Tiny Imperfect Fiction 03

Alice was really good at the martial art of being both happy and sad at the same time. She had had a lot of practice.

Though Alice had developed preferences for the way she preferred almost everything, she had also become ok with not getting exactly what she wanted. It was a matter of energy conservation really.

As Alice checked her tank filled with “Life,” bolted to the floor beside the claw-foot tub, she shook her head, disapprovingly but compassionately, recalling the times she'd mindlessly wasted precious Life on the dumbest things: the hysterical outburst of insanity unleashed at the American Airlines check-in counter; the irrational breakdown at the restaurant when her vegetarian meal came with bacon throughout; and that vampiric friendship that took her entire supply of emotional resilience allotted for the year. There were dozens more occasions when Alice was clueless that she was essentially flushing quarts of her Life down the toilet: the stresses over fashion sizes, the stresses over her hair, the stresses over other people's behavior, and of course the cigarettes.

Around age 37, she began to see that something was off, that perhaps her tank was a little emptier than it should have been. And then, by the literal grace of God, a one-winged angel named Quincy in the toll booth (the place where one-winged angels work) took her toll money one day and said to Alice,

“Here's your change. Have a nice day- hey, you should know, you can't refill your Tank of Life.”

Alice thanked him, and drove off muttering, “Shit. Now I can't un-hear that."

She spent some years trying to put other things besides actual Life into her Tank of Life- nothing raised the level on the gauge for long. She had tried to make up some of the wasted life by buying small second-rate quantities of it on the black market, but it never could fully make up for what she'd used up. Slowly she got it- you can't really add more life, you just have to use what you have with some awareness.

Luckily, on her 53rd birthday, Alice realized she really, really loved the life she had left in her tank. She examined it closer and appreciated it daily, said “good morning/good night” and "thank you" to it- and it bubbled excitedly in response. She noticed and loved how it sparkled and crackled in the tank, and decided not to waste it ever again.

Now Alice was 97, and she had managed to preserve the remaining contents of her tank with good results. In fact, she'd become a virtuoso of facing great difficulties and storms, somehow coming out of them with barely a drop of Life wasted, feeling more joy than before the storm arrived. And the happiness finally felt bigger than the sadness.