Last night, after years of insomnia, was the first night in years she laid awake the entire night. Every relaxation technique she tried didn’t work. Counting sheep just made her head feel like it was caught in a vise grip. Meditation made the darkness and loneliness of the night in her king sized bed make her feel like her body weighed a thousand pounds, every unpleasant memory from her childhood came back to her. Her classmates’ laughter echoed in the darkness as though she were pulled through some dark well. Then she saw an orange glow on each of her sides like she was twisting around the corners of a fun house. Dark, ominous, light bulb shaped heads rose on each side in the shape of pumpkins. Her eyes flashed open, and there was tightness in her chest.

She remembers these feelings from the time she was a secretary in a dentist’s office. She’d come home from work mentally and emotionally exhausted, and after cooking herself dinner and watching Friends, she’d go to bed remembering all her failings of unanswered phones and people glaring behind a long line waiting to get checked in.

The pummeling in her heart is back, this panic with nothing physically there, her mind simply can’t shut off, yet can’t think about the necessary tasks of booking the maids, calming irate customers yelling that they left some dust, didn’t get all the grime off the tub, breaking figurines with their dusters. He is eating away at her good soul and so is his new bitch.  She grabs toilet paper from the hanging roll, and grimaces from twisting her back like a circus freak. Whoever installed that toilet paper holder should have been shot. She claws at it like an animal because the roll won’t spin. It fits too tight. The toilet paper abrades her raw skin. Another outbreak. Nothing like falling in love with a guy that has herpes, only to have him dump you. She walks back into the bedroom to pick out her attire for the workday.

On her dresser sits a Gucci Bear he’d brought her from his trip to Italy. That was probably the trip he’d found some rotten smelling whore that infected him then infected her. In the corner of the mirror sits a picture of their trip to Grace Land. He would serenade her with Elvis songs when they took candle light bathes together. He’d liked her house, and was going to help her start an antique business. She was in a prime location. Out in the country with lush green hills where yuppies from the burbs took weekend drives to show kids that milk actually comes from a cow. He would put up a steel building in her yard, and consigners would come and rent space. They’d share the profits.

She opens a dresser drawer and pulls out a pair of underwear. Showering doesn’t appeal to her today. She would tie her hair back into a pony tail. She just works as a scheduler and dispatcher for Merry Maids after all. No one can see her talking on a phone. No one pays attention if her hair is a little oily.  The bathtub reflects in the mirror, and she sees the shampoo bottle that sits on the ledge is still almost full. Bathing will make her sleepier. Buying toiletries all the time just costs her more money. The cats sit outside her bedroom door jumping up and making the door rattle with their front paws. She remembers not feeding them when she got home from work last night. The rattling door makes her jump like nerves connected to an electrical socket. Nausea creeps up her throat. Every unexpected sound does this. She pulls on a pair of nylons and stops mid calf. The cold, clammy palms of her hands sickens her. She doesn’t know how anyone can sweat so much. The image of skinned rabbits that hung in the barn with her father as a child, that’s how she feels, raw and red. Her own body odor is close to that. The picture of her at Grace Land appears foreign. She’ll never visit places where she sees laughing couples again.

She pulls up her nylons and walks to the bedroom window. The sheet metal for the building sat there for a year now. She’d given him the money to start the project. That’s when it all changed. The dinners out, the evening walks, throwing pebbles at her window like some kid out of The Walton’s. It all stopped. Suddenly, his work consumed everything, and when it didn’t consume everything, it was either stopping by the bar in the city, or playing cards with his friends.

She walks back to the mirror on the dresser, and curls her lip at herself. She punches the glass with her small fist and the mirror teeters back and forth. The wood splintered along the base. She jerks her head toward the door and hears the cats scurry away. She grabs her bathrobe off the hanger on the door and goes out to the kitchen. The collar of the bathrobe sticks and smells musty. In the kitchen, the cats are jumping on the counter like wild monkeys. She reaches into the pantry to retrieve their bag of nuggets, and the cats walked around her feet like hungry sharks. Felix darts into the dark pantry, and she stoops down grasping for him. The side of her head strikes one of the shelves, and she drops the bag of cat nuggets on the floor. Her neck tenses. Little brown pieces roll over the floor. Toby starts eating food as he stands underneath her legs. Felix’s head pops out of the pantry and sniffs the air.

“Get out of my way, you fucken cats!”

She grabs Felix by the scuff of his neck and pulls him out of the pantry. He turns his neck to bite her, and she pulls her hand back and bops the top of his head. She losses her balance and steps on the hard pieces of food. Collapsing to the floor, her knees crunch more cat food.

“Fuckng animals. You’re worse than nagging children!”

Litter stamped across the floor, paws washed in the water bowls, puke on the living room carpet, yowling to be petted. She has been oblivious to them being in her house other than seeing them skitter to the door when she comes home from work. All her thoughts are in the middle of her pounding head focusing on his wormy Lawrence Welk Show smile, beat up Cadillac, tuxedo charm. Something with wooly hair from a seventies porn movie. If he were there, it could be a bad soap opera. She’d lure him up the stairs with long painted nails in her house coat lined with fur. He’d be chasing her for mirrored ceiling sex. She would run into her bed room with canopy bed and satin sheets, run to her vanity and pull out her gun, look him straight in the eye, run the bullet through his heart.

Her shadow of a reflection looks back at her through the kitchen window. Her shoulder blades stick up outlining the sheer thin cloth of her robe. She looks like a homeless woman with a home. A soulless woman. Her world, this farm, her job in the city, working for her obese boss who gets off on yelling at the Maids who can’t be Merry, and the man in the city she keeps hoping will drive back into her yard.

Previous publication credits include a short story, “The Fallen,” that has previously been published in an Anthology entitled, Deadication, published by Panic Press in the United Kingdom. A second publishing of that story has been accepted to the ezine, Surreal Grotesque, to be released in the second volume within the next several months.

Two other short stories of mine have appeared in the ezine, Colored Chalk. The first story was in volume one, entitled, “Friend in the Closet.” The second story was entitled, “Frankly, Scarlet,” in volume three. I’ve also had a short story, “Devotion,” published in the ezine, The Q Review in January of 2011.

Previous publications can be found on Colored Chalk and Q Review.

Colored Chalk "Fallible"

Designed and edited by Caleb J. Ross, with work by Nik Korpon, Michael A. Kechula, Anthony David, Chris Deal, Charles King, Michael Paul Gonzalez, Joel Shoemaker, Sean P. Ferguson, Mark Grover and Keith Haworth.

Colored Chalk "Steel-Toed Boots"

Edited and designed by Caleb J. Ross, with work by Michael Paul Gonzalez, Anthony David, Jason Heim, Mark Grover, Jason Kane, Gordon Highland, and Mlaz Corbier.