Trench Coat Hallucination Eight
I�m caught in the mirror again. Deep linty pockets in the laundry are harboring my chap stick, and my pleated lips rush past each other. Nostrils on a virus-infused button of a nose flair, and I can�t help but reach up to sniffle, rubbing the uneven cartilage. Ngh.
I open the bathroom door, peering out to see if any psychological thriller child horrors are lurking on the 11:00 dark stairs. Judging the situation safe, I dash out of the steamy bathroom, my towel doing little against the hallway�s cool air that chills my bubble bath scummy skin.
In the closed-door safety of my bedroom, I drop the towel on top of last week�s clothes. Its departure reveals a schizophrenic body, at times a Venus de Milo of smooth curves and at others an ugly visage like a matronly German, with child-bearing hips and ungainly bulges and breasts too small to fit into most lingerie.
The bed sheets are chill, like the November night knocking at the window. Last night, I didn�t mind the cool Egyptian cotton against my skin, didn�t feel awkward and vulnerable didn�t feel alone � wasn�t alone. But you�ve gone again, and without you I�m not brave, and pajamas are my only guard against impending heartbreak.
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She glimpses herself in the bathroom mirror. Her face is tilted slightly, angular, framed by wet strands of brown hair. The dark blue vein kinking down the side of her face. Eyelids rimmed with sparse eyelashes and sallow pink. Her lips are chapped and vaguely purple. Down a narrow neck to tanned shoulders, the pale slope of her chest till a striped towel blocks the rest from view. Thin freckled forearms are crossed over her torso; the knobby discs of her spine are visible, and the scar from falling in the high school parking lot. She slips through the door, into her bedroom. The towel slides down and wrinkles in a pile at her scarred, pruney feet.
Pulling the sheets apart, the girl slips between them. It's stained with nosebleed blood and dead skin and drool and sex sweat. She gets out of bed, pulls on an over-sized t-shirt and a pair of underwear still stained with blood after years of washing. She wraps the covers around herself again. Her pink teddy bear, two years her junior, is at her side tonight. Its cheeks are threadbare but its smile as serene as when her mother plucked it off the shelf at Macy's.
The minutes go by slowly, guarded by digital red numbers. She remembers the night before, when the minutes slid past freely. Her face is crumpled and damp like the tissue clutched in her palm.