Lillian Heckler Portfolio

december 9, 2023

1

Все меняется, ничто не исчезает

Everything Changes, Nothing Disappears

Abigail did not sleep last night. Her eyes feel dry because they were open for too long. Her head pulses. The alarm on her phone goes off at 6:15 AM, and she gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom. The lights hurt her eyes. She brushes her teeth and stares at her reflection in the mirror. She spots a massive pimple on her forehead. She stares at it long and hard and wills it to go away. It does not go away. 

Abigail feels too warm while brushing her hair. The knots at the nape of her neck get stuck, and she rips through layers of hair to break the brush free. It is 7 AM, and she has half an hour to get to Scholastic. She walks into the kitchen and scoops a cup of Honey O’s into a bowl that is probably clean but not certainly. She puts whole-fat soy milk into the bowl. The whole-fat soy milk smells sour. She looks at the bowl and thinks about how her expired milk ruined her breakfast. She puts the cereal and the milk away. She collects her things and starts to leave the apartment. 

“Today is a great day to have a great day,” Stacie says from the couch.

“Fuck you,” Abigail says. She shuts the door. She walks down four flights of stairs. She feels warm when she steps outside. The sun is bright, and her sweater is too thick. The sweater has a tag that itches the back of her neck. 

She goes to the subway entrance and walks down the stairs. There is no police officer in the security booth, so she jumps the bars. She holds a neutral expression. She does not look suspicious. 

The train closes its doors as she approaches the platform. She curses under her breath. “What the fuck,” she says. The digital sign hanging from the wall states that the next train will come in fifteen minutes. She has fifteen minutes to get to Scholastic. She texts her boss and apologizes that she will be late. 

I missed the train, and I have to walk now. I will be late. So sorry if this interferes with your schedule.

Abigail walks back up the street and feels warm in the sun while she is walking. She starts to get sweaty. Abigail does not like being sweaty. She walks as fast as she can without becoming more sweaty. She stares forward with an unassuming expression. 

She walks past the park and stops short when she sees him. Leon stands in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Abigail. His standing bothers her. He holds his hands away from his body with the palms facing up and looks surprised. She resists the impulse to high-five him.

“What are you doing here,” Leon says.

“I am going to work. I am late,” Abigail says, “Please move.” Leon’s eye twitches, and then his face goes blank. 

“Can we talk about last night,” Leon says.

“We cannot,” Abigail says. She walks past him and brushes his shoulder. Abigail does not cry. She does not feel sad, but she does not feel happy. She feels like she wasted her time. She wants to punch Leon. She wants to break a plate.

Abigail walks the rest of the way to Scholastic. She is thirteen minutes late. She sits down at her desk. She is a little sweaty. She does not like that. Abigail wipes her arms off with an antibacterial wipe and then opens her laptop. She answers emails and prints out papers for her boss. She schedules an appointment. She scrolls on her phone for a few minutes. She goes home after five hours at work. 

Abigail opens the refrigerator after she returns to her apartment. Her leftovers from the organic vegan restaurant she went to on Tuesday night are no longer on the third shelf. She turns toward her roommate with a blank expression.

“You ate my leftovers from the organic vegan place,” Abigail says, “I wanted those. I was going to eat those now,”

“I didn’t know they were yours. We went to that restaurant together. Organic vegan dishes look similar,” Stacie says. She grabs her wallet from her back pocket and pulls out a bill. 

“Don’t pay me. Just don’t eat my leftovers,” Abigail says. Stacie puts her wallet away, and Abigail goes into her room. She closes the door and lies on her bed. She stares at the ceiling. She looks at the picture of Leon on her desk. Abigail cries for a little bit and then goes to sleep.

2

Век живи, век учись (а дураком помрешь)

Live and Learn (and Die a Fool Anyways)

Phillip is a scholar. He is a scholar with nice hair and two ex-wives. He graduated from Harvard in 1985 and frequently mentions it in conversation. His first internship was on Wall Street doing God knows what for some probably immoral corporation, which he also frequently mentions in conversation. 

Phillip learned how to sail when he was seven years old. He built his own boat at twelve. He patented a pair of extra-strength grippy shoes at fourteen so he would not fall off of the deck of his boat. He got bored of sailing at fifteen.

Phillip can speak three languages fluently and is learning a fourth (Xhosa). He travels frequently but wants to travel more. He has seen the mountains in Peru and the waters in Palawan. He never books stays at hotels or resorts. He rents an Airbnb in the center of each city he travels to. He leaves after a few weeks and feels more cultured. 

Phillip owns an extensive collection of classic books. He likes to sit in the room and look at their leather spines. He has read a portion of them but refuses to admit how large that portion is. He diverts the conversation by talking about that time in his twenties when he was on the rugby team at Harvard. 

Phillip likes to tell people that he was a professor in a past life. He believes that his thirst for knowledge is unlike that of anyone else. He self-identifies as “curious.” 

Phillip is probably a narcissist but he does not believe in psychologists. He is probably a republican but he does not believe in voting. 

Phillip is commuting to his high-brow job in the Financial District on a Wednesday morning. There is nothing notably different about this morning. He woke up at five o’clock and felt confident and prepared for his meetings. He showered and drank his coffee and read the newspaper. He scoffed at an opinion piece more than once while he ate a dry slice of toast, crumbs raining onto his charcoal grey tie. He left on time and now walks into the subway station at the intersection of Spring Street and Lafayette Street.

Phillip descends the stairs carefully, limiting the number of creases kneaded into his leather dress shoes. He avoids eye contact with the homeless man by the MTA booth who shakes a cup in his general direction. He uses his monthly unlimited MetroCard to pay for his train fare. He chooses not to think about the change that jingles in the pocket of his wool coat, the change that he easily could have spared. 

He watches out of the corner of his eye to see if anyone stops to help the man. He feels much better about himself when he spots four people passing by, just like he did. Phillip enjoys fitting in.

He continues viewing the station through his periphery, no longer paying attention to where his feet lead him. Phillip has walked down this corridor more times than he can count and has learned all of its quirks. 

His foot lands in a puddle of unknown liquid. He slips. He falls backward and slams his head onto the dirty tile flooring of the train station. Perhaps all was an exaggeration.

His skull cracks on impact and fires a piece of bone into his occipital lobe, which forces itself against his temporal lobe. He feels a sharp pain shoot down his spine and realizes that he cannot move.

He cannot remember what he ate for breakfast or what day it is. He tries to recall where he went to college, but cannot place what “college” is at all. He cannot move.

He stares up at the ceiling and prays to God.

3

Без кота́ мыша́м раздо́лье

Without a Cat, Mice Feel Free

Georgia left for college last week. 

Wednesday morning, she packed her life into the back of her father’s sedan and drove five hours to a school on a hill next to a highway. She decorated her dorm room in yellows and blues and hung pictures of her high school friends above her desk. She had an argument with her mother about how much storage she needed. She lost the argument.

Georgia climbed back into her father’s sedan and drove ten miles with her family to the nearest Target. She bought a shelf with six cube-shaped sections and four cube-shaped baskets. Her mother wanted her to buy six baskets, one for each section, but Georgia resisted. This would be her only win for the rest of the day. 

Her parents left just before dark and she navigated the dining hall alone. She piled peas, chicken, and carrots onto her plate. Everything was remarkably dry and formed a paste in her mouth. Something about eating paste, alone, in a place she did not understand made her want to die. 

She propped her door open that night and a few girls wandered in and out. They all seemed nice enough. She closed her door at 10 PM and sat on her bed. Her mother called and told her that she was banned from entering any frat houses. She did not say “I love you.” 

Georgia said “O.K.” and went to sleep. 

During the first orientation event, she met some girls that were bearable. They went to the dining hall as a group and the paste made Georgia want to die a little less. She did not feel much less lonely, but at least she wasn’t alone. Her father texted her to say that she needed to be careful with her spending habits. 

“Yup,” she replied. 

She did, in fact, enter frat houses that weekend. Four of them in one night, to be exact. She borrowed a top the size of a napkin from one of her new friends, Tabitha. It squeezed her boobs weirdly, but she thought that she might have felt sort of attractive. Georgia had never felt that way before. She certainly did not feel that way when she woke up the next morning, vomiting. 

“Do NOT drink,” her mother texted her. 

Georgia sent her a thumbs-up. 

Classes were easy, but they dragged when she had them multiple days in a row. She took a shot after her last seminar for the week. And then another one. And another. Her friends cheered as the room swayed around them and she felt like God. They sat and played games on Christy’s shag rug until Frankie said that she wanted to go out. 

So, out they went. Georgia crammed herself into another top that was slightly too small and looked at herself in the mirror. Someone offered her a tube of mascara and she slathered a layer onto her eyelashes. She liked the way that it buried her eyes. 

Walking in front of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, Georgia felt a lot like a child in her mother’s clothing. She took a swig out of her bottle and caught up with her friends inside. 

Georgia continued to swig every few minutes for the next hour. The knowledge that her parents were states away, paired with the liquor, helped ease her nerves.

“I am so drunk right now,” she called as she slid back onto the couch, arms wide. She was so sweaty. And so horribly, wonderfully drunk. Her phone chimed and a text from her mother appeared on the screen, “I know what you are doing right now and it is incredibly irresponsible.” Another one quickly followed, “Answer your phone,” and then, “NOT O.K.”

Georgia turned over her phone, closed her eyes, and pictured a room with four open windows to fly out of. She smiled.