WORK IN PROGRESS | FICTION

A Character Named Sophie

An unfinished (short) story

By Mighty.Beautiful Art Studio

My dad left my mom for a prostitute when I was seven. That’s true; I didn’t make that up. Why would I? It’s what happened, as far as I know. As far as I’ve been able to piece it all together. It doesn’t matter so much to me if it’s true or not, if it’s the whole story or not. Nothing will ever be the whole story. All you need to know is that people do horrible things to each other, even to their sons and daughters and wives. It doesn’t make them horrible, not necessarily. Just flawed. We are all so flawed. 

I guess it turns out that my dad never wanted to be married. I think he got married so that he could have kids, but then it turned out that kids weren’t all that amazing, either. We don’t talk much, the two of us, but I’m guessing he’s pretty disappointed by how that whole thing worked out. I’m guessing both of them are. My mom definitely was. She cried all the time growing up and I never knew why. Not until I found out about the prostitute thing. I was 14 and I snooped into some legal documents.

Where does a kid — a seven-year-old girl, a 14-year-old girl — go from there? Dark places, that’s where. Nowhere, that’s where. Dark places in the middle of nowhere. 

Maybe that’s why I love the night sky so much.

I was too much of a geek for prostitution myself, forever uncomfortable in my own skin and too awkward to really be wanted. Prostitution just wouldn’t have worked out. I got the hell away from Dodge, instead. That’s the name of the town I grew up in — Dodge, Michigan. You can look it up, if you want. And if you don’t find it on the Internet, that’s because I made it up. I’m made up, after all. Someone else’s character, that’s all I am. That’s all I want to be. 

Being real would just be too hard.

I went to college. I never knew what I wanted to study, so I studied everything. I guess my creator just couldn’t decide, or didn’t think it was important to my story arc, or maybe the point of it wasn’t what I tried, just that I tried. And I tried a lot of things. Archeology. Journalism. Photography. Philosophy. Spanish. Statistics. Biology. Chemistry. Anthropology. Art. Sociology. Psychology. In the end, I didn’t choose any of them. I just chose the fastest way out. 

I followed a friend to Texas. 

I don’t think leaving is in my genes. If we’re going to get into a nature vs. nurture argument about it, I think it’s definitely more nurture. My dad never lived more than 40 minutes away from his parents and their farmhouse, lives there still even though they passed away 20 years ago, and my mom was always near her parents, too, as far as I know, she lives in their old house now, has somehow taken their place and stepped fully into their shoes. Family. But I left, and my brother left, and my grandparents all left and now it’s just the two of them, my mom and my dad, separate but there. 

I haven’t even introduced myself, and I bet you think you know something about me already, but you really don’t. I doubt you ever will. People don’t take the time for that kind of thing anymore, and even if you did, I don’t even know that you ever really can. Know someone, I mean. I’ve tried to get to know people, to really know how they think and what they think and why, but it never seems to work out. There’s always some barrier. What is it that keeps one mind from entering another?

My name is Sea, like the ocean. It’s short for Sophie, but don’t tell anyone that. I don’t want anyone calling me Sophie. I’m done with that. It’s Sea, which I like, because I like to explore and the Sea is crying to be explored. But some people call me Cat, because C is for Cat and I’m a lot like a cat in some ways, curious and cautious. I’m a lot like a dog, too, and a horse, and a bunch of other things, but people forget that sometimes or just focus on the C is for Cat business, and I roll with it because nobody wants to talk about anything other than the weather. It’s been really nice here lately, 70 degrees and sunny in January. 

Anyway. Right now, I’m homeless and I’m jobless and I really don’t know what to do with myself so I’m just kind of trying to wing it and hope that things turn themselves around, that someday I’ll wake up in a brighter place in the middle of somewhere, doing something somewhat important with someone who doesn’t want to get married but won’t leave me for a prostitute, or for anyone, because I really don’t have a problem with prostitutes, necessarily. I don’t want you thinking that. 

Every day, I have this overwhelming feeling that my author gave up on me. That she thought my story would be interesting, but then it didn’t go anywhere and she just couldn’t figure out how to make it go somewhere and I’ve been abandoned, left to my own devices. I truly hope she’s not waiting for me to do something because I want a happy ending, and I don’t know if I’m going to get it left on my own. Not that I’m not an independent woman. I’m totally an independent woman, or I was. But just that I’m an independent woman who is better at making a mess of something than making something. And I’m pretty good at making things, so you know I must be great at making a mess of things. I’m the best at it.

I know that in a way, I’m a part of her and she’s a part of me and maybe I’m so good at making messes because she’s so good at making messes. I know I’m not real and that I don’t have a soul, but I kind of think of her as my soul, or maybe I’m her soul. I’m not really sure which is which, if souls are real or if they are just something she wrote about a lot when she was trying to plot my story, which she’s started and changed about 1,000 times, you see. It’s all very confusing and maybe that’s why I’m homeless and jobless right now, lost without a plan. How can I have a plan when I don’t even know what genre I’m in? Is this science fiction, fantasy, murder mystery, a coming of age tale, women’s lit? She can’t seem to make up her mind.

I have no idea what her name is. She uses many names when she writes. I don’t know if she’s embarrassed or just wants the anonymity, or whether she’s shy and insecure or just wants to be someone else. But I call her Andi, because all of her stories always have a character or setting named Andi or Andy or Andrew or Andrea or Andromeda in it, whether it’s a he or a she, a dog or a cat, a person or a monster or a town or a constellation. One time it was every character, Andi and Andy and Andrew and Drew and Andrea and Mandy and Sandy and Wanda and it was all about identity and belonging and connectedness and finding yourself in others. But she scrapped that story just like all the others because it just wasn’t working. Still, I call her Andi because “and-” is always a constant. It’s the one thing I can count on any time she sits down to write, that there will be an “And-.“ I figure it must mean something to her or be someone to her, something that is more important to her than her name that she changes and changes and changes. 

My name changes all the time, too. Sometimes she calls me Mandy, or Cara, or Lacy or Hope or Renee or Emma or Olivia. One time, I was a man and she named me Kyle. The names are always different, but I’m always the same, basically. I’m her main character. 

I just don’t know why. 

I’ll have another beer, though. Just one more.  It’s been a long day and I’ve got a lot to do, but I don’t have any plans, so… why not? I probably won’t exist tomorrow, anyway.