t say a word and Pandora wasn’t so sure she could.

Then Pandora took her, now thinned out, hand into her soft and warm finger and ran as fast as she could towards the door. Running out Pandora looked at the 100’s of women who picked the dead skin off their lips instead of eating a meal. She saw them, and her hopes to be them were wiped out of her brain. 

Things will come back around, She thought, Maybe next year I’ll win…

She ran all the way to that front desk, the tv screen lit up with a new announcement, “New visual job : Mortician”.

Pandora saw that and her lip quivered as she ran until the door flapped after them. They were out of the clinic, but still in Mieux.  Surrounded by ads of skinny girls, pale girls, and winning girls that she wanted to be. In the clinic, every girl was a lifeless shucked body, bumbling around wishing for more. 

In the square, every pretty girl that decked the walls was smiling, dancing, laughing, and cheering for football games. 

Pandora was blind to which reality could be true, so she sunk into her thighs and sobbed out brackish tears on the steps of the clinic’s stairs. 

She wished that all those tears she shed would make her 10 lbs thinner.