The world began to shift and change as she lay on her back. The whites became green, the blues became reds. The fear of losing her balance became all too real as she tried to stand and felt the ground beneath her rise, alarmingly fast. She was ascending to the heavens without knowing here it began and the Earth ended. The flight unnerved her, as the she escalated faster and faster. A sudden jolt ran up her spine, she felt herself weightless for just a moment. Before landing on her feet. She looked down and saw that she had been stripped of her clothing, panicking she quickly covered herself with whatever arms and longer than normal hair she had. Looking up she saw people walking towards her. Her panic began to rise. However, the people coming towards her did not seem to register her nudity, or even notice her at all. As her body laid bare, she noticed the people just calmly walking by her. None more interested in seeing her than the last. She began to move among these people. None of whom seemed to realize she was even there. She became less embarrassed about her raw disposition, as the curiosity of the people's indifference took over.
The indifference became neglect as no one even looked in her direction as they walked by. She ran to the first women she saw, and asked for help the women's eyes, gray and without life, did not seem to hear and continued her forward pace. She ran to the next person, a shorter male, who just like the first continued his gait without an acknowledgment of her presence. Confusion began to set in. She could see all these people, she was able to touch them and talk to them. However, none of them even realized she was there. The pleas would go unnoticed. Panic set in as, as the pleas became yells for someone to see her. The distressed calls for someone to see her became less and less audible. She continued to cry out for her help, but with each new cry she found herself with less and less voice to wield.
The never-ending march continued, as a ringing began to be heard in the distance. She heard the ringing and like so many green lights she ran between the rows of people towards it. The ringing became louder and louder. As the auditory lighthouse sounded, she navigated her naked body through the sea of walking dead. She looked up and saw the sound was indeed coming from an actual light house. The light trained on her, she began to see the world fade away.
Helga began to open her eyes when she was blinded by the light of the morning sun entering the room. She looked over still hearing the ringing from her dream. She finally registered the sounds of her cell phone alarm. She reached over and saw the time, 6:30 AM. She pressed the snooze button needing about nine minutes to gather her thoughts.
She stared back at her ceiling, a light blue canvas accented with white and pink flairs. She began to feel more at peace. She had had the dream before. Being completely naked was new, though. Looking down at her bed she lifted her comforter to reveal she was still wearing the pajamas she put on last evening. She sighed a breath of relief that she hadn't started randomly sleep walking again. She laid in her bed thinking about the dream. "What man doesn't want to see an eighteen year old girl naked?" she thought to herself. She sneered at the thought of it, both at how men can be and how she hated to think of herself, attractive to men. She knew some men thought that way, and others were more innocuous but the thought of anyone seeing her that way or being that close made her uneasy. "I guess it's a good thing I dreamed about zombies under some magic spell," she thought.
The more she stared at the ceiling the more she realized the fraying paints on her ceiling, annoying her more and more with every new flaw she noticed. She had been in this room her entire life, when she was younger she couldn't care less about how the room looked. If she had her notebook and canopy bed, she was content. As she got older Helga decided to enact a little more control over her safe haven within her house. She ripped out the carpets, and replaced them with light pink and white stripped carpet. She took off the wallpaper she had always had and repainted to a soft mimi pink. Helga's personal wardrobe underwent a color shift as she got older. Replacing her pink everything, with darker shaded colors. Lot's of blacks and deep blues. She loved to wear one or two bright colored articles to contrast the darker colors she preferred. She still loved pink. She took out her old canopy rods and replaced it with a simple hook in the ceiling where she would hang light sheets. She thought it was a bit more elegant, but a little different. She built herself a huge bookcase to keep her prized books out of some old recycled wood from the junkyard she had scavenged for. She had her parents buy a pre-made smaller book shelf for next to her bed. There she kept all her writings. Looking at the bookcase, one could imagine there was a pink encyclopedia set she had gotten for it. Her writing had become mostly digital at this point, however her most intimate writing was reserved for her hand written pink notebooks. Her poetry her feelings on the day, and any random thoughts she couldn't express any other way but to write them out.
Her writing had undergone a transformation as well. Where her nine year old self would write short romantic stories and poetry almost exclusively, older Helga expanded her writing preferences. As she got older and read more, she began writing thought pieces on social issues. Ranging from poverty, race relations, and the economical consequences of those issues. Her writing teachers, specifically her favorite English teacher Mr. Simmons, loved to read her work and encouraged her to do more with it. He and many others who read her work regarded it as graduate level writing. Her incite seeming to be unique among young writers. "An old soul seeing a world as it's always been" was her favorite compliment she had received. She used her poetry and fiction writing as an escape from reality. Creating worlds she wanted to see.
She was resolved that she would redo that ceiling that had not changed since she was nine years old. She began to think of what she could do with her ceiling. She envisioned a white primer, thinking an off white may be a good color. "If I'd like to wake up thinking I'm in a hospital bed, it would be great." She thought to herself. Maybe a light pink, her color. "Too obvious, think deeper." She opined out loud. She began to think about color swatches, when the thought of how long it had been since she hit snooze crept to the front of her mind. The alarm was suspiciously quiet, she knew nine minutes must have passed already. She wondered if her alarm was broken somehow. A slight panic set in, as though she may have over slept without realizing it. She reached for her phone and was both relieved and confused. 6:32AM. "What am I doing?" she asked out loud, and immediately sat up. She swung her feet over her bed and stood tall stretching herself out. She grabbed her robe and headed for the bathroom.
She stepped into the scalding water and let the water flow down her body, through her hair, as she started the process of cleaning. She shampooed her hair making sure to rub it in thoroughly and wash it out just as thoroughly. She began to condition her hair, then grabbed her hair moisturizer to comb through it. Turning the water off she headed towards the sink wrapping her hair in a towel.
She walked towards the full-length bathroom mirror. She looked at her face. Looking back at her was Helga G. Pataki. The eighteen year old, stood a solid five feet ten inches. She smiled at the fact that she was as tall or sometimes taller than the boys. She moved passed the mirror and headed back to her room. She went to her three-way mirror and unwrapped her hair, and started the blow dryer. Fearing her hair may dry out she set it to lower setting and only focused on the wetter areas. She brushed her hair out and took a good look at her face. She was thankful that her acne had cleared up, showing a clear alabaster face. She looked at her assiduously manicured eye brows, inspecting that they looked presentable. After about eight grade she decided to move on from her unibrow, despite how much she was known for it. She applied a slight touch of blush, and lip gloss, never wanting to put on a great deal of makeup.
She got up from her vanity, and walked over to her closet, to get dressed. She grabbed her undergarments, putting on her bottoms. As she grabbed her purple bra, she stretched the elastic almost to the breaking point to hook into the back. She stood straight and realized how tight the bra had seemed on her, to the point of it being uncomfortable. She tried to adjust as best she could, however when she consulted the mirror she looked as if a she had press her breasts on a sheet of glass. She took off her third favorite bra, and looked down at her body. "Fuck!" she exclaimed into the mirror. "How the fuck did this happen?" She tried on several more bras, only to be defeated by each one. She looked at her phone, 6:59 AM. She had yet to choose an outfit and considered for a moment if she would go without a bra. "God damnit," she mumbled. She threw her robe back on and tip toed down the hall to Olga's room. Olga had long moved out after college, gotten married, and started her life. Her parents had kept her room for her, though. She even had them keep some of her clothes there so that she could do overnight visits with her and her husband Owen. Helga had always resented his sister due to the attention Olga siphoned from her parents. She was the golden child growing up, and Helga was always made to remember that. Olga getting older and moving away from her parents never ending attention had helped to bring the balloon a little farther down to Earth, to Helga's surprise. Helga connecting with her husband Owen had also helped that process along. He shared her sardonic sense of humor, and there was no better afternoon than hanging out with Owen and making fun of people in the park.
Helga thought her sister may be a larger bra size so she could possibly steal one of her smaller ones for a day. The clandestine walking seemed to be unnecessary as there was no one in site. There was also no commotion coming from downstairs, there was no Bob yelling at her mother, and no Miriam flatly saying, "uh huh" as she took another sip of her drink. The thought made Helga's face turn down, "I hope she's not starting so early." Helga slipped into Olga's room and started looking at her sister's bra sizes to find one a size large than her own. She found one. She opened her robe to put the under garment on when she looked down and realized the clasp was in the front. The bra was also far lacier than Helga was used to. "What the hell is this? Why would she have this here? If I'm wearing Owen's birthday present, I'll cut both their throats in their sleep." She swallowed her objections and her pride, and put the bra on. She could move without discomfort, in fact this one had fit better than any bra she had ever tried. She looked at the mirror above Olga's dresser, and noticed how the bra made her look. She was confused as to why she liked it, aside from the way better fit. She closed her robe and said to herself "If my tits get any freakin bigger I'm killing someone. Then I can just wear a damn jumpsuit for the rest of my life."
Helga went back to her and selected her outfit. She may have some lace bra on but she wouldn't let that dictate what else she wore. She grabbed her favorite pink Arctic Monkey's shirt that she had altered so that one side fell over her shoulder and her black denim pants. She threw on her black and pink sneakers to match. Looking at herself in the mirror and adding a band to her hair she decided a side ponytail draped down her shoulder would be her hair style choice of the day. She looked back in the mirror and smiled, she then noticed that her over the shoulder shirt exposed her bra strap. She grabbed her open sleeved black shrug and decided she looked amazing.
One last look in the mirror without the shrug let her appreciate her body. Thin and lean, a sports enthusiast who insisted on playing with the boys. Her other physical passion was dance. As a young girl, her father made her take ballet. She had always expected he wanted an Olga clone. Hating the other girls and the idea of wearing the outfits, she switched a year later to hip hop dance classes. Which she took every year since. She even competed a couple times as reflected by the dozens of trophies across the room on the shelf. She never wanted to go past school events though, she loved it and that's all she needed. Her body was a testament to her practice, lean but slightly curvy. She lamented the idea of being attractive to someone, she knew she had some effect on the opposite sex. No one in her school would ever try to call her beautiful for fear of being assaulted. However, these school events often included other schools and some of those boys never hesitated to approach her and tell her how attractive they thought she was. Or express their desire to take her out. She enjoyed these moments as it allowed her to practice new insults she had come up with during the week. She told a boy named Reggie two weeks ago that "his birth certificate was an apology from the condom factory." After she had told him to get lost the second time.
Finally satisfied she grabbed her backpack and headed down the stairs. "Hello?" she called, no answer came. The house was empty, for once she was relieved to come down the stairs. She looked through the cabinets for some food while she started the coffee maker. Finally tracking down some cereal in the empty cabinets, she poured herself a bowl and grabbed her coffee. She sat, took a sip of her coffee, and pulled out her latest book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. She folded open the book to where she had dog eared the book. Trying to find her place she followed her annotations on the side, and took a bite of her cereal. She grimaced, spitting out the cereal as it was far too stale to be edible. Angrily, she looked at the box and realized that the cereal was expired by about a year. She got up and wondered into the living room to see her mother Miriam Pataki sprawled out on the couch sleeping. She noticed this was becoming more and more of a habit. She wondered if her dad had even noticed the absence of his wife from their marital bed. She went over to her mother, rolled her over to her side, and put a blanket over her.
Heading back into the kitchen Helga took another look through, seeing a can of beans and box of pasta filled about a quarter of the way. She wondered how long those had been there, when the front door burst open "Miriam! You up?" Big Bob Pataki yelled up the stairs. "She's on the couch sleeping, Bob" Helga responded flatly. "Not now, Olga! Miriam!" He yelled up the stairs once again. "It's Helga dad!" she finally barked up. Bob Looked at his daughter, "and she's sleeping on the couch, she's out of it at the moment." "Well, alright then." Bob stated a little deflated. We wandered into the kitchen "Where's breakfast?" he asked. Helga held up the stale cereal she had resigned herself to eating, as there was little other choice. "Well, damnit Mariam. I had an early morning meet with a supplier and I wanted breakfast to be ready when I got back." Bob complained. His wife still on the couch sleeping most likely did not hear him as she continued to sleep. Bob, defeated, grabbed a bowl and poured some cereal, and grabbed his paper and started reading while he ate. Helga jumped when he spit out the cereal "This is stale!" he grumbled. "Nothing gets passed you Bob, does it?" Helga asked. Bob narrowed his eyes at his youngest daughter. "Don't get smart with me girly! You're getting old enough to start actually doing something around this freakin place. Why aren't you down here in the morning helping your mother with breakfast? Sixteen-year-old girls help make breakfast for their families." Helga stared at him incensed, "for your information, Bob, I'm eighteen years old. Not sixteen, not fourteen, eighteen. And as far as spending my morning making your breakfast, you can take this damn stale cereal and shove it up your ass. That way you'll have a better chance of absorbing some calories you'll need for the day than waiting around for me to make you something. I'm not here to make you breakfast." She slid her chair out from the table and put her finished cereal bowl in the dishwasher. As she started to run the wash cycle for the full dishwasher, Bob stormed over and came close to Helga "how dare you talk to me like that!? I am your father, I have no idea who you thought you were yelling at, but I won't be talked to like that in my house!" Bob was a physically imposing figure. He stood a tall six feet two, with a large upper body centered in his large chest, shoulders, and arms. His graying hair and worry lines on his forehead showed his age. Something Helga had no issue ever standing up to.
The tension in the room was thick as Helga prepared a new tirade for her father. Miriam had wandered aimlessly over and asked, "what's all the yelling about?" Helga and Bob turned to her and Helga looked back at her dad, deciding to swallow the four insults she had queued up just for him. "Nothing mom." She said as she walked passed her and grabbed her book and backpack. Heading towards her car out the front door, she heard her mother start to ask him what happened and him responding with his usual anger and disappointment that she wasn't fulfilling what he perceived to be her marital duties. Helga though to herself "if marriage is making some asshole's breakfast every morning then hard pass for me." She got into her car and started the engine, pulling off away from the curb and heading to school.