19 October 2009

Positive Negative Spaces or Just an excerpt of a mishmash story 1 for LTWR100

The next morning Thanh wakes from a terrible dream about growing penises on her body. It was terrible and disgusting so she tried to forget all about it, but parts of it felt so uncannily real that she would rewind her mind to start thinking about it again. She would remember that one part where she attempted to piss standing up. She was surprised she didn’t piss in her sleep. But it must have been because of that odd position she was in on the couch that made her dream this, and she also had no blanket to cover her.

Jonathan had already left for work. There's a note on the coffee table from him, but she ignores it. She called in sick and fell asleep on the couch again.

It was right about yesterday when she realized she had to leave. She was walking on the way home and heard children yelling. Two elementary school boys were fighting each other in an empty lot covered in a copper sheen.

“Hey!” she yelled. “You two, stop that!”

She grabbed them away from each other. They must have been in first grade. They lunged at each other again, wrestling free from her grip.

“Give it back! It’s mine!”

“No! Finder’s keepers!”

“I saw it first!”

The kids started tumbling toward the ground again, and Thanh desperately reached for the object from their hands and pulled the thing away from them.

Something felt wrong. She stood between them, all eyes on her clenched fist. Thanh slowly opened her hands to reveal half of a lizard’s body. Suddenly she felt a sinking feeling, an urge to pee. She shuddered; staring shocked at the nasty entrails running off her wrist. One of the boys took advantage of the odd slowness of the moment and snatched the thing away, laughing, while the other one chased him. Thanh sat down to let the nausea pass, and wiped the goo off her hand with the grass and flowers. She imagined the dying lizard in her hand again, trying to collect some sympathy for the animal she just murdered. Instead, she just felt relief.

I need to move out, she thought, and then laid her head down in the grass. The daisies above her were terrifically metallic in their sheen.