Paulo Gallian

The Woman Who Sold Stillness [chapter 6]

She arrived at the address, after running for about twenty blocks. Gulliver was still desperately screaming and scratching, trying to make his way out of the small bag.

The place was an abandoned house where drug dealers received and distributed their products.

Lilly reached for the door knob but, before she turned it, she felt a pressure on her back. A woman whispered in her ear, telling her to stay quiet, or else the gun pressed against her would be discharged. The woman then opened the door, and they entered the house.

The moonlight, coming through the broken windows, was the only thing guiding her eyes at that moment. Lilly could see there were three men holding guns in different corners of the room, and one man in the middle, standing next to a chair.

Gulliver suddenly stopped moving, so she quickly asked them where was the key to the bag’s locks.

The man in the middle of the room told her to come closer and take a look at the person seated on the chair beside him. The woman behind her took the bag from her hand and threatened to shoot it, should she try and harm anyone.

Lilly walked three steps forward and got a glimpse of the man’s smirk. Two more steps and she felt something, an energy pulsing within, connecting her to the person on the chair. She knew this feeling.

When she finally got close enough, she recognized who it was. Hours before, she had trapped this man in her stillness. He was paralyzed and alive, probably in a lot of pain and listening to everything they were saying. Although he couldn’t move, he was aware of who she was.

She looked at the man standing beside the chair, and told him she didn’t know who that person was, then asked him for the key to the bag’s locks, once more.

He gave a sign with his hand to the woman at the door. She dropped the bag then took a shot at the floor. The cat screamed and tried to jump, but couldn’t quite move. The woman put her left foot on top of the bag and charged her gun. The man told Lilly to “fix” the person on the chair, or else her cat would get the next bullet.

She could’ve tried to make them all stay still, but Gulliver would not survive much longer, and if she had a chance to save him, she would take it. Her only concern was the reaction of the man on the chair, once he was able to speak and move.

The Woman Who Sold Stillness [chapter 5]

Lilly had turned 20, but there was nothing to be happy about. She received an eviction notice one day after her birthday, for not paying the last two months of rent.

She was fired from her last job, after a discussion with her former boss that ended with these exact words: “I don’t give a fuck about your business”.

She was tired of everything: Jobs, people, herself. There was not enough money for daily expenses so she ate poorly, and sometimes she fed her cat, Gulliver, instead of herself. He seemed to be the only being on Earth that she cared about.

One night, walking on the streets nearby her building, she was approached by a man in a black car. He had the wheel in one hand, and a gun in the other. He told her to give him money or else he would shoot her.

She turned, slowly, and didn’t say a word. Lilly just stared at him for a while, and suddenly, he was quiet. Then she walked close to him, and whispered in his ear: “If it was up to me, you would stay still forever… but in this neighbourhood, I’m pretty sure you won’t survive the night… see you in the morning, perhaps…”.

Continuing her walk, as if nothing had happened, she got to her apartment, closed the door and lay down on her dirty mattress on the floor. She noticed Gulliver wasn’t home and thought maybe he had found food in someone else’s home.

It was almost two o’clock and the night was cold. Lilly stared for a couple of minutes at the mildewed ceiling, thinking about fungus and the fact that they were everywhere in her apartment. She didn’t mind them. In fact, she related to the destructive nature of that organism. She just didn’t know which one was greater: her will to destroy or her will to die.

She closed her eyes and hoped not to have sweet dreams, as they were a reminder of how far from sweet her real life was.

The sound of a cat crying loudly woke her up before dawn. She opened the door and there was a closed bag with a note on top of it, and she could hear Gulliver screaming from inside. For the first time since her mother died, Lilly was truly frightened. The bag had two locks and she immediately tried to break them with everything she had on her apartment, with no success.

She read the note in tears, while listening to the increasing sound of Gulliver fighting for his life. Then she picked up the bag and hurried to the address written on the piece of paper. Lilly was about to find out she wasn’t the only one feeding on destruction.

The Woman Who Sold Stillness [chapter 4]

Very differently from her mother, Lilly’s father encouraged her to deal with the fact that she wasn’t like everyone else. He couldn’t believe her mother never told him anything, even though they were very distant from each other, but he felt it was wrong to go on pretending there was nothing to be concerned about.

Lilly took her father’s advice and tried not to feel scared of the things she could do. She didn’t want to go back to school, so her father suggested she get a job at some place where she would have to communicate with different people everyday.

She worked at a convenience store for 2 months and quit, without ever telling her boss the real reason. Then she tried working as a waitress and got fired after 3 months, for being too immature when dealing with client’s complaints.

One day she went to her father’s studio, where he worked as a photographer, and she saw him taking pictures of woman for a fashion magazine. She couldn’t help but notice how hard it was for him to manage a shooting session all by himself so, at the end of the day, she asked him if she could work there as his assistant.

He thought about it for a couple of days and eventually said yes, but made it very clear that he was going to pay her as a regular employee and he expected a high level of professionalism and dedication on her part.

Lilly didn’t know exactly what she was getting into, and it was not easy for her to handle the pressure of working with her father. He was intentionally testing her strength, day after day, being strict and demanding, not holding back with criticism and not favoring her in any way.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t ready for that kind of treatment, and he failed to notice that his behaviour at work was affecting the good relationship he had with his daughter at home. And when she told him she wanted to quit, after 8 months of hard work, he didn’t take it well. He got mad at her and said she would never be able to live by herself unless she stopped being selfish and spoiled. They were having breakfast at the moment, and she threw her coffee mug on the floor, which scared both her father and Gulliver, her cat.

She looked at her father with wet eyes and began to understand why her mother hid so many things from her about their relationship. Very calmly, her father stood up and told her to clean up the mess on the floor. He said he was already late for work and, since she wasn’t going to assist him anymore, he would not leave the studio early that day.

He left, and Lilly started crying. She was angry and frustrated with the situation, and all she could think about is how badly she wanted her mother to be there and comfort her.

After hours of thinking, she made up her mind and started writing a letter to her father, telling that she wanted to scream at him, and explaining why she just threw that coffee mug on the floor instead. She was afraid that if she focused all her anger on him, he could be trapped in her stillness, and as much as she hated him on that moment, she decided to control herself.

Her father came home from work and saw the letter on the table. He noticed that the shattered coffee mug was still on the floor, and nothing had been cleaned up. He shouted Lilly’s name a couple of times, but she didn’t answer. He looked for Gulliver, but didn’t find him anywhere. After reading her daughter’s letter, he realized Lilly was not coming back anymore.

The Woman Who Sold Stillness [chapter 3]

Lilly’s mother was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks before she turned 18. Some of their relatives came to the hospital on the day of her birthday, and they all celebrated it together.

Before blowing out the candles, Lilly closed her eyes real tight and wished for her mother to get better. Unfortunately, she couldn’t stop her mother’s illness, who passed away a couple of days later.

Her father showed up for the funeral and she was really glad to see him. They talked and cried for hours and, at the end of the day, he asked her to move in with him.

She thought about how good it would be to live in another city with her father, but she didn’t like his girlfriend very much. Her father said that nothing was more important to him than his daughter, and that his girlfriend would have no problem in moving out.

Lilly said goodbye to a few of her friends and, 2 weeks after the funeral, she moved to her father’s. He did the best he could to make her feel comfortable in his apartment, but it took a while before she could called it home.

After 4 months, they adopted a cat together and called him Gulliver. Her mother never liked the idea of having pets, so she was very excited about it.

One day, during breakfast, they saw Gulliver chasing after a moth. When it flew out the window, the cat quickly jumped to the ledge, which made Lilly scream her lungs out.

Her father told her not to worry and walked towards him, very slowly. He called Gulliver several times, but the cat wouldn’t even turn its head.

That was the day Lilly told her father what she could do.

The Woman Who Sold Stillness [chapter 2]

When Lilly was 15, despite the warnings of her mother, she decided to share the most terrifying moment of her childhood with someone else.

She told her classmate Ted about the day she practically froze her mother, and he didn’t believe her. He told his other friends about it and, on the next day, pretty much everyone in class was calling her a liar.

A couple of days later, during Art class, she started crying. The teacher asked what the problem was, but she didn’t answer. Ted quickly got in the middle of it and said she was crying because he didn’t believe the lie she’d told him.

The teacher was wise enough to notice he was messing with her. She told him to calm down and asked Lilly to walk with her, out of the classroom. The teacher opened the door and waited outside.

Lilly stood up, and Ted started laughing at her, followed by the entire class. She was walking towards the door and felt this energy flowing through her body. She just wanted them to stop. And stop them, she did.

She called her mother from a pay phone in school and told her what was going on. Her mother said she had to think about that horrible day when she was 10, and figure out how to fix that.

Lilly felt strange, searching for that feeling, but it turned out to be a very simple task. She just closed her eyes and told herself, several times, what she wanted. Suddenly, she heard screams coming from her classmates and the teacher, who were able to move again.

Her mother picked her up from school and they talked about her situation, over dinner. Together, they decided it was best that Lilly stayed home for a while.

The Woman Who Sold Stillness [chapter 1]

Tic
Tac
Tic
Tac
T…

When the clock stopped, she ran downstairs to tell her mother it needed new batteries.

Her mother told her she would get them after work.

Lilly asked her if she could stay home and not go to work, after all, it was sunday and they had planned a picnic.

Unfortunately, there was nothing the little girl could do to make her mother stay. She left for work and Lilly stayed home alone.

After 2 movies, 10 different snacks, 36 doodles, 15 cartoons and 2 naps, little 10-year-old Lilly noticed it was dark and her mother had not come back from work.

She called her cellphone and heard it ringing just outside the front door.

Lilly opened the door. Her mother was outside, standing still, like a living sculpture of a woman about to lock the door of her house. Lilly touched her mother’s leg, but she remained still.

She screamed in fear for about 5 seconds. Somehow, the screaming made her mother move again, however, she instantly dropped on the floor in pain.

Both of them started crying. Her mother told her she didn’t get to work, she couldn’t move, but she felt every second of every minute of the whole time.

I guess there was, in fact, something Lilly could do to make her mother stay.