Thirty minutes later, she was digging her fingernails into her palms to stay awake. Did he miss his calling as a hypnotist? she wondered. Maybe that’s how a talentless jerk lands a teaching job here. “You are getting very sleepy… give Professor Landon a raise.”
Next thing she knew, her head had nodded downwards – Emma jerked it back up instantly. I slept for ten damned hours she screamed in her head. Why can I not keep my eyes open for an entire lecture! One minute after this impassioned self-analysis Emma was completely asleep.
Awaking with a start, Emma sat there dazed. The room had taken on the same slightly bluish tint she had noted earlier but everything else seemed very normal. To her right, one seat away, a guy she had a slight crush on was doodling idly on the wooden desk. Looking briefly behind, she noted a couple of other students had fallen under the spell of the lecturer’s heavy monotone and were sleeping soundly.
Without a word, Emma slowly got up, to the quizzical looks of her classmates. Taking a walk to the front of the class that seemed to last forever, she at last arrived in front of her professor. He stared at her dumbly, waiting for the reason for breaking into his scripted sleepy time. Emma simply smiled.
Taking another step closer as if to impart a secret she instead bit into his face.
She awoke again with a shriek and realized the whole class was looking at her.
Bending double, Emma did the only thing she could and feigned stomach pain. Thinking on this lie further she weighed the dubious merits of pretending to have gas cramps over waking up from a dream screaming, but the lie was already told.
Letting herself be led to the medical center she told a couple of her more dutiful classmates she would be okay, really. They slowly sauntered out, as if they were missing an ideal chance for a case study. Ambulance chasers.
Emma forced herself to sit there for twenty minutes, mind furiously racing, before claiming the pain had gone away. Not daring to go back to class, Emma fled home. Crossing the room in a bound, she was halfway to the bathroom and a nice relaxing bath before she realized she had left the door open. Diving back across the room she slammed it and watched the wall shake.
Chapter 2
Emma relaxed back against the still cool tub. This apartment was a bit overpriced – the main view from the living room was of the wall across an alley, after all. Ultimately she had rented it for two reasons – it was located in a safe, middleclass area of town and it held a deep, wide, claw-foot tub.
Putting a wet hand towel over her face she closed her eyes and tried to let go of the outright weirdness of the day. Feeling herself drift, she shifted her weight to lean her head back into the towel sitting there for support.
Awaking with a start, Emma realized she must have dozed off and sat confused for a second. Instead of her simple bathroom, she was instead lying on a bed in a disturbingly pink bedroom. Arching slightly to look at the light coming into the room from above her head she instantly recognized curtains she had not seen in over a decade – curtains that belonged in a room she had occupied while in middle school.
No stranger to lucid dreams, Emma had long since learned to enjoy the freedom they afforded her – the lecture this morning notwithstanding.
Relaxing, Emma looked around at posters she had long since forgotten with her conscious mind - she was embarrassed to note one of them declared her everlasting love for NSYNC.
Getting up - an act that often seemed to take a long time in her dream land - she was struck by the reflection of her pajamas in the mirror. It was easy to get lost in the scenery and think of this as a faithful reproduction of her childhood but her PJs clearly belied that. The material and style were not out of place but the pattern was clearly that of the rosebuds from a sexy nightie she had bought a couple of years ago to spice up the romantic interest of an old boyfriend, just weeks before he left her. The combination was creepy and twisted the whole scene slightly.
She resolved to throw it out when she woke up.
Seeking further anomalies, she walked over to the small round CD player she had in her room back when she was that age. Doing so took far longer than expected however, as the room seemed to stretch unnaturally, giving her a false sense of vertigo as her mind tried to resolve it into physical movement.
Finally arriving at her goal, she fought down the sense of queasiness for a moment before leafing through her disk collection. Sure enough, along with the favorites of the time were modern hits that didn’t belong. She stopped at her Ke$ha album – a guilty pleasure she normally indulged while running at the gym. In her regular existence she had bought the tracks as MP3s and had no clue what the actual album cover looked like, so this one was just blank white with the bold emblazoning ‘Ke$ha CD’. Imagination was never really her strong suit.
Hearing raised voices, Emma walked out of her room and stood at the top of the staircase. She remembered hearing this fight – it was the one of the last ones her parents had – after this they moved to the silent treatment, which they had employed extensively ever since.
Originally, she had crept out here – not daring to go downstairs and risk the ire turning towards her. Hearing only pieces of the fight, it was only the next day she found out her older sister had been killed in a car crash – an accident Emma’s mother blamed on her father. He had given his permission for Michelle to go to the party, after all.
Emma remembered in a blur the days following the crash. Being dragged to the hospital to wait mutely in the car while her parents went in, followed by their numb expressions 45 minutes later when they returned. The funeral, trying to cram into a black dress that she had grown out of before finally being given one that had belonged to Michelle. She remembered that moment as the first one where it hit that her sister truly wasn’t coming back. Michelle would never have let her borrow the dress.
Thinking back, Emma remembered how life changed after this for Michelle had always taken the pressure with her perfect grades and easy social graces. Emma had been happy to sit in the shadows unnoticed as she occasionally goofed off with her other socially inept friends.
With Michelle gone, all the expectations had transferred to Emma. Emma’s love of languages was almost instantly deemed a waste of time and her goals realigned with something more fitting of one carrying the sole responsibility of the family line.
Being the quirky daughter, Emma had always been her father’s unofficial favorite. He had even imparted his love of boxing unto her, a pastime from his younger days. These sessions were curtailed very soon after Michelle died as unbefitting the sole air from her family line.
A younger Emma had seen this as an excuse for mother getting what she wanted, though the young lady she was now doubted very much that losing her fair haired prodigy fit in any shape into the category.
Snapping back to the moment, Emma stood and slowly walked down the stairs in direct contrast to how she had acted back then. Emma knew that what she saw was the result of her mind making up the scene but she did not care. She longed to see their faces – assign some humanity to them in this most vulnerable of moments.
She walked into the kitchen and saw her father’s face crumpled in despair. He had lines that the version of him from 12 years ago had no place owning – though this night was almost certainly the genesis of most of them. Her mother on the other hand looked as youthful as Emma ever remembered her; a cold hard statue of a woman, incapable of feeling. Emma longed for the face to soften but as her mother turned slowly to look at the intruder her visage became even harder.
Every nuance to her stance, her expression and her eyes all said the same thing. Why did they take the good one?
“Well?” her mother asked her.
“Well… what?” asked Emma, confused.
“I said, ‘Why did they take the good one?’” her Mother reiterated, cold as deep space and about as filled with humanity.
Oh thought Emma I guess she just went ahead and said
it. That’s pretty direct.
“I don’t know,” Emma responded at last, weakly. “I missed her – miss her – too.”
Her father sat, an impotent figure to the side as Emma’s mother said this in her mind. Emma was sad to discover this was how she saw him, a figure robbed of whatever gusto that had once belonged to him. Secretly, she had always thought she took after her father so the realization was even less welcome.
It made sense though, Emma’s mother had always been the dominant force. This was the night that took the little bit of fight left in him away.
“Couldn’t you be more like her? Less like this?” said her Mother, motioning up and down her with an outstretched hand. “Awkward. You are an awkward child.” The fact that Emma knew this was her brain making up words she thought her mother wanted to say made it no less painful.
“I have spent my life trying to do precisely that,” answered Emma, letting uncharacteristic anger push her to the point she could actually respond to the accusations – an event not appearing in real life. “Michelle was the one who was good at sciences. I liked French and I longed to be a translator somewhere in Europe - yet here I am becoming a doctor.”
“I have studied all my life - becoming an adult didn’t make it any easier. I cram my nose into a book more now than when I lived here, all for your approval. Even if that happened and suddenly I filled Michelle’s shoes, I doubt it would make me happy.”
“I loved my sister and yet now I hate her – not for what she did in life but for leaving me to fill this position that I just cannot. Michelle died but her dying wasn’t what took her from me – it was you trying to cram me into her life.”
It was wonderful being given a chance to voice her frustration, Emma could never manage even a whole sentence in her defense in real life and here she was dumping all her hurt out. Her mom looked down at her but her face didn’t soften – Emma didn’t know what it would look like if it did – they just stared at each other; disappointed parent and child. Both of them were sorry to have been dealt the other but this was Emma’s first chance to say so.
Looking past her mother, Emma saw out of the window hoping to see the beautifully crafted grounds of her parents’ house – anything to relieve the tension.
She was surprised therefore to see nothing but water – like a reverse aquarium. Why would I imagine that? She teased herself with the question, rolling it around inside her mind. As all the windows started slowly leaking simultaneously, rivulets trickling down the expensive wallpaper before suddenly exploding, showering water and glass over everyone in the room.
Bursting from below the waterline in her tub, Emma heaved and coughed, sputtering the water from her lungs. Looking up, Emma thought for a brief moment that she could see her mother’s face, sadness in her eyes, in the mist around her. The young woman blinked and the mirage was gone.
Finally heaving the last thimbleful of water out of her lungs with a coughing fit, Emma draped herself over the side of the tub like shipwreck survivor. Try as she might, she just couldn’t recall exactly what her sister looked like.
Chapter 3
Emma was soon out of the bath (one near drowning a day, please) and hitting the fridge, she first had a yogurt then whipped herself up a bowl of soybeans. They clearly did not pass muster, as no sooner had she finished than her stomach growled at her again. In desperation she microwaved three bean burritos and when even that did not silence her wayward appetite she dragged some chips that she had been hiding from herself at the back of the cupboard into the dusk light and ate them hunched over while staring at nothing.
Every time she started to feel comfortable some small flash of the previous night came back to her – starting with intense irritation on arrival at the pawn shop, only to discover they had already closed with her beloved laptop hermetically sealed behind the steel bar encrusted exterior.
Vaguely, she remembered the pain and torn agony from her head, words dropping around her prone form from her mysterious assailant but their order remained a mystery - like figuring out the order of droplets in a rainstorm.
There were police officers there that much she could remember – along with the spray of arterial blood.
When she was a child, Emma had loved kicking around a red ball – it was the reddest thing in her entire memory. She had played with it that it until her mother took it away and replaced it with a blue doll. Previously they were the reddest and bluest things she could remember – and secretly the reason she had always loved red and hated blue.
Now though, when she thought red all she could think of was the thick wet drip of draining blood.
Shaking her head, Emma resolved to look later for news articles or posts online about an incident around Grove Hall – maybe the report would fill in the blanks that her memory would not. She knew one thing, if she was going to try again to retrieve her laptop it would be during the bright light of day.
Her stomach continued to growl even as she ate the fatty kettle chips but somehow that didn’t seem like the problem. Her brain gnawed quietly at her sanity in its frustration. She was craving… something. Not ice cream, chips, or anything she could verbalize.
Emma had never had any form of drug more potent than caffeine – not even a rogue puff on a joint handed around at a college party. If she had, the craving would have been more obvious for what it was – withdrawal. Her skin started to slowly crawl over her tightened biceps, like the leisurely lap of waves at the ocean. Rubbing her right upper arm hoping to release the tension, Emma was shocked to discover a steel cord of muscle mysteriously buried beneath her flesh. Flexing, it tightened even further – a feat she previously would have believed impossible.
Emma felt trapped - in a body that barely felt like it was her own, in the apartment and in her life.
“A run, yes. That’s what I need.” Before she left home Emma’s refuge from her parents had been her daily runs. When she moved to Boston Emma had purchased a gym membership, the parks seemed much too sketchy for a relaxed jog.
Today though, the thought of being crowded in a hot room practically shoulder to shoulder with other sweating beings was much more than she could take. She could almost smell the perspiration from her apartment.
Throwing on some sweatpants and a now ridiculously loose top – have I lost weight? Emma pondered, with excitement - she decided to ignore her paranoia and go for a jog through the Esplanade Park. Coughing lightly into her hand, she failed to notice the red smear this left on her doorknob as she locked up her apartment.
* * * * *
The cool night air felt good, the trees and water flowed by, a yin to each other’s yang. Even the insects – an ever-present hum – did not seem fit to interrupt her commune with the great outdoors. Surprising, seeing as she normally attracted them from miles around.
Her run took her past a baseball diamond and Emma wondered why she had trapped herself in a gym for the last few years.
Emma’s skin had not ceased to crawl but now it almost felt good - a gentle tide as opposed to a storm – almost natural. Her body was the ocean and the world around was a stone peak for her to crash against, wearing it down. She flowed around the stationary object that was the universe and dizzied it with her speed and relentless energy.
Is this what being high feels like she wondered to herself, not overly concerned – and it was. She was high from a vast, bottomless serotonin deficiency in her brain.
“Yo! Stop darlin’,” called a voice from the side. In her cosmic oneness with the universe she had failed to notice as baseball diamonds had given way to a thinner route – the path having wound away from the water and now surrounded at a medium distance by trees either side.
Here I am, achieving oneness with the universe and along comes a man to fuck it all up she thought idly to herself like usual she added with an internal giggle.
Even in her altered state, stopping seemed like less a good plan and more a one way tr
ip to venereal disease station – she kept on running, mildly concerned at her lack of concern given her perilous situation. Does being concerned about not being concerned qualify as a paradox? she wondered to herself.
Three more youths appeared ahead of her - they less materialized more oozed into existence on the path, she felt this was in accordance with their appearance.
Glancing over her shoulder, she confirmed the talkative member of their posse had moved to a position of blocking the path behind.
Her misfiring brain saw the three men ahead as bowling pins as she rolled quickly towards them. She smashed through, scattering all three - clearly a strike.
Why then am I slowing down? She asked herself, perplexed but giggling out loud.
Another glance backwards confirmed the presence of a rogue hand with a handful of the back of her shirt. The appendage belonged to a white man of slight build in his late teens. His dark brown hair was cropped close in the inimitable style of the fauxhawk but mysteriously it still seemed to hang limply.
She kept running with her hitchhiker dutifully clinging along for the ride - though he soon lost his feet and his journey quickly turned into a bumping, swearing and scuffling affair as he bashed along the path. Somehow through exceptional application of bloody-mindedness he failed to lose hold.
A second, larger, freeloader used her decreased momentum as an excuse and jumped over his friend – and was seemingly surprised when his weight did not bring her down. Though he did succeed in stepping on her previous passengers face.
It did however completely arrest her forward momentum which was clearly not acceptable.
His smelly, sweaty arm was around her neck and his moist ragged breath in her ear. He is already out of breath? Pathetic she thought idly, her mind bitchy in its disassociativity.
“Don’t… struggle,” he panted, his stubble rasping unpleasantly against the side of her face. Running footsteps proving his even less healthy friends had at last decided to join the party. “It will.. go easier on you that way.” His hand found the back of her head as a warning, as if he could twist and pop her head off like a Russian Doll.