Unfortunatly Untitled
It wasn’t a paralyzing fear, or one that sent her into throes of panic. Annie was quite ashamed, she felt positively silly. What person in her right mind was afraid of something so simple? Sure, being afraid of the dark, that’s one thing. There could be monsters or really big men waiting in the dark to beat you up and steal your money. Water, you could drown in water. Spiders could bite you and cause some serious harm; standing in front of a crowd sometimes results in serious ridicule. Even claustrophobia made sense; you could stop breathing if you were in an enclosed space too long.
But what the hell could a button do? A simple shirt button, four holes, nothing big at all, what’s the harm in that? Sure, you could choke on a button, but she had never swallowed one, not even when she was little. Her mother told her that even when she was small, she would wiggle away whenever someone wearing a dress shirt would try to hold her. She never even knew someone who had died from a button-related accident! She sighed deeply as she looked at the dress code for her newest job. She though she could survive, just a hostess at Outback. She knew she would have to look nice, and she had dozens of nice shirts and dresses. But no, they specifically stated "button-up shirt, a knee-length skirt or dress slacks."
She hadn’t applied at the movie theater downtown, even though several of her friends worked there. She had told them that it didn’t pay enough, that she needed more than minimum wage, which was the truth. She was the fourth child in her family to go to college, and her father was close to tapped out. But the real reason she hadn't taken the job was that the official shirts had four buttons on the collar. She sucked on the knuckle of her pointer finger, nervously pondering what she was going to do. Her mother had taken her shopping, and though she protested, she had given in. She glanced over to the bag they had brought home-- full of simple, crisp, white shirts. She had brought it in and dumped it on her floor, in the furthest corner, behind her dresser where she rarely looked.
Annie had to try them on, had to get used to them on her own turf. Five minutes here, ten minutes there. Soon, she may be up to a half an hour, but she only had three days to practice. Closing her eyes, she reached into the bag, pulling out the first shirt that touched her stretching fingers. She withdrew the plastic package and tore it open quickly. "It’s like a Band-Aid" she murmured to herself. "Just do it quick..."
She pulled out the starched white cloth. Shaking it the way she had seen others do, she looked at the simple white pieces of plastic that held the front together. They didn’t seem so bad, no big deal really. But they were buttoned. Sweeping aside the assorted clothing on her bed, she laid it out flat, smoothing the edges. Steeling herself for the inevitable, she ran her fingers over the unadorned circles. Shivers ran up her spine as the coldness mixed with her warm skin. Taking a deep breath, she flexed her fingers and reached for the collar. "Maybe..." she pondered aloud, "if I could only undo the top few, possibly, I could slip it over my head that way." Deciding it was the best course of action, she began to work the button through the hole. That was when she realized that she didn’t know how to work a button.
"It’s got to be simple, you just push it through the hole, isn’t that the way it goes?" She struggled, pulling harder at the thread until it snapped, the button flying across the room. Screaming in disgust, she threw the shirt onto the bed. "Now where is that damn thing?" She laughed slightly at the thought of her, searching out a button. She laughed at the thought of someone watching her.
It would be a man, wearing a dark hat that shielded his eyes just right, and he would have a double-breasted suite, the kind with two rows of large, black buttons down the front. He would slip his hands in his pockets and stare at her, with her full, brown hair falling in her eyes as she practically stood on her head to look under the dresser. He would laugh when she reached under the nightstand and withdrew her hand quickly as she slammed her finger into a box she had shoved under there. The man would let a sly smile spread across his face as she broke her search to find a Band-Aid to cover the broken nail that had started bleeding. Perhaps he would walk slowly behind her as she paced, trying to mathematically calculate the trajectory of the rogue button.
Crawling on her hands and knees throughout the floor, tongue sticking out of her mouth, trying to look in every crevice for that cursed thing. She accidentally turned over an end table trying to look under the dust ruffle. She picked up every piece of clothing that lay around in her floor, shaking it and discarding it to whatever corner she had the yearning to fling them to. Muttering under her breath steadily, she looked under the furniture. She lifted the covers on the bed, searched her dresser among the bottles of makeup and nail polish, dug through the random piles of clothing which were scattered on the floor after she had searched them once. She even threw every pair of shoes from the floor of her closet, despite the fact that the door was closed when the button went rogue.
"Dammit! There’s only so many places a button can go!" Digging her fingers into her hair, pressing her nails into her scalp, she let out a frustrated scream. She sat, in the floor, rocking back and forth until there was a soft knock at the door. "Annie? Sweetie? Can I come in?"
"Sure, if you want." Annie wiped her tearing eyes, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice.
"Are you okay?" Her mother glanced around the room and then noticed the shirt, which had become hung on the corner of the bedpost. "Oh, you were trying on your new clothes?"
"Yeah, only now I’ve lost a button. It’s hanging around my room somewhere waiting to jump out at me, I know it. I’m going to get up at three in the morning and step on it. I’ll hurt myself, and then I’ll fall over and hit my head and die. It’s a vast conspiracy." Annie laughed along with her mother, taking her hand to stand up. "Mom, is this job really worth this?"
"Well, Hon, that’s up to you. It’s a job or a life of fear, you know. You have to make a choice."
"Oh, is that it? Life of fear I guess. That definitely makes sense."
"If you say so sweetheart. Oh," she reached down, picking up something from the middle of the floor, "Is this what you were looking for?"
Annie only glared as her mother placed the button on her desk, as the sun went down quickly leaving the room in darkness.
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