The microwave emits a soft beep, reality sharpening with haste unkind, peaceful daydreams interrupted by mundane human routine. She uncurls from the almost foetal position on the bunk, legs feeling strangely alienated from the fleshy bond of human muscle, walking made difficult. Odd. Stagger to the microwave, empty the packet of basmati into a mug, and stagger back to the bunk. Suddenly ravenous.
Steam curls around her slender neck, a wispy collar against flushed skin; an imprint of a time long past. The fragrance is different today- ‘Spicy Mexican’ stares up at her from the packet’s broken seal. She likes life to have some form of variety, no matter how subtle or unnoticeable.
She rummages around under the covers, surfacing with a stained teaspoon. Adequate. The first bite of rice burns its merry way down her throat, a wave of heat emanating from that single mouthful and penetrating the mortal barriers of blood and bone, rushing straight to numbed toes and finger tips that tingle not uncomfortably.
*
“Doll?”
Fear.
“Mandy, doll… where are you, baby?”
Fear.
The rice loses all flavour, suddenly an ashen pile of refuse in the maw of her mouth as she fights a rising tide of nausea. Both mug and spoon land heavily in her lap, spilling scorching heat over the front of her jeans; a pinprick of awareness in a haze of panic, a hidden trapdoor in the recesses of her mind, a fleeting diversion from the horrors of her darkest dreams taking on earthly form.
“I said, ‘Mandy, doll! Where are you?”
She panics, a blur of movement; clutching red-hot silverware to her front in the hopes of being able to still the frantically-beating appendage lodged deep in her chest, fighting its way up into her throat, choking her to the point of pain. The sheets are no longer a comfortable den, now twisting snakes of flexing cotton and scratchy synthetic chains waiting to swallow him in a tangle of imminent screams and, surely, death.
“Hey! There you are! Leah sent me back to check on you!”
Idiot. Just Bert.
She relaxes imperceptibly, spoon clattering to the floor, forcing a smile, face losing some of its original pallor. Just Bert, very drunk.
“Hey, Bert. You okay, man? You look a little sick.”
She sees Bert’s usual grin, compelled to offer a grin of her own. Smiling seems as unnatural as walking in this state of awareness, the past looming all too close for her liking. Lips twitch in a parody of expression, hoping to convey some emotion too complex for words to ever support- that she is scared, and not scared. Wary, and not wary. That she is not a kid but needs to know that her demons are truly exorcised. Lips twitch again, and then freeze.
Bert leers.
*
She started to cry, then, her hands fluttering in the darkness like little birds with broken wings, sobs taking on the desperate note of the damned.
*
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that there can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he."
-John Donne
*
In memory of What We Once Had, February 2007-April 2007.
*
God bless.
