Genesis
you shall have no other gods before me

Think. (not many people do)

A cold, white tile room, with people packed inside like sardines. Well, no, not really, more like just one big salmon, vacuum packed in a thin plastic skin. The woman stood behind a podium at the northern end of the room. She spoke, face pale, skin damp. She was nervous, but didn�t know why. It could be the press that stood before her, with leering eyes, leering questions.

This woman, she thought she had it, had the answers, all of them. She had investigated it, researched it, read about it. (Like no one else had done the same.)

This woman, with her serving size breasts, mountainous hips and over stuffed thighs all wrapped in a white dress and white low heeled shoes (the dress made her feel more important, like a doctor) with her stubby fingers that traced the golden oak podium, who thought she had the word in her hand, was the perfect example that too much tea, organic foods, incense, meditation, and all that �good chi� was bad for a person. Really bad.

Really, she wasn�t that fat, but Jessica thought she was. Jessica, the young 26 year old woman, at the south end of the hall, leaning against the cold wall, with scapula length black hair pulled up into a loose pony tail, and her icy blue eyes that stared out from under her lazy eyelids, hated the woman at the podium. She hated every fiber, ever layer of fat, of hair. Jessica hadn�t even spoken one word to the woman, but she knew she would hate her.

�Most things,� the woman began, which caused many note books to be taken out, tape recorders to be started, and video cameras to be turned on. �Most things in life can�t be explained, thus they aren�t explained. Religious events that take place, such as a stigmata and those who claim they�ve spoken to God, or even those that have had a near death experience cannot be explained, even by science. Not completely.�
And so the hands raised and the questions began.

At the intermission of the program, Jessica approached the woman out in the hall, where no one else had seemed to find her. The woman looked exhausted as she downed Styrofoam cup after Styrofoam cup of water. �Do you believe in God?� Jessica asked, nearly causing her to choke up water out of surprise. �The whole mood I got out of you was that you don�t.� The woman looked at Jessica with a confused look on her face. �You don�t want to answer, do you?�

She wrinkled the cup she held in her right hand and swallowed. �Well, I�m still looking for the religion that best fits me. In an essence, yes, yes I do.�

�In an essence,� Jessica repeated, knowing it was just a cover-up for her real beliefs.

�Why does it matter?� the woman asked.

�Because my dear mother, I need to know what I believe.�

The woman�s eyes grew wide, and suddenly an alarm went off causing Jessica to wince. The woman grew angered and slammed the cup flat against the table. �It�s time for you to wake up, Jessica Shelby.�

The real world was bright as a light bulb without a lampshade, as Jessica parted her eyelids. She lay on the floor of her one bedroom, one bathroom apartment�s living room. Straining her hearing she could barely hear her alarm clock going off in her bedroom which neighbored the room she was in. Jessica groaned, she had done it again, fallen asleep without command. It wasn�t a kind of thing that if she was walking down the road, or at a club, that she would suddenly fall asleep.

Oh no, what Jessica had, it was more like the safety trigger on a gun. Whenever she fell asleep, it prevented her from what she was about to do, whatever that might be. Call it a special case of narcolepsy if you wish, call it what the hell you want. (Why wasn�t this around when she did drugs or drink alcohol?) It was �one of those things that cannot be explained� as the woman in her dream had said. The woman she thought was her mother.

What Jessica really didn�t understand was how her dream world could be any safer than the real world. Oh, it was times like these that she wished she were wasted, high, stoned, trippin� but her body didn�t allow her to waste it�s only command center on fun. She slowly sat up, her heat pounding inside of her chest instead of her head. She stood, also slowly, watching herself for dizzy spells and also trying to remember what it was she wanted to do that caused her �safe mode� to click on. She then walked over to the mirror in the living room. Placing her fingertips onto her face to stretch her skin in different angles, making her smile, frown, smile, again, repeat.

�How am I feeling today?� dropping her hands to her sides, she asked herself a loud as she looked into her own blue eyes. �Selfish,� she responded, �As always.�

She looked into her own mind, wondering what the date was. Could it be the first date of the month, or the third Friday? Those were the only days that mattered to her. Those were the only days that mattered to any average hardworking American.

Those days were paydays.

Funny thing was, Jessica didn�t earn a dime of the paychecks she received. No, it wasn�t welfare or her parent�s money, the money she got in the mail is the money someone else should be getting, the people that lived there before her. She never sent the checks back to the postal office, never even cared who the person was. Sure, the money could be someone�s mortgage or their sick little two year-old�s medicine, but how Jessica saw it as was that the money did serve its purpose. It paid for her mortgage and, it paid for her sick two year old�s medicine. That was, if she were ever in that situation.

But she never was.

Turning her head to look at the time she sighed. Why couldn�t she have slept a bit longer, so she would have missed her voluntary time at the hospital? That way she could blame it on her problems, not her own mistake and fault. Oh yes, candy striping was the most enjoyable past time. It was Jessica�s way of saying she was sorry, oh so sorry, for everything she had done in her life, every little sin. It was like she was screaming to the world, �I�m sorry okay?! Do you forgive me now?�

But the world never listens.

Easter egg yellow, spring time blue, throbbing heart red, grass stain green, and many more missing crayons from the crayola box. All tiny little circles and ovals separated by Dixie cups. They rolled along the room temperature hall. They sat on a plastic cart, never being delivered to their owners. Jessica breathed in and coughed, remembering the little facts they had taught her before she became a candy striper. All that air floating around, it could be air from 1912 for all you knew. For allergy purposes the hospital never took in good, new air, they just recycled the old. Kind of like what they do with their patients. It sickened her to think of this. To intake something that old could even begin to turn you old, give you wrinkles and folds, organ problems and arthritis. It sent shivers down her vertebrae and cartilage. So there she was, pushing the medicine cart up and down the halls, breathing in all that air.

�Oh Jessica!� called an annoyingly familiar voice. In reaction Jessica stopped in her tracks, but didn�t look around to see who it was. She felt a hand on her shoulder and a face came into her view. �Jessica, dear, you�re supposed to give these medicines to the patients.� Of course, it was one of the nurses. This one was Beatrice. And she looked like a Beatrice at that. She could make an excellent Mrs. Claus, what was she doing here? All that jumbling jelly, Jessica had already began to hate this woman. Not only that, but Nurse Beatrice talked to Jessica as if she was a twelve year-old girl. Actually, this woman reminded her of the woman in her dream. Quite much, but it wasn�t a perfect fit.

�See, you look at the roster here�� she pointed and read a loud the first number. Right there, she was breaking a law of a patient�s right to privacy. But Jessica didn�t care. �Abram, Beth.� Beatrice looked up at the room numbers around them. �Oh look, you see, we�re right here!� The nurse smiled and took a cup in her hand and waddled over to the door, opening it and gestured for her to follow. Jessica did, but stopped at the doorway when she looked into the room. It was a dinosaur that laid on the bed in room S34, a woman that had been rotting away and was now nothing but a dependant ninety year old infant. She was just regressing back to her days as a fetus. Were these pills keeping her alive? Then why should Jessica give them to her? Just let her die already, Jessica thought, let her know that death wants her. �Come on in,� the nurse called out to her.

�I can�t go in there,� Jessica said suddenly.

Nurse Beatrice looked surprised and walked up to the doorway, where Jessica stood and placed a firm grip onto right her arm. �There�s really no reason to be shy, hon.�

Jessica was afraid now and she looked around desperately for an exit, anything. Her heart pounding inside of her, she was beginning to feel the symptoms of an anxiety attack. Then she stared at the cart and grabbed a Dixie cup full of whichever color pills for whichever sickness. These were the strongest ones, they just had to be. The cup made it up as far as her chin, then everything went black.

Pitch black.

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