The convict sun broke through the second story window and raped the remaining early evening shadows at play. Bethany slept there, in the corner of the room…just out of its sinister radiation reach. She had painstakingly planned and eventually positioned the bed exactly there; a platoon of colorful stuffed animals and half painted canvases of carnival clowns always on the guard around her, in the event the murderous fire ball star decided to break the laws of physics and rush her as she slumbered.
She slept uneasy.
Sheets balled up at her sleek dancer feet, the tips of her curled tender toes painted digital red.
Her breathing labored as she hunted or was hunted, she could never be sure, through the disco light madness that always filled the latter two or three periods of her REM sleep.
Pillowcase-less pillows a plenty lined the side of her bed that’s not pressed firmly, (and secured beneath the mattress with black electrical tape), against the wall.
Her breasts formed perfectly symmetrical mounds snug tightly beneath a Jeff Buckley t-shirt.
The sun crept closer…across the immaculately dusty floor, up a splintered red painting easel, pausing briefly to tan the white complexion of clown number thirteen and then continue on its murderous journey up, up and over the top; a shot of laser photons to the wall beyond, resting mere feet above Bethany’s twenty three year old brain house.
Her angelic face a surreal island surrounded by tight curly waves of moderately damp hair, alternately scrunched into a pained expression, then relaxed back into such an alarmingly beautiful state even the spiders and roaches in the room fought for close up views. Sweat beads lingered at her temples and at her delicately pointed chin…and further down the length of her slender swan neck. Beneath her arms the juice of tormented dreams formed stains that at right angles resembled biblical figures and at left angles Dantes demons.
The shine slides down the wall like bright honey syrup. Moments away.
Mere moments away.
Bethany whimpered. Her internal clock registering the time. Time for escape back to the insanity of reality. Time to wake up.
Her brother would bellow, ‘WAKE THE **** UP.’
He would, back in the day when he was capable of bellowing such things. Back in the day when he would lead his army of pets commandingly into her fortress of girly solitude, dogs and cats, ferrets and little white bunnies, all trained at brother Kirks green army man military boot camp.
She loved her brother. He wasn’t a twin although the resemblance was enough to confuse relatives. Back when they were children that is. Before she started to develop and bleed.
Once that happened Kirk ignored her. He had gained other interests and left her cleaning the litter boxes and cages of **** pellets.
Of course now, he’s dead.
She found his corpse one grey night. It was feeding time and she was hungry. She swept out the front door calling his name, assuming he had awakened early and made a break for it. He always liked to hunt alone. Or at least without her. He had ‘others’ he preferred the company of.
She leapt down the front steps and practically trampled his already deformed head. Sunken. Deserted. Barely recognizable. But she knew. In fact, in retrospect, she felt the loss before she had risen that night. Felt it in her heart. A flutter. A skipped beat. A debilitating feeling of paralyzing sentiment. She woke that evening with a hunger since unrivaled. And it wasn’t for feeding. It was for revenge.
Now inches away, the brilliant sun beam sank closer.
The alarm finally raged filling the silent early evening with a piercing caterwaul of disorienting howls. Atreyu. She loved to wake up to ‘the Crimson.’ It was Kirks favorite.
With a cartoon like motion Bethany’s glamorous hand darted out and pierced the snooze button.
Her right eye, greener than the left, peeled open and her eyelash singed with the heat of the beam.
She grinned. Her teeth blinding. White and razor sharp.
The sun made its final creeping decent, still thinking it had the upper hand, thinking that tonight would be the night it sank into the western sky with Bethany’s soul as its prize.
But she was gone.
Time to rise sleepy heads. For tonight is the night Europa slays the might Zeus and returns to her rightful orbit. Tonight, its time to die all over again.
