Nala’s Lizard

Contributed by chrissasterling on 17/03/10

She was always saving things.

Trinkets, momentos, animals. Anything Nala could get her hands on in her effort to make herself matter. If she visited a theme park, she wanted an Eiffel Tower with the name of the park on it (never mind that the Eiffel Tower had nothing whatsoever to do with the park itself). Or when she went skiing with her fifth grade class she absolutely had to get a Mt. Holly snow globe to show proof that she was there, as if she’d forget. If she went to a nice restaurant, she wanted to save the napkin. She might even write the date on it, the name of who she went there with. What if that would be the last time she would ever go to that very place, with that same person? You just never knew, and in her way of thinking, at least she’d have that napkin.

The animals were another story.

Once she found a limping kitten, it’s right hind leg badly injured from a swift kick from an angry bull. Nala fashioned a splint made from a popsicle stick and taped it to the kitten’s leg in the hopes that it’d provide a tiny bit of support. She put it in a safe spot in the hay mow and brought it food each day until it was finally able to get around on its own. It never walked normally again, but better to be gimpy than to not be anything at all was how she liked to look at it.

She tried to save every thing; An injured grackle, a lone salamander, an orphaned wild rabbit. Perhaps she thought that if she stepped in the way of an inevitable demise, she could be important, she could be worth something. The problem was, no matter how many items she collected or critters she saved, she still didn’t feel worth anything.

One would think that someone as devout at documenting life and fashioning various ways to preserve it, would instinctively be revolted at the thought of ending their own. But rationale didn’t really occur to Nala the day she decided to take her own life. She no longer felt the urge to document the various things that she did, she had stopped placing special significance on those she did them with. In fact she didn’t really feel anything at all, which she found strangely comforting . The lack of feeling seemed to become an entirely new feeling unto itself. Nala found solace in being an observer, a documentarian, a traveler of realms if you will. She thought of her exit from this world as a journey to a new one. This idea filled her with just the tiniest bit of excitement, which was more than she had felt in a very long time.

She thought of all of the notes, the napkins and the traveling flair and doubted any of these things would be of any importance once she was gone, but just as her consciousness began to drift from her former physical presence, she did wonder, now who would feed the lizard?