Eleanor Eldin: A Short Story

Eleanor Eldin was 21 when she decided to leave the city. Her whole life she had lived with the adamant believe that the trees and dirt and bugs were things to be avoided at all costs. She found comfort in the sound of traffic and the gum glued to the sidewalk. The skyscrapers were old friends and and the thick air was blanketing, infused with the breath of thousands of people like her. Even the loneliest person could find company in anonymous city life.
Eleanor studied marketing, specifically the mass communication of advertisements. At age 18 she was offered an internship at a major advertising corporation, which later became her full time job. As an intern, she was exposed to the most positive sides of the industry while the circumspect

managers eyed her for all the qualities they needed in an employee. The complicity of her coworkers was frightening and on more than one occasion she was certain of the clandestine nature of their actions. Afraid that she would be tricked into a scandal, or forced into criminal activity, she gave a 2 week notice, and quit her job the day of her 21st birthday, trying to ignore the diatribes and disappointment from her boss.
Eleanor was unsure what to expect.

She had no plan, no goal and nothing she wished to gain. She was another lost soul that cities chew up and spit out. Somehow she knew this and the stereotypical nature of her situation was almost embarrassing. It was while she was cleaning out her office, she discovered her future. A bird hit the window next to her desk. She realized later it had served as a sort of presage, a warning of demise. She turned in time to see it flutter desperately on a broken wing, before tumbling to its death. It turned into a black dot on the sidewalk far below, and she watched as a passerby stepped over it, taking no

notice.
The bird had vanished when Eleanor left that evening.

She searched in the bushes and up and down the block but it was gone, probably collected by the boy they paid to do such things.
Eleanor looked back at her building as she walked down west avenue. She was struck by the ostentatiousness of it. The windows, polished to an deadly shimmer and the somehow opalescent metal siding gave it an eery glow. It was repulsive, a false image of perfection, of superiority and in that moment it terrified her. The comfort she once felt was replaced by disgust for her city. She had ignored the oil in the roads leaking into the sewers, the miasma from the dumpsters and rubbish heaps and the filth littering the streets and now she watched horrified as she saw her home in its true

colors.
That night she slept for the last time in her bed, in any bed for that matter. It was raining when she woke up, the kind of rain that is so heavy it is hard to draw breath. She nearly changed her mind-nearly stayed. But she saw her life play out before her. She was 30 and still working in marketing, adapted to the chicanery of the office. She was 40 and had aged poorly, grey and dry with no original thoughts left in her mind. She was 55, 60 and her hard work was futile as she struggled to provide for herself and her small aquarium of goldfish. She was dead, and inside an urn on the mantel of a distant relative's house, an object simply for discussion, not remembrance. No, she wouldn’t go that way. Eleanor shut her door, left the key in the lock, and made her way down to the bus stop. She had her life savings with her and a newfound goal to ascertain what it was that could truly make her happy. Someone called out to her as she stepped onto the bus, a colleague or friend maybe, but she didn’t hear them, or perhaps she ignored them. They ran towards the bus, imploring her to come back, but the bus driver shut the doors, oblivious to the stranger crying by the road. Eleanor looked back to her city twice, once as the bus turned away from her street, and again as the buildings and all the opulence of her home faded into the distance.