In the split second it takes for Thomas to recognize me, time taffies out, pulling from my eyes to his face -straining thin, threatening to break but refusing to go through with it. In that seemingly endless stretch, I rise high above the scene, floating back to my previous position atop the hood of the dragon. I see myself and Thomas on the road. His arms are pretzeled across his body, but I can see that he is holding the postcard I had sent him. I watch a look of confusion and disgust flood his eyes. Then, I take in my appearance: hair a wild tangle, face filthy. The robe I'm wearing is torn and dirty. Thin trails of blood run from my knees, some crusted brown, some still trickling red. Feet bare. I observe it all from this comfortable distance when a faint undertow of sensation tugs me back. My stomach feels like a black hole, recruiting blood, and feelings, and gravity. It pulls me from my elevated onlooker position and snaps me back into my body just in time to feel myself barf, right there in the middle of the road.
Thomas doesn't run to me. He stands there, arms folded. I stand upright and wipe my mouth with my abraded hand.
"What the fuck, Lucee?"
I have no words. I pat the pocket of the bathrobe. I feel the lump of paper, the one that contains my first creative output in a decade. Proof that I have words, but where are they now? I look back at the puddle of puke on the ground. Maybe they are there.
"Seriously, what the fuck?" he repeats.
The seething impatience in his tone lights a familiar fuse in me. I find myself walking towards him, then past him to the door of Maryn's house.
"Lucee!"
The walls come up around me. I hadn't realized they were gone, but now that they're back, I feel how they confine me and simultaneously hold me together. I limit my words because it's too much work to shout them through the walls. There's a relief in it. It's a familiar restriction, the woodenness of my expression. I turn to him, my voice flat.
"I need to shower, then we can go."
YOU ARE READING
Following Fish
ChickLit"The day my husband committed himself to inpatient treatment was the same day my dog died." When your life falls apart, and the pieces are so small and few that you can hold them in one hand, what do you do? Lucee Lekki decides to slip them into her...
