"Is this some sort of test on the four elements? Cause I'm tempted to show you the element earth from the bottom of a hole just big enough to fit your Orangesicle ass. Strike a match? Shoulda stopped when you still had me on your side."
Jaye suddenly grabbed the edge of Eric's bed, but the rocking of the room failed to cease. When she looked at the little lion, she felt detached, as if she was rapidly floating upwards.
"Oh, God." Her hand went to her mouth.
The orange lion looked up, saw the expression on her face and tried to remove itself from its little display stand.
Hoping the alcohol-induced funhouse room would not trip her or dump her ass on the ceiling, Jaye launched herself forward. A sink, a trashcan, an empty box…hell, a floor drain would do. The room jerked to the left. She shuffled in the opposite direction and bumped against a metal rack lined with supplies.
Ah, a mop bucket! As her legs went all noodly, she pitched towards her target and put her hands out in front with vague hopes of breaking her fall and not her face.
"Can I file for a divorce from my mind on the grounds of irreconcilable differences?" was the only complete thought Sharon could understand from Jaye's voice-mail message. Then Jaye screamed something that sounded like "Birds of a feather? You weasels." After that, shouts of "Stop" and "Oh my God" and what almost could have been the sound of a truck's air horn before the message abruptly cut off.
According to Jaye's immediate boss, or "the creepy little shit" as Sharon thought of him, the younger Tyler had stormed out of work early by a good thirty minutes. "It's a good thing we were dead and needed to cut hours, or, man, she'd be looking for another job," he had said after being asked what time Jaye left. "You'd be looking for your spleen after she finished with you," Sharon informed him before heading to the freak show of a trailer park her sister called home.
The High & Dry trailer park reminded Sharon of a beatnik poetry reading she had attended in college – dark, drab, and peopled with individuals who, though having no direct place in her life, made her feel she was only one bad choice away a similar fate. The sun slipped low on the horizon, every second bringing total darkness closer. She squirmed in her leather seat as she stopped just outside Jaye's trailer.
No car. Didn't mean much to Sharon. Given Jaye's socialist nature, she could have loaned it to a homeless guy so he could cross the border to buy beer. Wouldn't be the first such incident.
The trailer appeared to have a light on inside. Sharon watched for a few moments, hoping the sound of her SUV would bring her sister to the door. It wasn't as though the trailer park had vehicles running amok. No movement from inside. Damn it, she thought. She was loath to leave the safety of her vehicle. Not that she was afraid. Her handy canister of Insta-Burn personal defense spray could send an attacker to an emergency room, and if that didn't work, she could always fall back on the training from that women's weekend self-defense course. Yeah, that was $850 well spent. And her fling with the instructor did not last as long as the class. Still, the thought brought forth a brief smile.
With a groan, Sharon used the special two-level running board to step down and out of the SUV and then headed to the door. She had just cleared the front of her vehicle when something moved in the edge of her vision. The spray canister went up before her head turned completely. Finally, the overpriced spray would prove itself.
She hesitated just as her thumb had started to press down. Facing the business end of her skin-blistering spray was a very fat Chihuahua.
The dog looked up at her calmly, ears up, hind legs splayed under the roundness of its belly. The two stared at each other for a long moment. Neither moved. Finally, the dog's tongue slowly slipped out of the side of its mouth and hung there.
Sharon's nose wrinkled. Oh Christ, what did that animal eat? "Shoo," she said. Then she motioned with her hands for it to leave. "Go on. Shoo."
Slowly, the Chihuahua leaned to the left, further and further, until it plopped onto its side. Of course, it broke wind again, this time audibly.
For a moment, Sharon considered the spray again. Then she huffed and marched up to Jaye's door.
She knocked three times hard, scraping her knuckles and hoping her sister was there so the evening and her search could be at an end. No answer. No sound. Just the more-than-faint wafting odor of the Chihuahua's flatulence.
"Jaye? Answer the damn door."
She waited. Still no response. Swallowing a harsh comment about the low intelligence of trailer park dwellers, Sharon attempted to open the door, which indeed swung open. Unlocked, she thought. One day she's going to come home to a psycho waiting at her table.
Given the image, Sharon allowed herself a smirk. The psycho would probably be frightened of Jaye if he or she knew anything about the intended victim.
Not that seeing your obviously brilliant sister toss aside her potential and goals in life should be a source of humor, but what were the options? Sobbing to passers-by? Pulling out clumps of her own fine blond hair? And murder certainly wasn't much of an option, though she felt confident she could find a few legal precedents to cover her ass. No, no. Skulking about picking up the scattered pieces of her sister's life and mind all because that is what big, responsible sisters do is what a perfectly liberal-oriented therapist would order.
Sticking her head in the doorway with the intention of calling out for Jaye, Sharon came eye to eye with a parrot. Its striking red head feathers hung mere inches from her nose as its eye held her gaze. For a moment, she panicked, afraid of moving for fear of alarming the bird. But the bird never moved. Then the fine layer of dust coating the parrot's feathers became noticeable.
"Jesus Holy Christ," she muttered. The bird kept watch so well because it had been stuffed and mounted, nailed to its perch. It had nothing better to do except stare at her.
But as she scanned the inside of the trailer, Sharon realized that the parrot's were not the only eyes watching her. Plush animals, from bears to fish to pot-bellied pigs, littered the living space. Scattered amongst them were crystal, ceramic and resin creatures of all species in various sizes. From the ceiling swayed rubber spiders, snakes and lizards. Numerous cereal boxes and posters, all sporting animals both realistic and cartoonish, lined the walls where the three-dimensional critters were not stacked.
Sharon quickly entered the trailer and shut the door.
"Oh my god, she really is crazy."
