(Blah. I'm running out of cute and witty things to say – I'm worth five bucks and a pack of orange tic-tacs. WWF characters aren't mine. Please don't sue.)

And I meant what I said about going to tell him about all of this, I really did…
I just had absolutely no intention of telling him anytime in the near future. I mean, not within my natural life…
That was logical, wasn't it? I mean, even if I did tell Rob, it's not like he'd take it seriously. I mean, how could anyone that laid back take anything seriously?

Ah, now you see my point. He's probably just desperate, and I'm the first female nearby.

After the talk with Kari, however, I'm feeling a little better about things, thinking that maybe, I'm not really losing my mind, and that maybe, it's just a temporary lust bout, because…
Well, nothing against the guy, but I don't see him as the type I'd get serious with.
Serious is probably a word that eludes his grasp of knowledge, anyhow.

-*-

"Make it stop…."
I can't seem to pull myself out of this nightmare, this scrolling, looping image of my mother dying, my father walking out, the hell I've put myself through in the past few years, just trying to make ends meet, trying not to end up dead, or on the streets, or…
There are a lot of things I don't want to be.

But…I'm lost in this nightmare, staring into my mother's dead eyes, seeing her sallow skin hung taut over bone, feeling that last raspy breath fall over parchment-dry lips…
Why couldn't they do something…

Then the nightmare flashes into a crackle a pop, a trail of smoke from the exhaust pipe of a motorcycle, the department-store smell that fished between branches of our artificial Christmas tree, the scent of sugar cookies and wrapping paper…

Mama'd been crying, and I couldn't understand why.
"You're Daddy's left, 'Ginia. He's not comin' back…"
At six years old, I didn't understand what she'd meant – he was my daddy, of course he'd be back, and things would be perfect. It'd be the best Christmas ever, and I'd get the Easy Bake Oven I'd been bugging my parents about for six months.

There was no Easy Bake Oven, he left, and my mother died.
Now, in my dreams, it was all throwing itself at me, and I didn't have any choice in the matter…

-*-

"GODDAMMITMAKEITSTOP!" There was no feeling like waking up from that nightmare, waking up from a horrific past to see a lonely present, to see blackness, to hear…
A knock on the door?

"Ah-m fine…really. Go away…"
Whoever it was on the other side of door number one didn't need to know my troubles.