Matilda

If there were one word to describe Matilda, it would be "round." Almost everything about Matilda was quite round. From a distance, one could imagine a beach ball with skinny legs as she wobbled down the street. She would have a perfectly spherical head if it weren't for her jutting ears. Sporting a puffed hairstyle that came down to just below her ears, she managed to provide some cover and held that coiffure since third grade. No one who knew Matilda dared to mention her rabbit ears twice. Her sharp tongue shot back remarks striking a bull's-eye, bringing down the poor souls to levels of insecurity that rendered them speechless.

Matilda's first line of defense was her mouth. She vomited every thought that came through her mind without censorship, consideration or hesitation. Needless to say, Matilda did not have many friends. Actually, she had none. She did not care. She forged her way through forty years with the conviction that people who did not appreciate honesty had no place in her life. So she kept company with the written word. She read everything she could put her hands on and collected bits of information about almost anything. Matilda was a well-rounded individual, she thought of herself as knowledgeable and educated.

Her career choice helped little to improve her social skills. A lab technician in a fertility clinic, she spent her days alone in the cold sterile environment and fiddled with tubes and specimens away from patients and coworkers. She went home to nine cats and a house full of ferns. Matilda bought the house when she proposed to Thomas, the shy accountant who looked after the clinic's finances. He was the only man who dared a conversation with her.

Five months later, Thomas, her Tommy, walked out of that house two weeks before their wedding day. Matilda did not wonder where he went. She knew for sure he was in Hell. She sent him there herself the day he yanked the front door open and told her he could take her criticizing tongue no longer.

"Go to Hell," she commanded.

Matilda watched him march out. He started to cross the street but he never made it to the other side. Her Tommy lay broken in a pool of blood in front of the wheels of a truck. He did not die. She knew he wished he had. He told her that every morning when she walked into his hospital room and fussed over his damaged body, chatting away with one medical fact or another she had read somewhere.

It turned out; Matilda's Tommy was indeed in Hell. She read that with her own eyes in his journal, which he foolishly thought he could keep it hidden. Matilda did not believe in secrets, so she found a way into his locked desk drawer. His admission did not matter to her one bit. Her Tommy will remain hers forever. But she found something else in Tommy's journal, something that finally tied her tongue.

This is a short story in the making. If you would like to be involved in how the story of Matilda unfolds, send me your ideas about the following:

- What did Matilda find in his journal?

- What kind of character is Thomas?

Be creative and let's have some fun!