Permission to Pause by Carley Thorne

Carley Thorne has made the2024 CBC Short Story Prize shortlistfor Permission to Pause.

She will receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand her work has been published onCBC Books.

The winner of the 2024CBC Short Story Prizewill be announced April 25. They willreceive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency atBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

If you're interested in theCBC Literary Prizes, the2024 CBC Poetry Prizeis open for submissions until June 1. The2025 CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September and the2025 CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January.

• The 2024 CBC Poetry Prize is now open to Canadian poets

Carley Thorne is a comedian and writer living in Toronto. She is a Jack Whyte Storyteller's Award winner and her writing has been shortlisted for the 2023Federation of BC Writers Contest Short Fiction. She has performed as a part of the JFL42 comedy festival and as an understudy at the Second City Toronto. Alongside Blair Macmillan, she is the creator and co-host of Girl Historians, a comedy podcast about history. The current season is all about the Salem Witch Trials. She is currently working on a novel and probably has a tummy ache right now.

Thorne toldCBC Booksabout her inspiration for writingPermission to Pause: "I always find myself intrigued by people and how strange we are. I love characters who are freaks and unhinged weirdos. The narrator of Permission to Pause definitely falls into that category. She is so deeply invested in personal wellness, but also obsessed with the brutalization of women. She loves self-care and self-harm in equal parts. That dissonance is really interesting to me. She is a terrible person, but I love her dearly."

You can read Permission to Pause below.

WARNING: This storycontains strong language, references to domestic violence and suicide.

I take my self-care very seriously.

I learned about self-care from my roommate Clara, who calls it "permission to pause." Clara is very big on pausing, and as far as I can tell, never really asks permission to do so. Last week I asked her to transfer me her half of the Hydro bill and she told me she was not in the headspace to have this conversation.

The pores on the side of Clara's nose are always clogged, and it makes me feel self- conscious, like mine are too. She wears red lipstick that doesn't match her skin tone and listens to dating podcasts out loud all day. Last week I overheard one of the hosts describing a one-night stand she had as her "own personal Pearl Harbor." Clara and I are not friends, but I would die for her.

Sunday nights are my time to reset because I have the apartment to myself. Clara works as a hostess at a place called Sunday Service. For the first few months we lived together I assumed this was some kind of hip millennial church, but it's actually a members-only club where Clara serves ethically-sourced tequila to future white-collar criminals.

"They'll probably destroy the world or bring down democracy or something," Clara said one night, while over-applying her lipstick in the grimy bathroom mirror. "But they tip like motherfuckers."

As soon as Clara leaves, my self-care routine begins. I take a shower and put on clothes so shapeless I can forget I have a body. I sit cross-legged on our stained Ikea couch and put on an $8 Korean face mask. I order a $35 salad on my phone and log on to a men's rights forum to talk about killing women.

I get high off the deception. They think I'm one of them. They say things to me they would never say if they knew I was a woman.

Every time a post of mine gets a comment or someone DMs me, I feel a rush. It feels better than cocaine. I would assume. The only time I did cocaine was at a party thrown by the improv team at my university. I did a line while half-listening to a guy tell me about the cultural relevance of Caddy Shack. Turns out it was a crushed-up aspirin.

It's important to have hobbies. Some girls crochet or do pottery or drunk drive. I go on private online forums and pretend to be a violent misogynist. Having a balanced life is the key to happiness.

I make myself an Aperol Spritz while describing a sexual fantasy I have about my middle school piano teacher. I say I want to follow her to her car and put a knife to her throat. I add designer sweatpants to my shopping cart and then remove them. My mom calls. I tap decline.

It's too much to explain to her. Or Clara. Or anyone really.

I scroll through social media. A high school classmate has posted a picture of her on a red carpet. She got new veneers last year and they are blindingly white, like someone took a Tide Stain Stick to them. I report her post to Instagram and then block her.

I go to bed already feeling refreshed. I am ready for the week ahead.

-

Monday mornings are always slow. I am a receptionist for a company that makes feminist cookies. If you don't understand what a feminist cookie is, that is because it doesn't make sense.

On the back of every package of organic, gluten-free cookies, is the story of Alma. Alma was abused by her husband. He hit her, called her awful names, and eventually left her for an ex- marine and runway model. She was, 45, divorced, with no money. It was here, at rock bottom, that Alma decided she wanted to start a cookie empire that stood up for women and empowered them with every bite.

I don't know who Alma is, but she doesn't work here. The company was started by a venture capitalist who got all his money when his oil baron father fell off a roller coaster at Canada's Wonderland.

I like my job. I just sit at a desk and pretend to look busy if anyone walks by. Sometimes if I'm feeling tired, I go into the storage room to nap on the floor.

My coworkers are mostly men, and they all bleed together into a sea of plaid and thick glasses and bachelor's degrees in niche subjects. There is one who I like. His name is Ryan. He wears plaid and has thick glasses, but I can tell him apart from the others because he looks like a bird. In a sexy way. A sexy bird.

Last week there was a birthday party and he put a jagged slice of cake on a paper plate and brought it to my desk.

"I didn't know if you wanted any," he said. "But then I figured: who doesn't love cake?"

I stare down at the plate. The cake is Funfetti and smells like a crayon. I look up at Ryan's sexy- bird face and smile.

"Thanks."

I wonder if he's on the forum.

-

When I get home from work I do a guided meditation on my phone, eat the Green Goddess veggie bowl I meal prepped this weekend, and then retreat to my room to play violent video games.

I play on my brother's old computer. It is big and black and looks like the kind of computer the Unabomber would use. I wear my brother's old headset and listen to his friends, strangers on the internet, talk while we shoot zombies who are also Nazis.

When I first started playing these games, I kept getting the controls mixed up and spinning around in circles until I felt sick, but I've basically got the hang of it now. The game is pretty straightforward: stop the Nazis from invading. I've always been very goal-oriented. It's my Virgo moon.

I used to hate games like this. I thought that young men should be protected from senseless violence. But then my sixteen-year-old brother killed himself and his girlfriend last spring, and now I know violence and men go hand in hand.

I listen to these men like an anthropologist. I want to understand how they talk to each other when they think no one is listening. I'm like Jane Goodall, but instead of living with gorillas in Tanzania, I stare at a computer screen until the place behind my eyes throbs and my teeth ache.

Tyler was always quiet, like a poet or a school shooter, so his lack of participation is not out of the ordinary to these men. Every once in a while I will chime in by typing a message in the chat. Mostly I tell them what they want to hear, something about cancel culture or the woke mob. Sometimes I wish them a happy birthday or ask how their kids are doing.

I hear Clara banging around in our kitchen. She had invited me to a Taylor Swift-themed dance party tonight.

"I would literally rather kill myself," I said.

"Slay, chica,"she said.

I am trying to be nicer to Clara but she is making it hard.

On-screen, the zombie Nazis storm the beaches of Normandy, which seems willfully inaccurate. I listen to the voices of men I hopefully will never meet, and pray I don't recognize their voices.

-

My mother calls me during my lunch break. I am sitting alone in the break room, drinking a collagen smoothie and researching $200 crystal eggs that you can put into your vagina. I hate talking to my mom on the phone. Since Tyler died, her anxiety has consumed her.

I'm setting boundaries by not taking her calls. Boundaries are important, they are how you take back your power.
There are lots of ways to take back your power. Clara taught me that. The way Clara takes back her power is by shoplifting cosmetics. She is banned from five Shoppers Drug Marts in Toronto.

"It's basically feminism," she said, when I asked her. "Because I have to wear make up everyday under the patriarchy."

Every surface in our shared bathroom is cluttered with packages of unopened drugstore makeup. The clear plastic looks grey and filmy because they are covered in dust. For my birthday last month, she gave me five identical eyeliners with the security tags still on them.

My mother calls again. I don't know why, but I pick up. Maybe it's because I've dodged her last eight calls, or because no matter how many Norwegian Sea Salt facials I book I still drift to sleep every night in between body-wracking sobs.

Maybe I'm just bored.

"Hey Mom."

"Hi Honey,"she says. Her voice sounds thin and far away. I don't know if this is just how she sounds now or if my reception is bad.

She launches into a tangent. She is a third-grade teacher and one of her students brought the class hamster, Oreo, back crooked.

"I think her dad sat on Oreo," she says. "But that's not the kind of thing you can accuse someone of with no proof."

I listen to her talk about her students and Oreo while taking an online quiz that is supposed to tell you what celebrity foot you are. I am Tom Hanks. My mother is worried about me. I simply wish to be dead.

"I'm just concerned honey," she says. "You look tired. You seem tired."

She suggests that I see a therapist again. I want to say that this is rich coming from the woman who had a "running is my therapy" bumper sticker on the back of the car her son used to kill himself. But that's not constructive. So instead I say:

"I don't know, maybe."

My mother still thinks that it was an accident. That Tyler's death was just some horrible cosmic fluke. I've watched her tell family, her friends from work, even strangers at the grocery store. She calls it a "senseless tragedy."

I fight the urge to remind her that I spent the better part of my childhood afraid of him. I want to ask her if she remembers that he got suspended last year for keying "ugly bitch" into the side of his homeroom teacher's car. If she remembers that last April he wrapped the family car around a tree, killing his girlfriend and himself.

It was an accident. A terrible accident. Horrible things happen to good people. My mother repeats it, over and over again, like I do with my morning affirmations in the bathroom mirror.

I almost laugh. But I don't laugh. Or drink out of straws. Both cause wrinkles.

"It's important to take care of yourself," my mom says. She sounds so far away.

"I know Mom," I inspect my manicure. The light blue polish hasn't chipped, but the underside of my nails are filthy.

I ground myself with four deep breaths. I learned this technique from a tampon commercial where a woman plays tennis in all white and then has a panic attack because she gets her period. But then it's okay because her friend has a tampon. Then a disembodied hand pours blue liquid over a pad.

I wish I was a woman in a tampon commercial, but instead, I'm a woman with a dead brother, who was probably a murderer or incel or both.

I don't know if he did it on purpose. Maybe he lied to his girlfriend or forced her into the minivan. Maybe she wouldn't have sex with him. Maybe she did. Either way, she's dead. And so is he. And my mother and I are left here in the wreckage he left behind.

If it was suicide, he didn't leave a note. But he left messages online. Thousands of them. I found them on his laptop, which I told my mother was missing. She doesn't need to know.

I was surprised at how easy it was to lie to her these last couple of months. It came back to me like riding a bike. I do it with ease. I do it because It's the only thing left to do.

"Anything new with you?" She says.

I don't know what to say. Or how to say it. That it feels like my entire body has been run through the garbage disposal and I have no idea what to do with the love I had for Tyler. That I am surprised by the pain that is inside of me. That I miss Tyler and wanted him dead and am still trying to figure out how both of those things could be true.

Tonight Clara invited me to get drinks with her coworkers. Maybe I'll cancel and stay in.

One of her coworkers is a clown. I don't mean she's silly, I mean she went to clown school in Paris for 6 weeks and returned with a red nose and a 60-year-old boyfriend. I don't know how much "clown talk" I can take this evening.

"The same," I say. My heart is beating fast and I feel like I might cry right here in the break room. "I love you, Mom."

On the other end of the phone, my mother is silent. I pull my phone away from my ear to check that she hasn't hung up.

"I love you too," she says finally. "You've been taking care of yourself, right sweetie?

I reply quickly and realize that this is the first time I haven't lied to my mother in almost a year.

"Yeah Mom," I say. "I've been doing a lot of self-care."

For anyone affected by family or intimate partner violence, there is support available throughcrisis lines and local support services. If you're in immediate danger or fear for safety or that of others around you, please call 911.

If you or someone you know is struggling, here's where to get help:

• Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call or text 988.
• Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868. Text 686868. Live chat counselling on the website.
• Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention: Find a 24-hour crisis centre.
• This guide from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health outlines how to talk about suicide with someone you're worried about.

Read the other finalists

• Old Bonesby Kate Gunn (Vancouver)
• Lamentationsby Miriam Ho Nga Wai (Toronto)
• How to Make a Friendby Zilla Jones (Winnipeg)
• The Babyby Kailash Srinivasan (North Vancouver, B.C.)

About the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize

The winner of the 2024CBC Short Story Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency atBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

If you're interested in theCBC Literary Prizes, the2024 CBC Poetry Prizeis currently open until June 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET. The 2025CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September and the 2025CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January 2025.