Ping,went the icon on her Facebook window as she looked up from the papers resting in the curve of her lap, jostling for attention with the furry white body of her Persian tabby, Maurice.
She didn’t even need to open the message to know that it would be another tirade, most likely from her acquaintance made through that reading club she regretted having joined last March.
Sighing, she clicked on the icon to see the veritable flow of anger and resentment directed at her, because she hadn’t bothered to return a message and ‘like’ the latest Facebook update of this woman who had finished reading 35 books in under two months.
And don’t give me any more of your sorry excuses, woman, because I see you have enough time to write articles for the New York Times but not a shred of time to interact with me, ended the message, venom dripping from every word.
For a split second, she considered replying with everything that overwhelmed her world, every diversion and every excuse- her clinical depression, her inability to fall asleep every night as memories of her institutionalised mother rose up before her or the fact that she had lost a good friend to cancer last week or even that she had developed tennis elbow from typing too much- but instead, she swallowed it all as she always had and typed out one sentence, ‘Sorry, I’ve been really busy with work.’
©Shailaja V
Written for Five Sentence Fiction’s Prompt: Diversions
