Ode to the Oddities Chapter One

Alena's point of view on life.

 ~Ode to the Oddities~
          The Connection Born in The Unfamiliar -Elowyn Tackett    




                A Novel Written and Created by Elowyn Tackett

      What happens when two worlds collide and a choice thus be made?



          

                                Chapter 1 

Do you ever really think about how… insignificant you are?

I do.

Or�"I did.

I used to sit with that thought until it felt like it was carving itself into my bones. The idea that I would never amount to anything, that nothing I did could ever shift the world even an inch. Because the world doesn’t care. Not about you. Not about me. Not about anyone.

It just… keeps turning. Unbothered. Unimpressed.

Have you ever felt that?

I used to hate it�"this choking awareness that I was small, forgettable, replaceable. I used to be terrified that no one would ever really see me. That I’d always be that stupid little girl people stepped over without even noticing they’d crushed something fragile.

It felt like drowning in a lake no one even knew I fell into. My lungs filling, my body sinking, and the surface staying perfectly still.

No ripples. No panic. No one looking for me.

But I’m not scared anymore.

Now?

Now I understand the truth.

Nobody matters to the world.

Not a single person.

If one human dies, the world shrugs. It shrugs and keeps spinning like it didn’t just lose a heartbeat.

Maybe a funeral happens. Maybe two or three people cry because they’re supposed to, or because the silence finally catches up to them. But after that? Life sweeps in like a tide, washing footprints away. Weeks pass. Months. A year. And suddenly that person�"who once breathed, and dreamed, and panicked, and loved�"becomes nothing more than a faded photo and a few stories people only tell if prompted.

And their corpse?

Just meat and bone rotting quietly in a wooden box.

“What about important people?” you ask.

But the answer doesn’t change.

Rich businessman, powerful CEO, owner of whatever-the-hell corporation�"they all end up in the same dirt. Maybe their death trends online for a day. Maybe someone writes an article. And then their company gets sold for a pathetic price, or someone greedy picks it clean like a dead animal on the side of the road.

And then down they go, lowered into the ground, tucked into the same grimy soil everyone else decomposes in. Their legacy gets traded, rewritten, argued about, and then… poof. Gone.

Forgotten.

A lot of rich people are dickheads anyway, so it’s not like the world loses much.

But there’s one lesson I learned�"one I didn’t want to learn but did, over years and bruises and watching people for who they really are:

If you aren’t invisible, you’re hated.

If people can see you, really see you, they will find something to despise. Something to twist. Something to break.

They’ll curl their noses. They’ll whisper. They’ll decide you’re too much or not enough and punish you for both.

And no matter how many fans, supporters, admirers someone has…

There will always be enemies waiting to balance the scale. People who want them gone. People who want them ruined. People who sharpen their teeth on someone else’s success.

Every famous person has them.

Every known person.

Every seen person.

Enemies in the light.

Enemies in the dark.

Enemies they don’t even know they have.

And honestly?

I think that’s nice.

Sure, you can have fans �" people who scream your name like you’re some kind of neon-lit deity for five seconds �" but honestly? There’s something way more magnetic about having enemies. People who clench their teeth just hearing your footsteps. People who look at the space you take up, the oxygen you breathe, and decide it’s a personal insult.

Hatred, real hatred, requires effort. Dedication. Emotion. That’s commitment.

And if someone is committed enough to despise you, that must mean you’re shaking something in their world.

If you don’t have at least a few people snarling behind your back, you’re basically scenery.

I learned that a long time ago.

Kind of wish I hadn’t.

There’s a strange comfort in being unseen �" like slipping through life with some invisibility buff no one else got. You become this ghost in the crowd: recognizable enough to not cause suspicion, forgettable enough that no one retains the memory of you. You can breathe there. You can rest.

But once you step out of that safe shadow? Once you dare to want something, or be something, or raise your head above the grey fog of everyone else just getting by? Oh, people notice. And they don’t like it.

Look at all the ones who “made it.”

The ones with shiny kitchens and two-story houses and smiling profile pictures. Yeah, they’ve got the prizes, but behind all that curated happiness? Every single one of them is rotting under the pressure of being watched. Being judged. Being the one everyone else throws stones at because success makes you a target.

And the ones who tried and failed?

Jesus.

Those people get obliterated.

They rocket upward, convinced they’re fueled by passion and ambition, only to realize too late that the fuel tank is filled with gasoline someone set on fire. Haters, coworkers, the system �" someone always finds a way to drag them back to where everyone else is standing. Sometimes lower. And they learn, the hard way, that it’s terrifying to fly when the entire world is waiting eagerly for you to crash.

People who fight that hate, who try to keep climbing anyway �" they get eaten alive. Not just by the people around them, but by their own thoughts. That inner voice turns feral.

“If you’d stayed small, this wouldn’t hurt.”

“If you’d stayed quiet, no one would be laughing at you.”

“If you’d stayed invisible, you wouldn’t be bleeding on the floor right now.”

So yeah, maybe there really are only two types of people.

The ones who shrink themselves down and blend into a life that’s predictable and flavorless. A job with flickering lights, a lukewarm mug of black coffee, clothes that match the walls. No highs, no lows, no spotlight, no applause �" just one long exhale of safety.

And then there are the other ones.

The ones who refuse to dim themselves.

Who wear red boots or cosmic-pattern jackets or shave their head or paint their nails neon. The ones who insist on being loud or bright or interesting. Who show their teeth in a world that wants everyone smooth and dull.

Those people get devoured daily.

Chewed up by strangers online, coworkers, family, society �" and eventually by themselves. Because fighting the current every second of every day is exhausting, and sooner or later, they start to wonder if maybe the haters were right.

As for me?

I’ve made peace with being unremarkable.

Or maybe I’ve rationalized it. Hard to tell anymore.

My life isn’t glamorous. I live in a shoebox-sized studio with a roommate who steals my leftovers and pretends she didn’t. The walls are thin enough to hear the couple next door arguing about laundry at 2 a.m. The bathroom door sticks. My mattress has that one spring that always pokes my back.

And I work at a diner that smells like burnt oil and disappointment. A place where the fryers hiss louder than the customers complain. Where the cracked vinyl booths have stories older than me. Where the boss’s hands wander enough times that HR has become a running joke �" three investigations, zero consequences. Every shift feels like being dipped in grease and misogyny at the same time.

I’m not a hero.

I’m not an underdog.

I’m not a rising star or a tragic cautionary tale.

I’m just… here.

Watching the world spin too fast and too loud, hugging the shadows because they’re the only place that doesn’t demand anything from me.

And for now?

That’s enough.

I mean, I dumped a hundred and fifty thousand dollars into a pre-law degree because I believed hard work could muscle a life into shape. Turns out the world doesn’t care how hard you work when you’re not the demographic they want shaking hands in their conference rooms.

I went to interview after interview in my one good blazer, sweating through the lining, listening to men in polished shoes tell me how “inspiring” it was that a young woman had such ambition.

Inspiring.

As if that was the compliment I was supposed to swallow while they moved my résumé to the “no” pile.

Now I’m slinging dishes for eleven bucks an hour while my boss �" who smells like fryer grease and Axe body spray �" tells me I “could be a model” in the same tone someone uses when they’re imagining you naked. Every time he says it, I feel like I need to shower in bleach.

And honestly? I’m not special. I’m as ordinary as a cup of black coffee left on the counter too long �" cold, bitter, and tasting vaguely like something scraped off a horse’s hoof.

I used to believe I was meant for something big.

Back when I was a kid, I was one of those annoyingly determined types �" the “I’m gonna change the world” kind of child. The kind that teachers smile at because they don’t yet have the heart to tell you the world isn’t listening.

At fourteen, I decided I wanted to become a lawyer who helped women run from men who liked to break things �" walls, dishes, ribs. I thought I could fight monsters. I thought the courtroom was a battlefield where good people won if they worked hard enough.

Cute thought.

Delusional, but cute.

Graduated early, skipped a grade, lived in textbooks. I should’ve been proud, but school was just… noise. A distraction. A place where I could bury myself in case law instead of listening to my parents tear each other apart over late rent and empty bottles.

The library was quiet. Predictable. No plates smashing, no slamming doors, no footsteps that made my spine lock up. I’d stay until closing, dragging myself home at eight with my backpack digging into my shoulders, rehearsing the possible topics of that night’s fight.

When I walked through the door, the air always felt thick, humid with tension and old resentment. My mom’s eyes were always ringed with exhaustion, and my dad always looked… hollow.

Hollow and dangerous.

He didn’t work.

He didn’t try.

He drained my mom’s savings like it was some kind of hobby �" on casinos, vodka, women ten years younger than him wearing department-store perfume and bad decisions.

I remember being eleven, sitting on the couch with the TV blaring cartoons at skull-rattling volume because that was the rule: when Dad brought home a stranger, noise was a shield.

He’d given me a beer that day. Thought it made him the cool parent. I hid it behind the couch.

The woman with him that afternoon wore a tight red dress, the kind that made her look like a warning sign. Lipstick too bright. Smile too thin. Dad told me to stay put, as if I didn’t already know the choreography by heart.

An hour later, Mom came home.

I didn’t hear her scream �" the TV was too loud �" but I saw her face when she came back into the hallway.

Red.

Not from anger.

From humiliation that sat so deep it looked like pain.

They didn’t speak for a week. Silence can be louder than shouting.

But that wasn’t the day everything broke.

No, the real fracture came later.

I was sixteen when Dad vanished for three days. Mom paced the kitchen like a ghost, checking her phone every two minutes even though she already knew no one was calling.

When he finally stumbled back through the door, he found out Mom hadn’t made dinner yet �" as if she owed him that after everything he’d taken from her. He had a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand, and something sharp in his eyes.

He finished the vodka in one swallow.

Then he smashed the bottle over her head.

The sound �" God.

It wasn’t a crash.

It was a crack.

Like a bone breaking.

I ran down the stairs so fast I nearly fell. Mom was bleeding, trying to crawl away, her hands sticky and red. Dad grabbed her by the hair like she was an object, not a person, not the woman who kept him alive for years. He hauled her up and hurled her over the couch like she weighed nothing.

I froze.

Not because I was scared �" though I was �" but because there’s a special kind of helplessness that hits when you realize the person meant to protect you is the one you need protection from.

Then he grabbed the steel pipe from the unfinished section of the kitchen wall �" the one that’d been “under renovation” for three years because he kept blowing the repair money at casinos. I can still see his hand around it, knuckles white, eyes unfocused but sharp at the same time.

A shark wearing human skin.

He came at her with this wild, boiling fury, like she was the reason his life sucked, like she had personally offended the universe. And with just a few swings �" brutal, unhesitating swings �" Mom wasn’t Mom anymore. Her face stopped looking like a face. It was just swelling and blood and this sickening collapse of features that made my stomach crawl up my throat.

And then, because apparently God wanted the bonus trauma package, Dad turned around and locked eyes with me. His expression… God. It wasn’t even rage anymore. It was hunger.

Like he’d noticed something else he could destroy.

I ran.

Instinct.

Pure animal panic.

I slammed myself into the bathroom and locked the door, but it didn’t feel like a barrier; it felt like a thin piece of cardboard pretending to be safety. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely dial 911. The dispatcher kept asking questions, but all I could focus on was the pipe hitting the door �" over and over �" and Dad screaming at me to “come out and face him like a man.”

Like a man.

I was sixteen.

I weighed maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet.

And he wanted me to be something he could legally justify beating to death.

Then something in me snapped into action. I grabbed the toilet tank lid �" heavy, cold �" and smashed it into the tiny bathroom window. Glass everywhere. The shock of the wind hitting my face. I hauled myself through the broken frame, scraped half the skin off my stomach, and somehow ended up on the roof, crouched there like a feral cat.

It was -6 degrees. Barefoot. In pajamas.

And the cold didn’t even matter. Not compared to the noise downstairs.

Fifteen minutes.

That’s how long it took before flashing red-and-blue lights painted the neighborhood. Longest fifteen minutes of my life. I watched from the roof as cops dragged him out, still yelling, still spitting insults and slurs and nonsense, like the world owed him something and Mom had just forgotten to deliver it.

Most people assume that when the cops finally come, that’s the part where everything gets better.

But God was a prick about it.

Still is.

Turns out Dad and the judge on his case were drinking buddies from some greasy old bar they used to haunt. So instead of the kind of sentence that fits “beat your wife’s face in with a pipe,” he got ten years. Ten years is nothing. You can sleep through ten years. You can blink and miss it.

And on the day of the trial, when the judge banged his gavel like this was all normal courtroom procedure, that’s the exact moment I learned the truth:

The world doesn’t care. Not about victims. Not about justice. Not about kids watching their mothers collapse on blood-soaked carpet.

If you have friends in the right places, the world shifts to make room for your sins.

So yeah. I ended up with the classic tragic character setup:

A dead mom.

A father rotting in prison but not enough.

A life held together by duct tape and sarcasm.

And a roommate who thinks microwaved pad thai counts as cuisine and not a chemical hazard.

After all that, becoming a lawyer almost felt like a survival response. If I couldn’t save Mom, then maybe I could save someone else’s. Maybe I could stop another girl from dialing 911 in a locked bathroom.

I threw everything into school. Ate Ramen. Slept three hours a night. Buried myself in casebooks so heavy they could double as murder weapons. It cost me 150,000 dollars and about ten years off my life expectancy. I made some friends, sure, but mostly I made dark circles under my eyes and a collection of panic-induced migraines.

Took the bar. Passed.

Thought this was the part where the soundtrack swells and life finally pays you back.

Yeah… no.

Agency after agency smiled at me, shook my hand, said they admired my passion, promised to “keep your résumé on file.” Then they just tossed it into the void. Because they wanted a man for the job. Someone with a stronger “court presence.” Someone whose tie collection gave them gravitas, apparently.

Two years of this.

Two years of hope becoming humiliation on loop.

And after the 52nd rejection �" yes, I counted, because misery loves statistics �" something in me fizzled out. Like someone blew out the last candle in a dark room.

So here I am:

Twenty-six.

Drowning in school debt.

Living with a roommate who can burn cereal.

Working at a diner for pocket change.

And wondering what version of myself I would’ve become if I’d just never believed in anything at all.

Because hope?

Belief?

Dreams?

They’re scams. Emotional Ponzi schemes.

You invest everything and end up broke and exhausted while the universe pockets your losses.

Kids dream big because they don’t know how cruel probability is. And then adulthood shows up, slaps you with reality, and suddenly your astronaut/fashion-designer/model plans look like scribbles on a napkin you should’ve thrown out years ago.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe the world needs dreamers so reality has something to chew on.

Maybe we’re just the fuel for the machinery that grinds people down into the grey, faceless mass we call society.

Because after enough failure, enough heartbreak, enough nights spent staring at ceilings wondering what the hell happened…

You get tired.

You get quiet.

You blend in.

And maybe blending in is just the adult version of giving up.

"Order of coffee with two shots of espresso for Alena."

My name slices right through my internal depression monologue like a knife through wet cardboard. I let out a long, exhausted sigh, sling my bag over my shoulder, and try to navigate through the roving herd of twelve-year-olds ordering caramel nightmares that sound like somebody dared them to invent diabetes.

"That's me," I call out, lifting my hand above the sea of tweenage chaos and squeezing between backpacks the size of small planets. One kid shoulder-checks me on his way to the whipped cream station like he's prepping for a career in the NFL, but whatever. I’ve suffered worse.

I manage a small, forced smile as I grab my cup.

A nice cup of joe to fix my life. Totally. That’s how that works.

Cup hoisted above my head like some kind of sacred relic, I weave my way toward the door, dodging spilled Frappuccino droplets and the sticky crunch of dried caramel syrup on the tiles. Only two employees on shift �" and both look seventeen, morally defeated, and sharing what I can only assume are their last three functioning brain cells. Calling this place a coffee shop is charitable. Real charitable.

The door swings closed behind me, and the cool air hits my cheeks instantly, sharp enough to sting. Then the smell settles in �" stale exhaust, hot trash, that weird metallic city scent like someone microwaved pennies. Classic.

God, I hate this city. Hate it in the deep, marrow-level way you only hate something you’re trapped with. But my lease has six more months on it, and breaking it costs four hundred dollars I absolutely don’t have, so here I am. Stuck in my own personal pit of misery with scenic views of the dumpster behind the laundromat.

Whatever. Coffee time.

I let the cup drop to a normal height and take what should be a life-saving sip.

“S**t, that’s hot!”

I immediately regret every decision that led me to this moment. I stand there with my mouth wide open like a busted foghorn, fanning my tongue like that’ll help. I’m too busy internally screaming to notice my next step is not a step at all but a trap. The sidewalk dips into a curb; my heel snags the sewer grate like it’s been waiting specifically for me.

I pitch forward.

Toe catches, knee buckles, and suddenly I’m in a slow-motion nature documentary about clumsy gazelles being hunted by gravity. The pavement rushes up and smacks my face with the enthusiasm of an unpaid intern getting to fire their boss.

Pain explodes behind my eyes in one clean, cinematic burst.

I lie there, face-down on the concrete, long enough to contemplate the questionable choices that built my personality. At this point I’m basically communing with the sidewalk. Maybe we’re dating now.

I grunt, lift my head, and �" shockingly �" God has cut me a deal today. My coffee is still intact. Cup still upright. Lid still on. Liquid salvation unspilled.

Truly, miracles exist.

My pants, however , are not so fortunate. They are now coated in cigarette ash, street grime, and something that smells vaguely like expired pickles and despair. I do not investigate further.

With a groan, I yank my right hand out from under me, peel myself off the ground like a sticker off a lamppost, and wobble upright.

That’s when I notice him.

A man �" thin enough to be aerodynamic �" stands a few feet away staring at me with the wide-eyed panic of a housecat that’s locked eyes with a blender. His hair looks like he styled it by sticking his head out a car window at 95 mph. His coat is too big; his expression is too earnest.

“Are you alright th�"”

“Oh, f**k off, would you?” I snap before he can finish.

It comes out harsher than intended, but honestly, his face screams “I’m about to offer you essential oils and unsolicited advice.” He recoils like someone hit him with a rolled-up newspaper, then scurries away �" small steps, big energy �" heading toward whatever gingerbread workshop Santa’s got him scheduled at this season.

I cough on a lungful of downtown air and try to inhale something resembling oxygen.

“Just wanted a coffee,” I mutter, “and now I need new pants and a new identity.”

I bend down to scoop up my wallet and keys from the sidewalk, both lying there like sad little casualties of war. My satchel slides off my shoulder again, and I hitch it back up with the kind of resigned frustration usually reserved for printer jams and bad Tinder dates.

Maybe �" just maybe �" this is the universe telling me to go home.

Or that the sewer grate has claimed its first sacrifice of the day.

No. I am a determined woman who needs her eleven dollars an hour to cover half the rent. So I haul myself upright like an absolute unit and brush myself off. Or, more accurately, smear the ash in new artistic directions. Same thing.

I sigh and scan the street, making sure no other short-witted pricks witnessed my graceful swan dive. When I’m certain no one’s recording me for their TikTok compilation of “City Idiots Falling Down,” I pivot on my heel and speed-walk toward the diner. I’ve got about five minutes before I get chewed out for being late, and I really don’t have the emotional bandwidth today for my boss to call me “kiddo” again with those greasy sausage fingers pointing in my direction.

So I head toward the diner, because the law school dream died fast, and my roomie needs functioning plumbing, and I need to live somewhere that isn’t a cardboard box or my mother’s couch. Life sucks, and apparently it always will, and I’ve accepted that with all the grace of a raccoon eating trash behind a 7-Eleven.

At least my outfit matches the weather. I glance up at the sky�"gray, thick, and ugly, like someone smeared soot across the clouds with their bare hands. It looks exactly like the ash on my pants, which feels like some kind of cosmic color coordination I didn’t ask for.

And then, like the small-minded, tight-fisted little prick that whichever god is running my file today must be, the sky opens up and dumps rain on the world.

“Great,” I mutter, yanking my hood up. “This day can’t get any more pissy, can it?”

The rain immediately intensifies, slapping against my face like Mother Nature herself is trying to wake me up for school. The wind kicks up next, blowing cold needles of water straight down the back of my collar. Lovely. Amazing. Iconic.

My hair starts sticking to my cheeks, my socks grow damp and squishy inside my shoes, and each step toward the diner feels like I’m trudging through an emotional montage where the protagonist has officially hit rock bottom.

Cars hiss past on the wet road, spraying dirty sludge dangerously close to my legs. I clutch my satchel tighter, half convinced the strap is going to snap if I breathe too hard. A truck speeds through a pothole filled with brown water and sends a wave arcing in my direction. I barely hop back in time.

“Fantastic,” I spit, water dripping off my nose. “Go ahead, universe. I’m already soaked. Give me the full baptism.”

My fingers are stiff when I reach for the diner door, but I tug it open anyway, letting the warm, fried-food-and-regret-scented air wash over me. The bell overhead gives a pathetic little ding�"a sound that’s exactly how I feel inside.

But I made it.

Wet, irritated, borderline homicidal… but I made it.

And I’m definitely still clocking in, because eleven dollars is eleven dollars.

Author's Note

I love and except any critics anyone may have on this piece for I am trying to upgrade my writing skills.
I will also take followers on insta if you enjoyed my piece because personally I am trying to get viral with my writing

Reviews

[LH Weiss]

This is a very effective introduction to our protagonist. The pacing neatly jumps from inner monologue to tragic backstory to today. It does make one wonder how this story will get better for Alena. I will anticipate the next chapter with much enthusiasm. Very nice work :)

[Your_Mysterious_Writer]

Thanks babes,