Thinly-Veiled Fiction

*Just a little something I found from Janet Fitch's class last semester. Our assignment was to write a really long sentence. Here's what I came up with:


The phone refused to ring no matter how long I stared at it, the almost iridescent rounded square buttons remained dim, which made me wonder if I’d made the wrong impression, and if so what I should about it, but rather than think about being rational (let alone smart), like maybe he should worry about how he came off last night during that miserable conversation that keeps reverberating within each nerve-fiber of my brain, even though I do realize I am over-analyzing everything as usual and will likely make myself sick of it, which is a stupid habit of mine I can’t seems to break, part of me would rather be here, with my heart vibrating, hoping for the possibility of his name, in blocked, digitized letters on my pea-green Nokia screen, with my intestines unraveling then clenching as I scrape the side of my thumb with my fingernail, shredding off flecks of flesh until the pain comes, the raw pink underneath spreading and revealing that my fingerprints go deeper than I thought in finely dotted lines as the skin peels over the front side of my thumb, making a ridge between old and new, which means I should cancel my manicure tomorrow so the lady doesn’t chastise me for picking, rather than stop now and end the spiky pain of nail-on-new-pinkness, besides I like the way it calms me, and now I see I can take the pain, which I am going to have to get used to if I’m going to remain a prisoner to my cell phone, to him, all the while morphing into a person I never dreamed I would turn into--needy, caring--as I sacrifice my time for his schedule and whims, and although it makes my vital organs throb, my thumbs magenta and torn, a look I have found is not really attractive when one goes to parties can’t get away with wearing mittens as accessories, I can’t stop.