cjjo
December 5th, 2009, 11:15 PM
The old familiar metallic taste churned upwards from the pit of her stomach-- from her kidneys, her intestines up through her lungs--to lodge itself at the base of her throat. She coughed. Nothing. She struggled to clear her throat. The foul-tasting lump refused to budge. In desperation, she even resorted to the childhood trick of blowing air outward from her ears. Absolutely nothing.
"Say it again...."
Chanctetinyea rolled over on the sweat-dampened love seat, her head and heart pounding. What time was it? What DAY was it? She awoke laboriously, sloughing off heavy layers of fatigue with all the effort of a seasoned athlete warming up for a major event. Even so, every inch of her body ached. Her brain was intricately woven strands of steel wool.
And she was hungry.
No, that wasn't right. She was craving something...but what?
The dull, particle-filled rays of the sun suffused the room with a dull, crimson glow. She tried to breath it in. Her lungs rattled, spurring a violent coughing fit which left her limp and disoriented beneath the four heavy blankets.
"Godforsaken hole," she muttered for about the thousandth time since being ordered to move there. No one, after all, treated a person like family; and her second-oldest brother had pulled out all the stops in shutting her away in this place. There was no heat of which to speak; mold grew in thick, gray fur in the bathroom and on the far wall of her bedroom. There had been neither stove nor refrigerator, forcing her to make due with other people's rejects: neither one lasted longer than a few months. Since, however, he had taken great care to make sure the electricity was shut off nearly a year ago, all this was academic.
She tried to sit up. Her limbs felt like blocks of concrete. The arms lay at her sides, immobile.
"What's wrong with me," she wondered, only the questioning came to her with an odd detachment, as though she already knew somehow but could not summon the energy, the interest to care. A staggering pain--like a crowbar being shoved viciously into the bone just above her right eye clear through the delicate hollow at the back of her neck--caused her entire body to go limp. "Just being lazy again...," she muttered.
Or had she?
The words hadn't seemed real. None of it seemed real--not the bone-numbing cold that kept causing her to yawn, not the acrid, venomous smell radiating up into her nostrils from deep within her own abdomen. The sound of her own breathing seemed...off. In fact, there only thing she COULD distinguish as real was the erratic beat of her heart: a strange scratch at her ears which reverberated beneath her left ear as a faint, sickeningly squelching squirt.
"But I want something. What is it that I WANT?"
Surely it couldn't be food. An appetite was a thing she had not possessed in so long that the concept of mastication left her weary. The thought of "sweet" caused sour water to gather in her cheeks, to evoke an uncomfortable twang just beneath her jawbones. Salty: that concept churned in her stomach like remembered vomit. Part of her vaguely craved cornstarch, of all things. Perhaps dry flour? Self-rising with perhaps a hint of sugar? No matter. Her desire, her hunger was most assuredly not for food.
She had to get up.
"Swing the legs." Had she actually spoken? "Throw off the covers and swing the legs."
Though it proved a harder task than imagined, she managed. Barely. Once upright, she swayed. The world tipped on its access, toppling her over into a vat of sheer, fizzling pain--despite the fact that stubborn determination kept her rigidly upright. Time stopped, reordering itself into particles and waves: indistinct entities which swirled around her, sweeping her into the familiar currents of indeterminate sights, scents and sensations. She tasted something slimy and foul behind her sinuses. Her intestines smelled poison. Her eyes heard the roar and moan of reality slipping into imagination the turning back upon itself to defy the constancy of space. She was a little girl again; yet she could hear her own baby (now thirteen years old) calling, "Mooommmeeeeee!!!" from the bathroom. How could that be? The girls were three hours away, at boarding school. Her son--the one playing at her feet in his velcro-secured paisley pants, his fat little feet hidden away in blue-trimmed white high-tops that flashed tiny orangish lights--gurgled to his white dalmation puppy even as he studied diplomacy and philosophical truths in the same State as his younger sisters. There was water. Only she couldn't swim--her grandfather's nose refused to let her. The inside of her throat was made of metal. Walking was too hard. She crawled. On all fours, like a dog, she crawled across the miles to defecate, squatting in the middle of the tiny, mold-filled room, above a pile of old newspapers.
And she was hungry.
Not thirsty--her cracked lips and tickle in her throat notwithstanding.
What did she want. Tears burned in Chanctetinyea's stomach. WHAT DID SHE WANT!? Not the red meat they pushed...or the spinach either. Not water (the mere thought of which made her dizzy) or the chocolate she once ate by the one-pound block. Baking powder? Well...maybe a little, nevertheless, that wasn't IT. She NEEDED! She CRAVED! Without it--whatever that elusive, addictive something might be--she would most assuredly...cease.
Her phone. She could taste the vibrations of it against her chin. His voice would caress her ear, the harsh Bostonian tones giving way to the soft rumble of Louisiana humor or that lazy California drawl before speeding up into a whirl of sensations which took her out of this alien world back to the earth, the time, the home she knew. Maybe that was it. Perhaps, if she swallowed it whole, the phone would bring her relief, would replace the sharp slashes of pain with contentment? Anchor her to herself once again? Keep her inside her own skin?
But would it ease the hunger?
What was her hunger.
Chanctetinyea's knees gave way. Down, down, down she tumbled-hand over-hind--into the void of solid frigidity which weighted her irrevocably to that same, sunken spot on the love seat. The fog took her...then everything was clear. Too clear. Why hadn't she recognized it before? It was as plain to her as the stars swirling in yellow, purple, blue and green before her open, unseeing eyes. She was hungry for love and laughter. Her children. Boston Her Sunshine. Music...singing: hitting that high note. Light! The feel of the sun on her face and the grass beneath her feet.
How long had she been exiled on the other side of the chasm? When had she stopped fighting to get back? Where had she been--floating outside her own skin, her own identity--in the interim?
Chanctetinyea was hungry for LIFE....!
***********************************
"In here, office-sirs!" The words echoed in the hallway just beyond the outer doors, the tones high-pitched and gravelly in their urgency. The knob turned tentatively, the door creaked open, a fraction-of-an-inch at a time. "See, I didn't thing it'd be locked. She charged in, covering her snub nose with a plump, dimpled hand. "Agh! Whadd-aye tell you. That SMELL!"
The first officer was young with a jaw as smooth and soft as spoon-smoothed sherbet. He wrinkled his nose, the eyes widening in child-like dread before he blinked all humanity a way in order to face the undeniable. He crouched beside the love seat, shook his head, and sighed.He then turned to his partner. "Been dead at least a week. Maybe longer."
Above him, a slightly gnarled hand scraped back thinning gray hair. "And you say this is your neighbor, ma'am?"
She cowered a bit at the hint of censure in the deep but quiet voice before nodding slowly.
"When was the last time you saw her? Around the neighborhood?" He found himself facing a blank stare. "In the building?"
Nothing.
"In the laundry room?" his partner interjected with impatient desperation.
She shook her head. "Sh-she always was a strange one...never mixed much. Real hoity-toity prep school type!"
The baby-faced law man gingerly lifted Chanctetinyea's left arm. "Medic alert bracelet."
"What does it say?"
"'...g6pd...no meds...MDS...?'" He spoke as though deciphering some complex code.
The other man grimaced, the puzzlement straining his old bones. "What the...?"
"Some kind of blood thing," the neighbor offered. "Told us about it when she moved in."
"And that was?"
"Three years ago. Maybe a little more."
"Let me get this straight. Your next door neighbor lived her alone for three years or so. You knew she had 'some kind of blood thing', but it never occurred to you to check up on her? Maybe knock on her door from time to time."
"I told you. She was a strange one!" she insisted. "One of those smarty-aleck intellectuals. An artist, I think. No, a writer."
The two men exchanged glances before the young one elevated himself up from the pile of waste--wasted dreams, wasted talent, wasted love, life, and potential--to pull the black-bound pad from the breast pocket of his uniform.
Almost imperceptibly, his hand shook.
The front door squealed on its hinges before banging--irreverently, unmoved by the macabre scene--into the wall to which it was attached. "What's going on here." The woman who slipped into the apartment behind them was expensively dressed and perfectly coiffed despite the distinct twang of a West Virginian accent. Her short hair was the odd light brown of a brunette gone gray, the face so wizened by age and determination that it has lost all distinction, even the subtleties defining its gender. "Lowered! What is that...odor?"
"Know her?"
She gave her chin a quick jerk. "The owner's sister."
"The owner of the building you mean?" She nodded. "And that would be."
"That football player. Retired now. Back at Yale. Grad-jate school he says."
The older man glared. "His name, ma'am?"
"Hayle, I believe." She nosed her way between the two men. "Nasty."
"Been dead a few days at least. Body seems...bloodless though. Might have been longer."
The neighbor nodded. "Makes sense. Always was real anemic. Heard those kids of hers whisperin' about it in the halls."
"Oh." The second woman peered at the corpse with distaste. "Well, tell me." She turned flirty blue eyes up and on to the younger partner. "How long d'ya think it'll take to get that smell out? I'd really like t'turn this unit in the next few days so I can lease it before the first of the month...."
"Say it again...."
Chanctetinyea rolled over on the sweat-dampened love seat, her head and heart pounding. What time was it? What DAY was it? She awoke laboriously, sloughing off heavy layers of fatigue with all the effort of a seasoned athlete warming up for a major event. Even so, every inch of her body ached. Her brain was intricately woven strands of steel wool.
And she was hungry.
No, that wasn't right. She was craving something...but what?
The dull, particle-filled rays of the sun suffused the room with a dull, crimson glow. She tried to breath it in. Her lungs rattled, spurring a violent coughing fit which left her limp and disoriented beneath the four heavy blankets.
"Godforsaken hole," she muttered for about the thousandth time since being ordered to move there. No one, after all, treated a person like family; and her second-oldest brother had pulled out all the stops in shutting her away in this place. There was no heat of which to speak; mold grew in thick, gray fur in the bathroom and on the far wall of her bedroom. There had been neither stove nor refrigerator, forcing her to make due with other people's rejects: neither one lasted longer than a few months. Since, however, he had taken great care to make sure the electricity was shut off nearly a year ago, all this was academic.
She tried to sit up. Her limbs felt like blocks of concrete. The arms lay at her sides, immobile.
"What's wrong with me," she wondered, only the questioning came to her with an odd detachment, as though she already knew somehow but could not summon the energy, the interest to care. A staggering pain--like a crowbar being shoved viciously into the bone just above her right eye clear through the delicate hollow at the back of her neck--caused her entire body to go limp. "Just being lazy again...," she muttered.
Or had she?
The words hadn't seemed real. None of it seemed real--not the bone-numbing cold that kept causing her to yawn, not the acrid, venomous smell radiating up into her nostrils from deep within her own abdomen. The sound of her own breathing seemed...off. In fact, there only thing she COULD distinguish as real was the erratic beat of her heart: a strange scratch at her ears which reverberated beneath her left ear as a faint, sickeningly squelching squirt.
"But I want something. What is it that I WANT?"
Surely it couldn't be food. An appetite was a thing she had not possessed in so long that the concept of mastication left her weary. The thought of "sweet" caused sour water to gather in her cheeks, to evoke an uncomfortable twang just beneath her jawbones. Salty: that concept churned in her stomach like remembered vomit. Part of her vaguely craved cornstarch, of all things. Perhaps dry flour? Self-rising with perhaps a hint of sugar? No matter. Her desire, her hunger was most assuredly not for food.
She had to get up.
"Swing the legs." Had she actually spoken? "Throw off the covers and swing the legs."
Though it proved a harder task than imagined, she managed. Barely. Once upright, she swayed. The world tipped on its access, toppling her over into a vat of sheer, fizzling pain--despite the fact that stubborn determination kept her rigidly upright. Time stopped, reordering itself into particles and waves: indistinct entities which swirled around her, sweeping her into the familiar currents of indeterminate sights, scents and sensations. She tasted something slimy and foul behind her sinuses. Her intestines smelled poison. Her eyes heard the roar and moan of reality slipping into imagination the turning back upon itself to defy the constancy of space. She was a little girl again; yet she could hear her own baby (now thirteen years old) calling, "Mooommmeeeeee!!!" from the bathroom. How could that be? The girls were three hours away, at boarding school. Her son--the one playing at her feet in his velcro-secured paisley pants, his fat little feet hidden away in blue-trimmed white high-tops that flashed tiny orangish lights--gurgled to his white dalmation puppy even as he studied diplomacy and philosophical truths in the same State as his younger sisters. There was water. Only she couldn't swim--her grandfather's nose refused to let her. The inside of her throat was made of metal. Walking was too hard. She crawled. On all fours, like a dog, she crawled across the miles to defecate, squatting in the middle of the tiny, mold-filled room, above a pile of old newspapers.
And she was hungry.
Not thirsty--her cracked lips and tickle in her throat notwithstanding.
What did she want. Tears burned in Chanctetinyea's stomach. WHAT DID SHE WANT!? Not the red meat they pushed...or the spinach either. Not water (the mere thought of which made her dizzy) or the chocolate she once ate by the one-pound block. Baking powder? Well...maybe a little, nevertheless, that wasn't IT. She NEEDED! She CRAVED! Without it--whatever that elusive, addictive something might be--she would most assuredly...cease.
Her phone. She could taste the vibrations of it against her chin. His voice would caress her ear, the harsh Bostonian tones giving way to the soft rumble of Louisiana humor or that lazy California drawl before speeding up into a whirl of sensations which took her out of this alien world back to the earth, the time, the home she knew. Maybe that was it. Perhaps, if she swallowed it whole, the phone would bring her relief, would replace the sharp slashes of pain with contentment? Anchor her to herself once again? Keep her inside her own skin?
But would it ease the hunger?
What was her hunger.
Chanctetinyea's knees gave way. Down, down, down she tumbled-hand over-hind--into the void of solid frigidity which weighted her irrevocably to that same, sunken spot on the love seat. The fog took her...then everything was clear. Too clear. Why hadn't she recognized it before? It was as plain to her as the stars swirling in yellow, purple, blue and green before her open, unseeing eyes. She was hungry for love and laughter. Her children. Boston Her Sunshine. Music...singing: hitting that high note. Light! The feel of the sun on her face and the grass beneath her feet.
How long had she been exiled on the other side of the chasm? When had she stopped fighting to get back? Where had she been--floating outside her own skin, her own identity--in the interim?
Chanctetinyea was hungry for LIFE....!
***********************************
"In here, office-sirs!" The words echoed in the hallway just beyond the outer doors, the tones high-pitched and gravelly in their urgency. The knob turned tentatively, the door creaked open, a fraction-of-an-inch at a time. "See, I didn't thing it'd be locked. She charged in, covering her snub nose with a plump, dimpled hand. "Agh! Whadd-aye tell you. That SMELL!"
The first officer was young with a jaw as smooth and soft as spoon-smoothed sherbet. He wrinkled his nose, the eyes widening in child-like dread before he blinked all humanity a way in order to face the undeniable. He crouched beside the love seat, shook his head, and sighed.He then turned to his partner. "Been dead at least a week. Maybe longer."
Above him, a slightly gnarled hand scraped back thinning gray hair. "And you say this is your neighbor, ma'am?"
She cowered a bit at the hint of censure in the deep but quiet voice before nodding slowly.
"When was the last time you saw her? Around the neighborhood?" He found himself facing a blank stare. "In the building?"
Nothing.
"In the laundry room?" his partner interjected with impatient desperation.
She shook her head. "Sh-she always was a strange one...never mixed much. Real hoity-toity prep school type!"
The baby-faced law man gingerly lifted Chanctetinyea's left arm. "Medic alert bracelet."
"What does it say?"
"'...g6pd...no meds...MDS...?'" He spoke as though deciphering some complex code.
The other man grimaced, the puzzlement straining his old bones. "What the...?"
"Some kind of blood thing," the neighbor offered. "Told us about it when she moved in."
"And that was?"
"Three years ago. Maybe a little more."
"Let me get this straight. Your next door neighbor lived her alone for three years or so. You knew she had 'some kind of blood thing', but it never occurred to you to check up on her? Maybe knock on her door from time to time."
"I told you. She was a strange one!" she insisted. "One of those smarty-aleck intellectuals. An artist, I think. No, a writer."
The two men exchanged glances before the young one elevated himself up from the pile of waste--wasted dreams, wasted talent, wasted love, life, and potential--to pull the black-bound pad from the breast pocket of his uniform.
Almost imperceptibly, his hand shook.
The front door squealed on its hinges before banging--irreverently, unmoved by the macabre scene--into the wall to which it was attached. "What's going on here." The woman who slipped into the apartment behind them was expensively dressed and perfectly coiffed despite the distinct twang of a West Virginian accent. Her short hair was the odd light brown of a brunette gone gray, the face so wizened by age and determination that it has lost all distinction, even the subtleties defining its gender. "Lowered! What is that...odor?"
"Know her?"
She gave her chin a quick jerk. "The owner's sister."
"The owner of the building you mean?" She nodded. "And that would be."
"That football player. Retired now. Back at Yale. Grad-jate school he says."
The older man glared. "His name, ma'am?"
"Hayle, I believe." She nosed her way between the two men. "Nasty."
"Been dead a few days at least. Body seems...bloodless though. Might have been longer."
The neighbor nodded. "Makes sense. Always was real anemic. Heard those kids of hers whisperin' about it in the halls."
"Oh." The second woman peered at the corpse with distaste. "Well, tell me." She turned flirty blue eyes up and on to the younger partner. "How long d'ya think it'll take to get that smell out? I'd really like t'turn this unit in the next few days so I can lease it before the first of the month...."