Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
I typically spend the mornings scavenging in the empty houses. Every week there is a new one to look through. Someone goes off to work and doesn’t return.
This week it is not a house but a shop called the Kitchen Sink. I have not been in here before, but yesterday I heard some whispering about a man called ‘Big Jim,’ who is… possibly dead? The whispering people didn’t seem sure. They wanted to go into his shop and take things, but their uncertainty prevented them from doing so.
I have no idea why they fear this man, nor do I care about the life status of Big Jim. I go right into the Kitchen Sink and begin to peruse the shelves. There are weapons in here. And backpacks made of thick canvas the color of dreary olives. Little containers, in the same dull color, that hold water. Various electrical mechanicals. Food wrapped up in silver packages. And on an endcap a book of maps.
All these things feel quite useful in a wild way. A way that intrigues me and makes me yearn for the open road. For an adventure. A trip into the great unknown.
But there is no adventure for me.
I will be stuck in this town for all eternity.
So I leave the shop and wander back down to the bar.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the shadows once I step inside, but I sit at the same place every time I come in so I head in that direction with the sunlight lingering in my vision. When I get to my stool, I take off the leopard coat and drape it across the back, then settle and sigh, my feet weary from all my aimless walking today.
The bartender, who is a gigantic bear-faced chimera who looks much more animal than the human he’s been mixed with, slides a glass of whiskey down my way without comment. It’s my usual. Sometimes it’s a very nice whiskey. Sometimes it tastes like shit. It all depends on how well the shelves are stocked. And oftentimes they are not stocked well at all, since it’s the job of the eros humans to procure and deliver supplies and, as we all know, getting home from the outside world can sometimes be a problem.
I don’t participate in much as far as the community goes. I walk. I scavenge. I drink. I go back to the apartment and sleep. Eros will join me in the middle of the night. He usually wants sex, but the nice thing about having sex with Eros is that he has absolutely no expectations. It’s a physical act and nothing more.
And it suits me.
This whole life is starting to suit me.
In fact, I’m beginning to forget what it was like to be a queen with her day scheduled down to the very last moment.
Perhaps that whole life was a dream?
The longer I sit in the bar, the more this dream fades. One day, I think, it will vanish altogether.
I sit on my stool sipping whiskey until the sun goes down.
This is my signal to end the day.
I follow the sun and go upstairs to bed. I’m not really tired—it’s more like a weariness—but sleep comes easy to me these days, so why fight it?
A heavy sigh comes out as I set my broom-handle scepter against the wall and toss the leopard coat in the general direction of a chair, but it misses and falls to the floor in a heap. Then I slip my arms out of the blue dress and let it slide to the floor where it lies, like a puddle, at my feet, until I step out of it. The antlers come next. Another exhale comes out when I untie that string, but this one is relief. Carrying a rack of twenty-two points around on the top of my head is tiring, after all.
It never used to be. When they weren’t affixed there with string, but were a part of me, like my heart or my bones. But it is definitely tiring now.
When I am stripped down to my skin, I slip into the bed I share, kind of, with the god of love. We both sleep in it. And have sex in it. But we don’t really share it. There are a few hours during the night when we’re both here in the same space. Not talking, or commiserating, or supporting one another—it’s not that kind of ‘share.’ It’s just… existing next to each other.
I tell myself I like this way.
I like being alone. Singular. Solitary.
Who in this world, after all, could possibly relate to me?
So I like it this way.
I wake up suddenly, sweaty and breathing hard, sitting up and holding my chest with both hands as the memory of the dream comes back.