DISCLAIMER: Stephen King owns Carrie, Diablo Cody owns Jennifer's Body, and I own this ball of lint. DON'T TOUCH IT.

When Carrie woke up in the morning and made her way down the stairs, a foreign light washed over her. Of course, the deluge of nostalgic, golden sunlight spilling into the family room egged it on, but after rising above the subterrestrial sleep-muzz, an epiphanic memory overwhelmed her. She knew about the fork, the radio, and the antenna; they were accustomed to the latent hysterics that were brought on by the Plague. However, she remembered seeing Momma stop the minute she yelled at her. In the cage of infinite babyhood memories, she's always seen her Momma in such a state for hours rather than a few minutes. She also remembered (importunity and tears o impotence of haply had ends above my all in flames) the fluid transition from standard, unadorned thought to omniscient voices that echoed in her wandering skull.

Margaret sat on the far end of the sofa, her dresses left unfinished. Three pins were missing from the tomato pincushion, and with how Margaret massaged her hand, Carrie just shook her head. Carrie checked for voices again, but only found a perplexing community of slovenly-drawn stars, wings flying without a body, a burning cross setting fire to all religious insignias, picking a single fish apart to find it had bread for organs, a woman with no genitals reaching an unusual precipice upon seeing a butterfly fly away from in between her legs— voices were also present, some human and comforting (o child calm your nerves i scared i hear a thunder no scared you're a brave girl let's go make a thunder cake), and some too grotesque to be concrete.

Carrie searched for an obstruction and, at first, couldn't see one, but it didn't take long before the cold table she mistook for the Whites' dining room caught her eye. An embellished display of foods she heard about from word of mouth decorated the table, but seeing them in her own home caught her unawares: a warm, spongy stack of waffles, dappled in thick syrup; scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns that sizzled whenever you prodded at them; a bowl of dry Froot Loops, chilled fruit in a Tupperware dish, and a complimentary glass of milk. A dizzy giggle came out of her, as if she was aware that she was in a dreamlike half-sleep and found the absurdity to be too funny to seem palpable.

However, there was a note resting against the milk, damped from the glass's sweat. Before Carrie could even decipher it, she knew who was out at the time. The handwriting was cursive, written in fiber-tip ink, and spoke to her in an complaisant lilt.

Morning, sweets! You've hardly eaten anything as of late…perhaps you needed a back-to-school treat in order to cheer you up. Margaret's fine. She's just a little shaken up, but I'll make sure she won't come back until she has calmed down. I called some of your teachers, and the only major thing you need to do is write your essay about your summer reading—Margaret had a few choice words about the Divine Comedy, I tell ya!—and you can transcribe it into a digital copy at school on Monday. Have a lovely weekend! Miss Lucy xx

Carrie set the note down, looked the buffet before her, and prodded at the stack of waffles with a fork. It had gone cold immediately. On the other side of the table, there wasn't another plate or set of utensils to join her.

The phone rang.

Margaret let out a smothered cry, grasping for an animalistic sound and failing in the process. Carrie ignored it at first, but then (baiii) it came to her again. She approached the phone, waited for Margaret to return, and picked it up when she didn't.

"H-hello?" Carrie stammered. The remaining pins in the pincushion depressed further into the woolen fabric; the steel needle bobbed against the machine bed, rising to a clamor. Margaret did not stir. "Jennifer, are you there?"

Silence nestled against the speaker for a moment. Carrie waited for a response, but a ghastly thought prickled in the back of her head, causing an ache in her neck. Was this a new conspiracy? Was this New Girl acquainted with the Ultras and their rapacious Mortimer Snerd performances? A mantle clock in the living room, resting on gilded claw feet, topped over, letting out a confused tock before the glass cracked and dispersed. The curtains glided across the windowsill, flirting with Margaret's bony knees; the windows rippled throughout the house, and the idea of a startling implosion mollified the black flower within, whose petals ruffled in response to another anxious seed she planted.

Fragmented hellos and a raucous audience in the background: "Hey-ey. How's it hanging?"

(o)

The sewing machine was silenced. The clock came back from the dead, resuming its rightful place on the mantle amongst other homely trinkets. The window stopped rippling, the pins stayed still, and the flower of thought, though in full bloom, hushed as the vinelike stems tried to coil around her legs, pulling her down as quick as a sly foot in the hall.

"I'm OK…was about to eat breakfast. Where are you?"

"At Waffle House, getting breakfast after assembly and never coming back," Jennifer smirked. A soprano squeal punctuated the background noises. Jennifer shouted back, "Hey, fuck off! I'm talking to someone!"

A vague sound (don't do me like that wanna have a bowl of that cereal)—Carrie jumped when she saw the glass of milk totter over the edge of the table. It fell, but was caught mid-air; Carrie gently set it back on the coaster, gathering any spilt milk into a ball and dropping it into the glass with a splatter.

Carrie glanced at her mother once. Margaret shook her head, wincing as she pressed her thumb against her aching palm. Her eyes wandered to the ceiling, as of coming to grips with the daily throes of mysticism within an inner world.

The laughter and clatter of china drowned once a door slammed, and now all Carrie could hear in the background was a crisp rustle of leaves in the pre-autumntime wind. Jennifer sighed, relieved. "Okay, what's up?"

"Who were you with?"

"Oh, no one important—"

"Who were you with?" A festering earnestness poked through Carrie's soles, drawing reluctant beads of blood. She looked at Margaret again, and she was disturbed at how this vitriolic sensation brought forth a stunning resemblance between them.

Jennifer again: "Chillax, Jezebel. It was just Chris and her sex toys—I mean, friends…and her actual sex toy."

(o that) "Really? I thought you didn't like them."

"Ehh. I think she's a few drops of cheese less compared to other french fries in the container, but her other lackeys are all right."

"Then go back to them," Carrie said with sudden guilt. "I don't want to hold you back."

"No," Jennifer said. "I want to talk to you."

Carrie's gut descended. "R…really?"

"Yeah. You skip out on the Jamboree, you didn't go to the football game—which we sucked at, I should add—and all you did was leave a pissy voicemail for me to get back to in the middle of my hangover. We have a lot to catch up on, hun."

"Oh." Carrie felt heat cross her face like the eye of a storm. "Well, where should we start?"

"Well, for starters," Jennifer said, adding a surly sweetness to the conversation, "I think I need to ask why your mother held you back yesterday. I didn't see you at school."

The glass shattered, milk and glass spraying against the floor. "How did you know?"

"Just a guess," Jennifer remarked. "I mean, you didn't look sick yesterday. All I heard from Grayle when asked about it was there were severe family issues and my guess is any family that has some fish-symbol on their car always has an issues, so…"

"Um." Carrie turned away from the receptor to snigger at her comment; and then, returning: "I suppose."

"Don't sweat it. I remember a time my mom went all menopausal one night and I had to stay home in order to look after her. She was depressed, her joints ached, and she spent all night sweating. It was so gross."

"Well, why'd you stay?"

Jennifer clicked her tongue. "Because it was the right thing to do, I suppose. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so now's not the time to become wormchow. So, what's up with your Holy Carrier?"

"My mom's kind of…" From the tail end of her eye, Carrie saw Margaret clapping her hands together in a sluggish rhythm. A garbled, giggling song came out of her, lilting with verbose girlhood. "Well, she's a little unwell."

"Mmm. Paranoid schizophrenic?"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry," Jennifer said, mock-apologetic. "I heard Chris and Tina say something about how your mother is a schizophrenic bat that's been living in a cave this whole time, but I wondered if they were just being cruel bitches about something real or were just running their traps."

"Running their traps," Carrie retorted.

"It's like a NASCAR race to see who talks the most and who says the dumbest things."

Carrie, with sudden brusqueness: "No, they're outmatched in that area. I think it's the amount of blowjobs they give that is tallied in a competition."

Carrie clapped a hand over her mouth, gnawing on a callus. As Jennifer brayed the same jovial amount of laughter she did yesterday, Carrie felt a numb sense of powerlessness, reprimanding herself for uttering something as filthy as the Eff Word. Something coerced her into saying it, raping all common sense and letting everyone land on the four-corner space that says GO TO JAIL. The dark floweret bloomed further, and the thought of flipping the cold table over (no stop that) wasn't so far-off at this point.

Before the table could even levitate, Jennifer finally caught her breath. "Good—fucking—God, you're funny!"

"I am?" Carrie heard the word funny before (she's so funny miss yellow-belly fartface ol prayin carrie so funny look it's a look such a funny-looking look).

"Yeah. You make me laugh."

"So, not funny as in weird or ugly?"

"Why would I call you any of those things?" Another awkward silence came between them, but Carrie mulled over the genuine uneasiness in Jennifer's tone.

A new background noise ripped through the conversational lull: Chris slamming the door open, asking Jennifer if she wants to trigger her sepsis or what, Jackie Talbot saying he won't eat all of Jennifer's waffles if she'll let him taste a certain waffle, Tina shrieking at him with laughter, calling him a fucking pervert—Jennifer diffused them: "Hey, gimme a fucking minute, okay? I'm touching bases with someone."

Surprisingly enough, the ambience hushed as soon as she said that.

"Hey, Carrie?" Jennifer said, now alone. "I gotta head back. I'm gonna hang out with these losers for the weekend, but can you try to talk to me at school on Monday?"

"I don't get it."

"What do you mean? It's called communication, it's not always done with words—"

"No," Carrie snapped, plaintively honest. "I mean, if you're hanging out with the Ultras and preps and bad boys and so on…why does my approval matter?"

"Because you're real."

Carrie stopped, nonplused. Without much cohesion, the glass began to piece itself together again. Each shard snapped back in place, announcing its return with loud, pronged crackles. The milk had stained already, but it evaporated like ice in the June sunshine.

Finally, she spoke. "Ohuh?"

Jennifer sighed. "Look, believe me or not, this isn't just some hipster bullshit I found on a Tumblr e-card in order to make you feel good about yourself. When a lot of outsiders like to out themselves as some sage minor that feels as though they've honed their wisdom because of the harshness of their peers...well, frankly, I think that's stupid. No one is special, and no one is worthless. We're all shitting from the same asshole here. However, I would be remiss if I were to say none of these teens at Ewen are fake. You're not, and I'm not, either, so I admire that."

Carrie blushed again. "Oh...oh, hey, I—well, I've never been—i-it's not like, I mean…thank you."

Jennifer chuckled, but without rancorous humor this time. "Work on that enunciation, White. I'll see ya 'round. Baiii!"

Carrie mimicked her goodbye, hung up, and floundered right after. The tickle-me-pink innocence was written on her face, but she clung onto her cross necklace out of fear that Margaret would reach land-ho, see her blush, and go into cycles about the Something and how the Smell comes after Color. However, her mother still clapped her hands and sang nursery rhymes under her breath, eyes focused on the ceiling. Walking towards the table, Carrie picked up the glass, went over to the kitchen sink, and washed it thoroughly. She picked up another glass, snatched a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, and poured a refill for herself.

Sitting down at the table once more, she prodded at her waffles again. It was piping hot, as was most of the food, and the temperature never faltered as Carrie dined on her breakfast as if it were the Last Supper.

A/N: Ayyyyyyyye, I'm still alive! :D

So, a lot of kinetic mind-play here! There's Carrie's telekinesis, and some implications about our favorite succubus snowflake queen, Jennifer—and, of course, whatever the hell is goin on with Margaret. o.o

On a bit of a serious note, yay, I'm alive…went off my 10mg of Lexapro, currently on 20mg (soon-to-be 40mg) of Viibryd, and super-duper manic amidst a storm of rapid-cycling, but alive nonetheless! I'm finally done with school (finished on Tuesday), and spent the last couple days resting up. I went to my old school's graduation yesterday to see old friends, and boiii, did I LOVE making those prissy little teachers and faculty members that stigmatized me in the first place so dang nervous! XD

My plan for today is to go to one of my friends' house party to celebrate her graduating, come home, and either watch The Wolf of Wall Street for the first time, or just listen to some scary-as-shit PIFs as background while I write more chapters. Either way, I passed Junior Year, my summertime has started now, and I see more frequent updates in the future! Baiii for now! :)

peace xx