later is greater? or not...

so because some couldn't get online over the holiday, the current flash fiction friday deadline was extended to noon (cst) today. i was actually done by the regular deadline, but since i had an extra day, figured i'd wait and see if anything else came to me. and this is my last chance to post before noon, and it hasn't happened.
i don't dislike my entry this week, i'm just not sure it's ready yet, and i'm not sure how i feel about how much it seems influenced by my working on the children's hour (which i'll finally say something about this week)- but time's up...
big-up jj for being the man with the plan:

“They should make people take a test before they...”
“before they what?”
she cut me off, challenging me, daring me to say to her what she’d heard me say about so many others, and i had to admit to myself that she had a right to angry. but i’d never thought it’d be her, either.
i stopped and rewound my thoughts. was i friends with somebody i believed that about? who was the hypocrite here?
“how dare you judge me? and what do you know about it? you know what, you’re such a fucking snob – you sit there and look down your nose at everybody – nobody’s as smart as you, reads such good books as you, listens to such good music as you. but you don’t know shit about this. you’ve never done this and you never will. because you can’t. so you can take your opinion and shove it!”
she left me standing there, guiltily.
i had no right to judge her, but aren’t friends supposed to tell each other the truth?
i was only trying to offer an opinion, and somehow it ended in my saying – for all intents and purposes – that the person i’d been making catty comments with for so many years, was now one of those i made comments about. that wasn’t supposed to happen…
years of friendship.
years of confidences, crises, commenting on the stupid people we were somehow surrounded by…when did she become one of them?
had she become one of them?
she was the one who promised nothing would change. i knew things would, but she insisted – she’d still be the same person, so how could things change? she’d be a little more busy, that’s all.
but as soon as she came home, i could tell she wasn’t the same.
she tried to say it was me viewing her differently, but it was her. i was just reacting to the new person i was faced with – not that i saw her right away – she was busy with family and whatever else she was busy with, and i was just a friend on the phone. she was too tired. i should come by next week. she needed a few days to catch herself and adjust.
i complied – i’m her friend. i want what’s best for her, and she said she needed a few days. so i gave her a week. the longest we'd gone without seeing each other in years.
when i saw her again she was somebody else. somebody else with somebody else. somebody i didn’t know anymore, who didn’t really need me anymore. she had a different support system. and everybody changed with her – the only thing they had to say to me now was to ask when it’d be my turn. and when she heard that, she’d smile and tell them i wasn’t interested in babies. and they’d encourage me, saying it’d change my life, and she’d just keep smiling up at me then back at her new life – she knew i couldn’t.
i wasn’t the one who changed.
and then she had the nerve to come to me complaining about the difficulties of parenting, expecting sympathy. we never spared anybody else; was i supposed to spare her? i told her what i thought.
and now apparently we weren’t friends anymore.

walk good.

his name is (drumroll) toby...

i realised today when i saw him again that i shoulda named the engineer who saved the day in my previous post about the questioning of a national radio host, re: the frequency with which her vagina gets pounded, so i went back and added it, but figured i should name him here too, for those who'd already read the original version and won't notice the small edit.
and while we getting accurate, the 7second-delay that's industry standard is what wamu used to use, but apparently they now go with a 10second delay to make math easier, and nobody seems to know why 7seconds is industry standard in the 1st place. the guess is that it's the minimum time somebody felt comfortable with for doing an emergency cut+dump, with finesse.
i also learned that the wamu show i assistant produce for doesn't air with a delay at all- it's a live live show. dangerous, and thus, now even more thrilling to me...
and i forgot to mention yesterday, that the other unexpected occurrence was when a caller told me his name and comment, and i realised he'd been to my house. which is not to say i know him- he once met my mom on a flight (she's a flight attendant) and in chatting her up, revealed that he owns a film production company. my mom, being a mom, instantly told him about her daughter, the actress/writer, who he needed to connect with. then while she was staying by us, this dude came over to visit her, so the only time we've ever spoken was in my living room on a completely random occasion, which i still heckle my mother about from time to time...
today, a dude named eddie called in to say that he didn't have a father in his life and that fathers are often dysfunctional, but the shitty software sometimes loses/replaces caller details and i had to get back with him after putting him on hold to ask for his details again. so i explain the situation and ask him the questions and he starts getting all aggressive- he demands to know whether he'll get on air, and i tell the truth, which is that it's not up to me and i have no clue what his chances are. he then threatens to withdraw all his support for weta if he doesn't get on air, to which i gently point out, again, that it's not within my control, and that even if it were, i can't say that i'd care, since we're wamu.
so i get the details and put eddie back on hold, and of course, the segment ended without the host taking his call. so i sat still and hoped he'd hang up, but he must know the protocol, and waited for me to come back to him, explain that the segment was over (which he must've known because it plays through your phone when we put you on hold, and the 10second delay on her signoff had cleared) and finesse getting him off our phoneline. i said hello a buncha times and he didn't respond, but he didn't hang up and free the line, so i had to keep trying. after about 9 "hello"s, he finally responded. i said my lines, and he decided to try and be 'smart', and replied by thanking me for saving him $. he thanked me in 3 different arrangements of the same sentence, basically making it clear that he'd make good on his threat to withdraw all support for another radio station, but wasn't clever enough to think up a cutting way to say so. then he said goodbye, but as i thankfully waited for him to release the line, he said, "oh, are you still there?", to which i explained the details of ending a phone call, including the part where he had to hang up the instrument in his hand into which he'd been speaking, especially since in this particular case, i needed to close out all the lines and reopen them for the next segment. he then tried to gain my sympathy. "you know where i'm coming from, right?", so i explained again that who gets on air is out of my control, and i don't care what the fallout for weta is over it. then he said, "i know what goes on. i know how it is." so i asked what, specifically, he thought he knew, and he said he knows the host looks over all the callers to pick+choose who she wants on air. so i said that since he knows how it's handled, it's beyond me why he'd bother to waste my time and his shouting about it, and that i had 3minutes to pee before the next segment, so he needed to get off my phone. then i dropped the call without guilt.
why do stupid people try to engage with minds they clearly can't handle? do they aim to do it in situations like this because they figure it's kinda like customer service and we have to be nice and accomodating? or is it the phone-not-in-person thing? because i couldn't figure out why he kept pursuing it after the 1st go-round...it was obvious that i didn't care, couldn't do anything to help even if i did, and thought he was an idiot. the control room was laughing the whole time, so i know it was obvious. to everybody except eddie the retard, who unfortunately, will no longer be sending financial assistance to weta.
walk good.

can't always get

this is not a "woe is me" post, but i'd like to state that, mostly, my level of desire for something to happen is inversely proportional to the chances of it happening.
i need to learn that it's not all within my control- possibly much, but not all.
so in the world of live radio, today listeners almost heard some dick named chris with a 703-mobile-number ask a well-known, middle-aged, female national public radio host when was the last time she'd had her vagina pounded. but because of the 7(?)-second-delay and toby, a superstar tech who handled the cut+dump perfectly with smooth brilliance and no thought, only the control room did.
but the real question is, what makes somebody like chris make up a story about his changing location and come up with a question-or-comment to get past the phone screener then hold for 17-minutes-and-change and even indulge in a moment of small talk with the host first, just to do that? unless there's $ involved, there's no way i'd hold, on a mobile phone, in the car, for 17-plus minutes just for that small thrill. i have no idea what could sponsor such dedication, but grims suggests that chris really gets off on the sound of her voice.
also in the world of live radio, i learned about the new york taxi driver who emails the aforementioned abused host's show every single day, on the same contact list as michael moore, his lawyer who never replies, and the bbc, to discuss the usa gov't conspiracy to kill him and the art that he'll therefore have to leave with somebody when he's fleeing for his life, guggenheim and gore and the environmentalists, the irish-catholic redheaded fashion plate who's running the nazi party while modeling her fabulous wardrobe, #1, 2, 3, 4, and sometimes 5, which means earth death, etc.
this dude's sending some longass self-aggrandizing conspiracy theory shit on a daily basis, and i wonder when he drives the taxi, and wish i could get my hands on the file where this producer's been saving every one he sends. she's been collecting them for years...
tell you when i get them.
walk good.

2 out of 3... (appended 10.12pm)

am i too old to still be putting together a "best of" final bite of every meal? does a brownie-smothered-in-ice-cream count as a meal? and do i get points for creating one that's a bowlful of best-mouthfuls?
the prize is in the eating. and it's really a prize just for knowing you can't go wrong with brownies and ice-cream.
walk good.

been meaning to tell this random and slightly odd thing: the other day somebody who was liming here by us told us a story prefaced by something along the lines of "...you know sometimes an ordinary but unexpected thing will happen and for some reason your brain jumps to the most absurd conclusion, well, you'll know what i mean when i tell you this..." then told us a story that involved somebody spilling something like peas or marbles or something in the storyteller's prescence (for some reason i think he was a he) and the storyteller immediately assuming that his head had exploded, then realising that if his head was exploded he shouldn't be able to notice and comment upon it, and thus, those must not be particles of his head and its innards rolling about.
when he told this story, i knew exactly what he meant about how sometimes the mind just does that, makes bizarre leaps with very little prompting in the way of weirdness.
now i have told this story to somebody else (including the part that follows presently, about my own subsequent weird leap) and they said no, their brain never does that. so now i wanna know how many people's minds are prone to this kind of thing.
anyway, so a few days after the unremembered-friend (neither grims nor myself remembers who the hell thought his head had exploded, but we agree that we were told the story together on our living room couch) told his(?) story, i was in the car-
quick backstory: a few days prior, around the time we were told the head-exploding story, i got in the car to drive to rehearsal and noticed birdshit just inside the passenger side, on the vertical bar between front+back windows, as if grims'd been driving with the window down and me not around and a bird shat at just the right angle to catch that spot and nowhere else in the car. and i'd been saying for days that he needed to take care of it-
so i was in the car, and decided to wipe up the mess with one of the wet naps-
sorry, other half of backstory: we'd also ordered from pizza slut a few days prior, around the same time that we heard the head-exploding story and the bird shat in the car, and when the food came, grims said "look, you'll be thrilled, they gave us a shitload of wet wipes with the food" and i was thrilled, and put them in the car, knowing they'd come in handy-
so i was in the car, and decided to wipe up the mess with one of the million slut wet naps that had just come in brilliantly handy. i grabbed a little packet and tore it open, all excited about the prospect of removing the birdshit with a few damp, lemon-scented towelettes, and froze in horror when some pale yellow crumbly shit fell out.
my immediate realisation: the car had become severely radioactive and its radioactive properties had completely altered the composition of the wet wipe, leaving the pale yellow crumbled result of chemical breakdown.
my next thought was, could i go in and love up grims or would i contaminate him?
then the black squiggle on the packet in my hand resolved itself into letters. parmesan.
your brain ever do you dat?
walk good.

ps: remember when i said "monkey" was in style? well now it's pirates. it started with johnny, but it's been a slow, steady build, and i think pirates! the porno was a rung on the piratical rise in the public consciousness.

fff touchback?

unintentional- i just wrote what the current flash fiction friday starter brought to mind, and it seems to have come somewhat inspired by the recent bathing beatitude.
big-up jj for continuing to inspire.

“3.. 2.. 1..”
she rolled her eyes to herself, then grimaced in the direction of the cameraman to meet the predictable coming-on-cue. she swore up+down to friends, fans, freaks+weirdos who questioned the possible truth of the myth, he just did it to show up his coworkers.
she rolled away and made sure she’d be heard above the awed congratulations of interns,
“ugh. thank god, 'cause he sure was getting on my last nerve…couldn’t stand another minute of that inept fumbling…”
she made a show of picking a pube from her still-cherry-red mouth, and wrinkled her nose again, more delicately this time, now damning him with faint praise – she’d always liked that expression and employed it wherever possible.
her exit line was,
“damn – we’d all appreciate coming on cue a lot more if there was any kinda control. you’re always late for your next shoot after this inconsiderate asshole.”
she went back to get cleaned up, then remembered who she was meeting, and gathered up herself to go home instead – she needed the full soak+rinse before the imminent s+m encounter.
18minutes later she screeched around the corner and pulled up short in her driveway. she wanted to be in the tub instantaneously, warm water gently pressuring her orifices…
she unlocked the door with one hand while unzipping her denim mini with the other.
as she squeezed her way in the narrowly-cracked doorway the cat still managed to streak by her on its way to the opposite-neighbour’s pussy, but this time, he was on his own – and should the tail be worth the street-crossing, more power to him – she was getting wet.
she stepped out of skirt+heels in 3 quick strides, dropped her keys+purse on the end table on the way through the living room and had her halter-top up+over her head by the time she reached the bedroom.
she grabbed oscar from his pedestal and kept moving through to the bathroom.
90seconds later she sat on the edge of the tub, one hand wriggling lazily in the stream of hot water slowly raising the water-level and fogging up the mirror, and the other wriggling not-so-lazily between her thighs.
a sudden thought made her reach over to the corner of the tub for oscar. she flicked the little switch, and her almost-dismay was relieved by the familiar buzzing.
she smiled for real for the first time that day.
the tub was almost ready.
lunch with mom would have to wait.

walk good.

lockoff

i do forgive, i just never forget. and my never forgetting is not about holding onto resentment, but about the fact that i try to learn from my mistakes, so my memory remains explicit about anything that doesn't fall out in a way that pleases me. no fuckery is to be repeated.
and i might be an idealist about art but i'm a realist about myself and my life, so if i know it's impossible to have something, i decide i don't want it. it's much easier to deal with.
these things lead to the lock off.
it takes a lot for me to get to the point of locking off somebody, because i'm blessed with good judgement about who i want to get close to- if a person is likely to do something that results in my having to lock them off, chances are i'll never spend enough time with them for it to happen. it goes back to my basic hedonism, i guess- if i don't enjoy it, i don't do it, and that applies to people too.
but on the odd occasion that i do have to lock off somebody, once i lock them off there's no going back. it doesn't matter what the person does to atone or how they may change, because it's not about them- when i lock you off, i lose interest in your existence. so there's no going back, not because i continue to dislike you or be angry with you; there's no going back because you're a nonentity. i've learned what i needed to from you.
people have said that they think my forgiving but not forgetting is not true forgiveness, but i beg to differ. i don't forget for my own purposes. not because i can't let go of what happened- if i never again speak to those involved, it because they've ceased to exist, not because i'm still mad. people need to get over themselves and realise that as self-centred as they are, we each are, so i can't be bothered to stay mad @ somebody- it's all about me, and maybe i just don't enjoy your company anymore...
anyway, i've had to lock off more people in dc in 8years than in my entire life in trinbago, and at least 2 of them were working acquaintances (and a 3rd, a friend who occasionally dabbles in theatre). i never thought that actors were all sociopaths, as often stereotyped, but i'm beginning to think that in the usa, it's true...
more later.
walk good.

fff for my mom

big-up our boy jj, not just for this week's flash fiction friday, but also for reminding me what i'd like to gift my mom every day...

"A cool breeze licked the back of her neck..." making her shiver as she licked her mango-passion-fruit ice-cream. it was a little chilly for ice-cream, but the chalkboard outside the little shop had looked so inviting, with its promises of her favourite flavour combinations in a rich, creamy blend, held together by a sugar cone. and it didn’t disappoint. she was delighted by the concoction – if only it were warmer outside, it would make the moment perfect.
and she deserved a perfect moment or 2, she figured. she deserved to indulge in some ice-cream and sunshine, and there had to be a way to make the sun cooperate.
she looked up, willing the sun to come out and play…
sun, i know you can hear me. i know you can feel me needing your warmth…
she thought as hard as she could about the beach, about laying out on a woven bamboo mat under the ever-dangerous coconut tree – yes mom, i know they kill tens of people every year, yes, i’ll look out for falling coconuts – trying to ignore the man selling more beads she didn’t need because she already wore them on every limb so they could dance in the sunlight when she was still, trying not to attract stray dogs when she finally sat up to eat a bake+shark, trying to get sun evenly all over her body…
she thought about carnival tuesday, every carnival tuesday, miles and miles down the road in hot sun behind the music truck, burning slowly as she sweated off the sunblock.
she thought about running away from class to sit in the garden by the fountain, ducking behind bushes when teachers were spotted approaching, just to be outside in the sun, as if it were a rarity where she grew up…
sun, i know you love me. we old friends…
and she pushed with her mind – pushed the clouds aside, being careful not to spill a single drizzly drop, pushed the air currents away from each other like moses parting the dead sea (or was it the red sea?), pushed and diverged and slowly dissipated the mostly-intangible mess of air, dust and water-vapour between herself and her source of life – pushed it all gently out of the way, like simply opening the curtains in a too-dark bedroom on a late sunday morning when the smell of an imminent and tasty sunday lunch won’t let you sleep any more, no matter how hard you feted on saturday night (and that sunday morning self).
and then she could see and feel her sun.
she turned 180degrees so it could caress the spot on the back of her neck that the breeze had chilled, and sighed serenely as she licked her now-dripping mango-passion-fruit ice-cream.
she turned back around, now in search of a bench to indulge her new desire to dilly-dally outside, and came face to face with a quizzical look from the man who’d been in line behind her for ice-cream. she knew he’d seen her send the gloom of the day away and was trying to decide whether her prescence and the weather change were unconnected, or he’d actually seen what he thought he’d seen.
she knew she shouldn’t, but it was a beautiful day – who could resist?
she grinned right at him, gave a tiny wave, then pointed upward with the same hand.
she drew a big sweeping motion across the sky, winked at him to indicate this was her personal gift to a fellow-ice-cream-lover (he had chocolate-raspberry, another best) then sauntered away to let him enjoy his ice-cream and special-delivery-rainbow in peace.

walk good.

in the hindsight-perfected story of my life, this will have been written immediately following the experience of being a youth man's 1st ever blue devil after getting sick and missing the end of jouvay 2006.

i have to be in the right frame of mind for bathing. if i don't have time to indulge, sometimes i'd rather not start. it's a personally intense labour of love to lather then lotion to a smooth+creamy finish. it deepens my mood so much that i sometimes have to make myself "get up" for it.
it leads to the kind of introspection that makes me make a face- my bathing face- a combination of fighting to keep my eyeballs from swimming away, and the study of soap, lather-potential, and self.
bathing+lotioning is kinetic masturbation.
i adore myself in my smoothnes, softness, firmness, curviness, all in all the right places.
i take my bathing very seriously, hence the extra steam- it promotes absorption in thought by keeping the world a warm, wet wrinkle in time away. this is naked time @ it's realest when my hands explore flesh usually worshipped by others' fingertips wanting to visit the oasis conjured by my scent mirage.
watery grave it's not.
bathing would be more erotic if i didn't take it so absolutely dead serious.
the word "shower" is merely my vocabulatory concession to america because i'd usually rather not try to explain the langourous pleasure that demands the word i prefer, grew up on, in a climate that can't let you let shit slide. 5minutes sounds like criminal depravation. i need time to smell effortlessly and freshly earthy. like i have a naturally perfumed vagina pulsing against my thong.
bathing is composing odes to my navel, a small, lint-free pond i can never resist stirring with a finger. overflowing, displacing just enough to fill the gap between fingertip and curved nail. i take this bathing (ritual) so serious that it can be blasphemous to clothe the oiled, massaged skin begging to keep breathing freely and be touched all over again while it still feels perfect.

walk good.

champagne in a sow's ear

i think it's a disgusting idea to drink anything out of someone else's shoe. or one's own, for that matter.
and i think it's a bad idea to agree to payment for services rendered in dogs. especially poodles with pink bows.
walk good.
ps: there's a proper post in my mind, but time is short and it's prob'ly not...but hopefully tomorrow, now that mom's left.

new one

and i'm back.
and yes, there will be regular posts again from here on, not just flash fiction fridays.
but 1st, the latest fff, courtesy the amazing jj, who achieves wonders from purgatory:

“If he doesn’t stop that incessant …”
she stopped, mid-mutter, to consider whether ‘incessant’ meant ‘unstoppable’, or simply ‘not stopping’, since her intended success in stopping him implied the latter, so if the former were the correct meaning, she would’ve misspoken, which she tried not to do, even while planning a murder. even murder’s no excuse for linguistic laziness…
she resumed her contemplation, still bothered by the constant drone emanating from her bed, but comforted by the knowledge that she wouldn’t share it much longer.
there were so many options, but she needed the perfect one, or it would all be worthless in the end – she had no intention of spending any time hiding or in punishment for relieving herself of the snoring buffoon she was temporarily attached to.
things changed so much – she didn’t despise him until he threw the pre-nuptial agreement in the face of her devotion. it’d never occurred to her to take him for his money. she was in love, and it made her blind and deaf to his snoring, pettiness, womanising, and a host of other faults. she took him at face value, and was so thrilled by this smart and discerning man’s interest that she never noticed how truly extravagant their courtship was – she knew they were nice restaurants and fancy parties, but didn’t know enough about the finer things to know how fine it all was – she thought the tiny orange balls on the rice+fish rolls were the salt-equivalent of the coloured sugar crystals that decorated the cheap cookies she bought in the corner store.
when he introduced her to his friends, she thought their names sounded vaguely familiar, but never placed them until portfolios came under discussion, or she saw their pictures in the paper the next day. and even then, she never quite understood what they did, she just knew it was somehow important.
but now she knew better.
she knew that she'd married a pig, and should’ve walked away when he made her sign that contract as a prerequisite to marriage. but in that moment she was so shocked to discover that he didn’t trust her after all, and all she wanted was to earn that from him, as he had hers.
“goddamn that snoring – i can’t hear myself think!”
funny how she could be silent, thinking about anything, but he always provoked such a visceral response that she found herself nearly shouting at him, even when he was asleep in another room.
but she’d made good use of her time since the wedding. she’d become the perfect model wife he wanted – she learned enough to fit in, but not enough to intimidate his friends with her knowledge – at least that was what she allowed him to believe. what she was actually doing was equipping her arsenal. she learned everything she could about his business, his cronies, and their connections, about how his empire worked and any loopholes that might come in handy or need to be closed, and about the biology and chemistry of the human body.
all the time he thought she spent shopping for herself and their home, doing what he charmingly termed “woman crap”, she spent learning how to destroy him, handing her sister the joy of keeping up their household’s appearances – she was better at it anyway – funny how sisters otherwise so similar had such different interests.
“i can’t work with this noise…”
she found herself speaking aloud again, furious at his holding her back, even now, by making it impossible to plan properly amid the ruckus.
“how can any person snore so loud?”
she went to check on him. maybe she could shift him into a different position to decrease the rumbling.
she stepped into the bedroom and saw him splayed out on the bed – of course it never occurred to him to leave her some space to sleep – blankets shoved off to one side, pillows on the floor on the other side.
she picked up the pillow as he snorted and grunted, and rose just in time to see him bury a finger knuckle-deep in his left nostril, then shove the same hand into his underwear.
he was disgusting.
and the snoring was getting louder by the minute.
then, for the first time since the pre-nup, she just acted in response to him – didn’t think about it, about how he’d react, how the henchmen would respond, how it would affect her sorry situation.
she just put the pillow over his face.
it sat there lightly. it was as if she was just trying out the gesture.
without applying force, she just placed it there and looked at the new picture – it was already more appealing – his face was covered, his snoring muffled slightly. and he didn’t move.
she got comfortable with the thought that she finally had the advantage.
she got comfortable with the thought that it could all end, right then.
she began to smile.
then she applied pressure. leaned into it, pushing her weight down, now thinking that the personal trainer had been a good investment after all. he’d probably start struggling any second, but it’d all be over in less than 5 minutes.
then she stopped again.
she pulled the pillow away and let it drop to the floor.
she stepped back from the bed.
“i know i could do it now and you couldn’t stop me. but i want you to know when i do it. i want you to be aware of what’s happening and why, so i can see the expression on your face…”

walk good.

making magic

i know that 2 weeks ago i was scarce, and last week was only a little better, but i must take a few more days while some magic is set in motion.
back soon, with inspiration.
walk good.

#34

jj is the man for keeping this going, even when ingrates like myself forget to help out by sending starter suggestions. but between his perseverance, and other fff-ers who are more helpful than i, we have fff #34, and my promise that i will try to send some starters this week:

It was either a pill or a piece of candy…she pondered it briefly, then realised that perhaps it didn’t really matter – at this point she would happily settle for a placebo effect, once it was a positive one, and she'd read about that, knew it was possible…in her current condition, even a placebo was nothing to sneeze at, literally or figuratively.
she again pondered briefly – this time on what mother said about taking candy from strangers – did that apply to medicine as well? because if not, she had no problem saying that she was completely convinced it was a pill.
all she really wanted was to breathe easily again, and mother’s rules were getting in the way…but mother always said the rules were for her own good, her own protection, so wouldn’t mother want her to take what this stranger offered, if it would help? she just wanted to feel better. wouldn’t mother want the same?
she corralled what breath she could muster to summon mother. it was hard to control her thoughts while she was struggling for air, but she just managed to bring mother mostly into focus.
what should i do, mother?
what do you think you should do, cordelia? do you think he would hurt you?
i don’t know, mother. i don’t know him enough.
how can you not know? has he ever done anything to hurt you before?
mother, i’m sorry, i’ve never seen him before…
cordelia. you must recognise your father.
but mother, i don’t have a father…
of course you do. everybody does. who do you think takes care of you?
you do, mother.
now cordelia, you know i don’t exist anymore, except here, in your head. you must start living in the real world – and your father would never do anything to hurt you.
i don’t know this man.
yes, you do. and don’t think, young lady, that because you summoned me, i have to play along with this silly game. your father’s done nothing but love you and care for you – you can’t deny that.
she expelled the air she’d been holding onto for dear life and let mother pass away.
that wasn’t the response she’d expected.
but as her head cleared slightly now that minimal oxygen flow was reestablished, she looked at the man again, at his outstretched hand offering the tiny white globe, and made a choice – it couldn’t hurt any more than not breathing, and mother seemed sure that this man wasn’t dangerous.
as she sucked on the little ball and its hard white outside dissolved, her mouth was flooded with a bitter taste – it initially came as a relief – only medicine would taste so bad – but when she looked up at the man to thank him, she saw a strange smile anchoring a decidedly unfatherly expression – is that why they’re called strangers? because they look strange?
mother?
mother!
mother...was her last coherent thought before she passed out.

walk good.