Soo...is this just the wrong category maybe? Is the party over in the cartoon category? Because I can totally crash that party instead. Any advice, dear readers? Thanks to sm4567 for reviewing chapter one!
She moaned, and gingerly used both hands to lift herself off of the carpet. Orange light streamed through the window, and as she squinted disoriented and still half-asleep up at it, a long stream of drool reaching from her lips to the carpet smeared itself across her cheek.
"uhuhuh…that's hot."
She slapped herself. Hard. Facing the carpet again, she stared at the floor, willing herself to focus, and shook out her head. Waiting in silence for several seconds, she risked rising to her feet, but nothing happened. She sighed and looked out the window. A car passed under the street lights through abandoned roads. It must be late. She walked over to the nightstand and flicked up the face of her phone. 3:58am. Craig lay sound asleep, oblivious to everything.
Lydia slowly lowered herself to the bed and dropped her head into her hands. Her palm smeared across some of the drool from before, causing her to reflexively wipe it on the skirt of her nightgown which she immediately regretted doing. She refused to get distracted and slid her palms up to her temples, desperate to recall what she'd just experienced.
That voice…. She'd heard it before. Where had she heard it? From the television? She worked desperately to think of every show she'd ever watched in the past five years. Nothing.
The crassness….She'd actually felt more disgusted than threatened. What did it mean when you had dreams where disembodied voices asked to see rather intimate body parts?
She shook her head, launched herself to her feet, and made her way in the dark to the living room.
Sitting on the couch, she turned the lamp on low and looked over her bookshelf. It was crammed full of manuals on photography, business, finance…but at the bottom lay a large purple volume with swirling silver designs that caught her eye. It lay stacked on its side with several other books on top of it. Sliding off the cushion, she reached down and finally managed to tug it free, knocking dust everywhere as she did so. Ahh, the dream book. She smiled. It had been so long since she'd pulled this out, not since Craig had teased her for looking at it shortly after they began dating.
"What are you reading there? A book of dream meanings? Haha, come now, Lydia- you don't really believe in that sort of thing, do you?"
Lydia sighed, and shook the recollection from her mind. Craig wasn't here. His opinion didn't matter right now.
She slowly cracked it open and began thumbing through the pages when she realized she wasn't sure what to look under. Eventually she found her way to E for 'Embarrassing Situations' where it listed out a series of possible scenarios.
"Not wearing any pants….," she murmured quietly aloud. "Speaking in public…spilling coffee on your boss….throwing up on your boss…" Lydia raised a brow. "Caught…in the act in the office supply closet, or any closet….masturbating in public with a fruit or small...animal— What?" she nearly stopped reading when at the very bottom in tiny script she saw, "Being asked to show your breasts, for, you know, fun." Her face scrunched up at the wording but she brought the book closer to her face in order to see better.
"Being…asked to show your breasts in public," she read carefully, "by strangers or even close family members in dreams is…nothing to be afraid of?" she read incredulously. "When given the opportunity, you should definitely do it…because…it just means those around you thinkyerreally hawtnstuff nyoushouldtotallyjustgive'emapeekc'monbabejustonceIpromise." Lydia screamed and slammed the book shut, throwing it far across the floor from her. She pulled her legs close to her chest and breathed heavily into her knees, careful to pull her nightgown down as far as it would go, and glared at the book on the other side of the carpet.
She stayed like that for what seemed like ages, just watching the book. Expecting something. Anything. Eventually, she brought her knees down and tucked her legs beside her. She tried to center herself while keeping an eye on the book, but the book just sat there, motionless. Finally, she decided that she had to check. Is that even what it had really said? She needed proof. Getting on all fours and slowly, carefully, never taking an eye off the book, she made her way towards it. When she was just within arms reach, she stretched out her elbow, extended her index finger, and quickly flicked the cover of the book open with a small squeak and flinched in expectation. But again, nothing happened. Encouraged by the book behaving as a perfectly normal and ordinary book, she then dared to lean over it, and carefully, smoothly, flipped back through the pages to E when she realized she had skipped "Embarrassing Situations". She flipped back, but skipped it again. "Embarrassing Situations", the entire page for it, was gone.
Lydia flipped back and forth for awhile, convinced that she'd definitely run across it, until she was so overcome with frustration that she sat down in earnest, took the book in her lap, and turned to the index. That page had to've existed, she repeated to herself. When she reached the letter E, she lifted the book up and brought it close to better seen the fine print when suddenly the book slammed shut, smacking over her ears, hard, in the process. The large book rolled back, over her fingertips, and landed with a loud thud. Lydia passed out, cold, on her living room floor beside it.
—
A strong light streamed through the blinds and hit Lydia right in the eye. She twitched, her shoulder jerking, when she cracked open an eye and was nearly blinded by the strong, early morning sunshine. Flailing in a panic, Lydia tossed her hands above her head and rolled away, nearly impaling herself on the corner of the dream book. She winced, taking a moment to recover when finally she sat up. A blanket fell away from her and crumpled in a heap on her lap. She rubbed her eyes and looked down at it, trying to recall if in her sleep she'd gotten it for herself. Coming up empty handed, she shrugged and pulled herself to her feet. Coffee was definitely calling her name.
She padded into the kitchen, loaded up the coffee maker, and slumped into a nearby chair tucked neatly underneath a small, wrought-iron cafe table. She felt awful. Sleeping on the living room floor, however, was never supposed to be comfortable. How did she even wind up there? Lydia frowned into the glass of the small table as the coffee maker revved up its brewing. She had found herself in a dark place, she recalled. There had been a mirror, and her eyes...Lydia touched her fingertips to her brow for reassurance. But there had been something else...
As she strained her mind to think and the coffee maker got progressively louder, Lydia looked up at the wall of her kitchen to see a cringe-worthy-sized bug crawl up the dappled paintwork. A voice then filled her mind: "you'll flash 'em, though, right?"
Lydia gasped in revulsion. "BETELG-" she cried reflexively, and slammed two hands over her mouth as her mind caught up with what her lips had begun to do. At the interruption of the charm, the grizzly bug let out an impossibly high-pitched screech, hissed, and fell off the wall onto the floor. Lydia jumped to her feet, desperate not to lose sight of it, but it didn't move. It just laid there, on its back, steaming.
Slowly, she pushed the chair from behind her and stepped towards it. As she drew closer, the coffee maker beeped, and Lydia was staring down at a dead, reeking beetle.
—
She didn't move it right away. She was suspicious. What would happen if she touched it? If it was just an ordinary insect, what could actually happen? Grisly bugs just fell off walls every day. Some species don't do well indoors- right? She swore she'd read that somewhere.
She had pulled her chair closer to it and sat there, mindlessly stirring her coffee while staring at it nervously. The dialogue from the night before endlessly cycled through her head. How could this be? she thought loudly to herself. How could he come back? And how could he even find me out here? Some time after college, Lydia had made the decision to move back to The City to pursue a career. Little did she know how the career she had wanted would be taken and replaced with something else. Although that something else certainly made a lot more money, and had led her to Craig, she wasn't totally satisfied with it.
She sighed, slowly pulling herself together, and took a sip of her coffee, allowing her eyes to wander to the center of the table where she found a small postit note with a hastily scrawled note. She picked it up with a slight frown. "Found you on the floor. How did you get there? Left a blanket for you. -Craig xo" That was one mystery solved. Lydia rolled her eyes and flicked the note away to look back at the carcass on her kitchen floor.
It had stopped steaming and now just laid there, its legs curled into itself. She pressed her lips together and, putting down her coffee mug, stood up with purpose to get the dustpan and broom she kept tucked away beside the fridge. She returned and stood next to it, looking down with determination, before wrapping her arm around the broom and squatting down. She held the dustpan in place and began to gingerly push the beetle towards it. An awful miasma of rancid smells, almost spicy, erupted from the shell being shifted and Lydia turned her head, trying desperately not to gag and let the nauseatingly putrid smell into her mouth as well. She kept trying to sweep it in without looking when she noticed she had succeeded. She paused, and then looked back down into her dustpan. The beetle had flipped over, and its wings seemed to be spotted in a green, mouldering moss. Something bright red glimmered between its head and its torso, however, causing Lydia's curiosity to get the better of her. It appeared to be a seed, a bright red seed, in the shape of an...apple? Lydia rolled her eyes dramatically and scoffed, rising to her feet on the rush of adrenaline from her success.
"Really? Is that really what you're trying to say?" she said loudly to the walls of her apartment as she marched her way to the bathroom. "I do not," she declared, dropping the broom from her hand. "Have," she continued, flipping open the toilet seat with a clatter. "Parental issues!" she shouted, tossing the deceased insect into the toilet bowl and aggressively pressing down the plunger. She held it down for several seconds with a scowl, watching it spin round and round till it was long gone. When the toilet recovered, she flushed it again for good measure. Then she flushed it a third time, this time putting sufficient amounts of toilet paper into the water to be sure. When she was satisfied, she slapped down the toilet seat and sat there in grudging, uneasy triumph.
"I just shouted at nothing," she mumbled into her hands, and took an exasperated sigh.
After about a minute, Lydia began to relax. She leaned back, taking in a couple breaths to collect herself, when the peace was shattered by the high-pitched ring of her cell phone. Lydia's head snapped in the direction of the door and a wave of unidentifiable foreboding washed over her. She ran through the door and into her bedroom, diving for the phone, and popping the screen up to answer.
"Yes, hello?" she said frantically. There was a pause.
"Uh...heya, Lydia! How's it going?" The female voice on the other end of the line queried casually. Lydia blinked and began to pace.
"Yeah, yeah, fine! And you?" she replied.
"Well, you know how it is..." the voice began. "What with work and all. Speaking of work, are you coming in today at all?"
Lydia stopped dead in her tracks as her stomach flipped over. "Oh my god..." she murmured into the phone. "Yeaahhhhh..." the woman on the other side helpfully added.
"Oh my god, I am so sorry! I will be..." Lydia was pacing furiously now, almost putting herself out of breath, when she glanced out the bedroom door towards the bathroom. Although she had appeared to have successfully flushed the home invader down into the bowels of the New York Sewer System, where it would undoubtedly become some lucky rat's gourmet meal, she still didn't trust it. Her eyes flashed back to the phone in her hand. "I will be right there. Please just give me 30 minutes, ok?"
"Yeah, yeah, no problem," the woman drawled. "Just don't forget your slides for the 10:30 today."
10:30? Lydia supressed a curse, offered another round of apologies, and hung up. She threw on something good enough to make better later and ran out the door, but not before sprinting back into her bedroom to grab a small, velvet jewelry box off of the nightstand.
"Taxi!" she shouted, waving furiously as she barreled through her front door and out into the street. A shabby looking cab pulled up and Lydia dove in. The whole car smelled like smoke and clashing spices.
"Whea to, lady?" the cabby wheezed. Lydia rambled off the address and sank hastily into reviewing her presentation and trying to put some amount of makeup on.
As the taxi drove off, the cabby was unable to suppress a grimy, gum-diseasy grin. He lifted a filthy hand and pulled his soiled cap down even further over his eyes, flashing a gold and ruby ring, and stepped on it.