Short Story | Under Oceans Boulevard

 Gloriana Cocci is the spiritual healer off of Carver Street and Oceans Boulevard. I heard of her through my mother's friend who saw my troubles and felt for me, handing me off to her best doctor. I arrived at her doorstep—a stripped door held open by an ordinary large stone—and she greeted me with a faint smile and a burning gaze. Her jewelry was gold and her teeth were slightly yellowed from whatever she usually smoked. The walls were tainted from both that and her incense, which made the room feel heavy.

I told her my name, she told me hers to which I replied,

"I know,"

All she gave me was a look, not quite aggressive but still intense.

"What troubles you?"

All I could offer was silence. I stared at the Persian rug, my hands feeling heavy in my lap. I felt a shrug without moving, a beat of silence offering itself as a buffer between me and the tumultuous crowds of insincerity. 

"Nothing." I finally replied. "I'm restless, my mother says. And my father notices that I cry too often about things that don't matter."

Gloriana Cocci didn't nod or hum in acknowledgment. She stared at me.

"What do you want?" She asked, but in the way that felt like she was asking me several other different questions that usually would make my head spin. I tapped against the stretched leather of the chair, making myself smaller so that the words that would come out wouldn't hurt the present.

"Want?"

"Yes, want."

"Not having what I want doesn't trouble me. I just feel... irregular."

"Do you want to feel regular?"

"I want to know how to live my own life without constantly worrying about the other lives that I live in my head."

She tilted her head, sort of in the way that felt like she was picking at my skin, like trying to find the loose end.

"You want to be alone."

I groaned in frustration, then immediately feeling guilty in expressing my restlessness outwardly towards her. "I want to live one life."

She let out a sharp laugh, her eyes not moving from mine. She looks deep into my character, her figurative fingers finding each fold of my brain and gripping on, pulling and prodding with only her stare.

"You're sixteen, what do you know about life?"