My Talking Bird.
-Rated T for Drugs, etc.-
It started with a deal.
A quick exchange, no words, only quick, shadowy movements. The brick around them was too in-focus; the grime was calling out in fear, in realization. The city yelled it's curses, but the young woman was deaf to the sound. Her senses clouded with want, delicious yearning. She needed the break. She needed her alternate reality.
She wanted a Wonderland.
.........
It was dark enough by the time she got home that she couldn't see too far past the glow of the streetlights. As she entered the weathered old house it tittered and creaked, whining and nagging like the young woman's late Grandmother. A grin was plastered to her face as she sat on the bare mattress in her room; as the high finally hit her. Her back hit the mattress with a dull smack.
.........
The walls weren't walls; they were moving, breathing masses of color. The paint swirled and groaned, reaching out to me. I reached my hands above my head, closed my eyes. My eyelids smiled at me. I smiled back. Everything was wonderful. Beautiful. I stood and walked out of my room, running my hands along all of the moss and vines hanging from the ceiling. Mushrooms the colors of childhood popped at me, beckoning. I heard voices from all around; everywhere. Everything was everywhere. Everything was nowhere.
"Charlotte, Charlotte, my dear little Harlot."
I danced and screamed and hummed.
"Charlotte, CHARLOTTE,"
The ceiling fan went faster and faster and faster
"My dear,"
Coming towards me
"Little,"
The scream left me, curling out of my mouth like an accordion.
"HARLOT."
.........
I awoke with my head spinning, spinning. I stood, the world around me turning, turning my stomach. I vomited, the remnants of last nights dinner of mushrooms greeting me again.
This is me sober, I guess.
I stumbled into the shower, turning the water on as high and hot as it could go. I wanted to melt. To melt down the drain and away from this house, from these dealers, from the mocking sunshine now streaming through the window, everything. Away from life.
I think I do, at least.
My fingers acted on their own. Like concerned mothers they fretted my coppery hair with shampoo, pulling at the knots and ignoring the few dreads and braids. Soap floated down in a river over my chest, pooling serenely at my feet, and then navigating down that cursed drain.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
I almost fell out of the shower, stumbling to grab a terry-cloth towel. I wrapped it around me messily as I turned to the mirror. My hand kissed the surface, and then circulated, clearing the fog from the reflective glass. The Looking Glass.
Staring back at me was a stranger. A stranger with died hair the color of bronze. With grey eyes that looked hazed, and then disgusted. The stranger's full lips curled into a grin, that said everything but 'I'm happy.'
With that, Charlotte Alice Cidel left the stranger in the mirror.
.........
Outside of the graying house was a garden.
The garden is dead. Has been for twenty years. But somewhere in that garden, in the upper left corner behind the remains of a Hollyhock shrub, a small bud popped out of the soil and heaved a musical sigh.
And so it has begun.
.........
This was the best trip Charlotte had ever had. Everything was real. For once, she wasn't frightened into her mind, but the world just seemed…sunny. Light streamed, flowers bloomed naturally from the floorboards, a lazy breeze brushed her face. Everything was just wonderful.
She brought the blazing, wrapped paper to her mouth and inhaled Mother Nature. Mother tried her best to free from Charlotte's pink lungs, but the young woman kept her down, and then let her go, go, go, swirling around until Charlie felt dizzily relaxed.
"Charliiiiieeeee…"
The girl's head popped up two seconds too late. Too seconds two late. Aha.
She walked drowsily, sidestepping smoke-people and vines that kept lacing up her ankles. The voice called her to the bathroom.
The door was shut, but Charlotte could see the light was on, and purple and green smoke was filtering out from under the rotting door, through the keyhole…
She turned the door handle and slithered inside. Sitting in her shower was a caterpillar-woman. The woman turned and beckoned to Charlotte.
"Charlie." Her words poured from her red mouth, the hookah smoke writing the pet name in the air. One of her four hands reached for the girl, a smile alighting her discolored face. Her naked body gleamed in the cascading light and saturated shadows. Long tendrils of vines poured from the showerhead, and the tub was moss-covered. A tree feathered out from behind the toilet, looking as if it had been there for hundreds of years. Charlotte was, erm, rooted to the spot.
"Oh Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. This is so, so, so lovely. It's nice to be out again."
Charlotte giggled and passed out. Again.
.........
When Charlotte woke up, it was raining outside.
She didn't bother to look at her shower, where she would have seen a discarded hookah and a couple of vines slithering down the drain like soapy water. She also didn't notice the tree.
She instead noticed the hunger in her belly. She walked steadily to her kitchen, pulling a box of crackers out of her cabinet, along with some questionable cheese from the fridge. She gobbled the crackers in their entirety, leaving only an empty box and a small hunk of cheese left. Satiated, she took a walk in the garden.
Or, what was left of it.
Charlotte remembered looking at pictures of her Grandmother in this garden, and her mother before that, and her mother before that. Charlotte's Great-Great grandmother was an exceptionally beautiful woman. Tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Perfect. Except she was diagnosed as schizophrenic. They said she was crazy.
Charlotte giggled to herself. But aren't we all a bit Mad?
She was put in an asylum at the age of forty-five, a month after the birth of her grandchild. After the woman's incarceration, it became her child and grandchild's duty to keep up with the garden. But then the Grandchild became old, and her children and grandchildren were too busy with modern life to burden themselves with the upkeep of a silly garden.
So when Charlotte's Grandmother died, she took the garden with her.
The teen looked around her now as rain pattered against her bare shoulders. There wasn't anything alive in the patch of Earth except for bugs and weeds. Charlotte walked among the dilapidated debris, sighing with inner peace, and running her fingers along the vines and weeds and dead flowers. As she reached the end of the garden where a cement birdbath stood somewhat crookedly, a green flash caught her eye.
A plant in the corner was growing rapidly from the deadened ground, shooting up towards the sky. The plant sent its' tendrils around the bewildered girl, gliding past her ankles deftly and slithering across the garden. Green spread like wildfire. Flowers and leaves and fruits and vegetables and trees sprouted from that one spot, filling the small plot with unimaginable colors. And then, four people popped out too.
.........
I could have sworn that I was high, that this wasn't reality. But my vision was clear; strikingly, beautifully, fearfully clear. A scream halted in my throat, making me choke. This all is so strange. Nothing like this has ever happened before. This is all too much.
I expect it when I'm on something, but not sober. No. I can't be. The acid hasn't worn off yet. It can't have, it-
"You, girl."
My thoughts were rudely interrupted by a boy sitting on a three foot tall Toadstool. My eyes widened, and the rain fell harder. Reality has caught up with my dreams.
…………
A/N: So there it is. I'm nervous already. Gah. It's a tad short, I think. But I would absolutely love it if you told me what you think :3