Something crashed so Anna opened one sleepy eye. Tyler had knocked over a lamp as he tried to unpack his suitcase quietly. The man was like Helen Keller in a china shop. “Sorry, sorry,” he whispered, setting the lamp back upright. Anna closed her eye again. She did not feel like talking. Her head throbbed and the room was spinning. Or moving. She felt like she was still in the car, speeding down the highway at eighty miles an hour. Maybe this was all one bad car dream. Maybe they hadn’t even arrived in Wormwood yet, maybe Wormwood wasn’t really their destination at all. Maybe she’d wake up in San Francisco, covered in chocolate and gay men.
“Anna.”
Oh god. She hated the fake whisper. Tyler wasn’t concerned about waking her up. He was trying to wake her up. Why even bother to whisper?
“Anna?”
Anna groaned and rolled over, away from him.
“I’m going to go on a walk. Scout around town some.”
“Fine.”
“Do you need anything?”
“Sleep.”
“Okay. I might be gone a while, depending on how much stuff there is to scout.”
Anna pulled the blanket over her head.
“Knock yourself out.”
Tyler the Dinosaur tromped out of the room, flicking the light off as he left. Anna listened to him go down the hall and then the stairs to the first floor. Could you hear everything in this house? Paper walls and three dolls, all of them living together.
Anna pulled the blanket off her head and sat up in bed. The shades were drawn, with only a crack a golden light running along their bottom. She dipped a hand down into her suitcase and pulled out a magazine. It was too dark to read the blocks of text but she could make out the models well enough. Anna studied each picture carefully, weighing the pros and cons of each woman’s figure and the way she presented herself to the camera. The clothes were secondary, really, something she barely considered as she flipped page after glossy page.
When Anna finished reading the magazine she held it up to her nose, inhaling its gluey, perfumed scent. Then she tossed the magazine onto the floor, rolled over, and fell asleep, snoring lightly into her feather pillow.
4 comments:
Helen Keller in a china shop?
You better believe it, baby. I'm real proud of that one.
I'm drinking orange soda right now. So refreshing and delicious. On our trip to claifornia this summer my cousin Steve and I drank about forty gallons of this stuff. Unfortunately, orange soda does not count as a fruit source.
Fruit source!
"claifornia"
Isn't that a Red Hot Chili Peppers song?
Fruit source...or vegetable origin?
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