◤𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕒𝕞𝕪◢ - It Started With Vomit!

Chapter 12 | Shying Away

. . .

"Who do those middle-aged housewives think they are? meddling in my own personal affairs!" Amy grinded her teeth. 

She was sitting at the head of an extensive dining table, surrounded by boundless amounts of dishes: soups to sober up, french toasts, fruits arranged in pretty patterns, lobster scrambled eggs, tantalising baked goods, and many more she didn't know or think she could stomach. 

After waking up and quarrelling with her (not) husband, Shadow, Amy had went back inside and turned on the TV to relax her mind. Yes, there was a television in the dinning room; being rich demanded for it. Amy had some four to six people for company, but they didn't care to talk to her—or were ordered not to converse with her—except when given an order at her behest or when they were carrying out a formality, like "good morning madam" or "your bath is ready madam." 

While strangers moved about the grand house, dissapearing into corners and halls Amy didn't care yet to familiarize herself with, she decided to distract herself from the bizarre state of affairs that had become her new life (for the next six months). Amy tuned in to the only show that made her feel normal again: Good morning Sega, a talk show enjoyed by most ages and demographics. However, instead of beginning  to feel better, a very nasty headline, an unflattering picture of herself, and unwarranted rounds of insults from the show's hosts and hostesses greeted Amy.

She immediately  had to call up her friends.

"How is it any of their business who I choose to marry, huh? How is it their business if I'm a heavy drinker? Why must I fit their perverted, glorified standard of beauty? Why should my degrees dictate my only sense of worth, huh?" Amy couldn't help but fumble all over thoughts and questions overrunning her brain with overwhelming speed per second. "How is it any of their business if I'm doing all this to protect my actual marriage?"

"Ames, calm down."

"Calm, peace, or talking-it-out will not help what my life has sadly become, Silver!"

"Hey!" Blaze, who had been listening calmly and attentively till this point, fumed through the phone. "We all get that you're worried and worked up, but do not take this out on Silver!" To which he muttered his thanks, staggered and taken aback by the indignant undertow welling in her voice. "You know better, Amy," Blaze concluded.

"Well, I'm not my normal self today," Amy said, feeling petty as to pin her behaviour on hormones and erratic emotional changes.

"I should think that constitutes nothing."

"Like hell it doesn't!" The speakers blew up with robust vigor. "There are days when every woman must live it out, else they die from the inside out!"

"We don't die," Blaze interrupted sardonically.

"We bleed from the inside out. Doesn't that count?"

"Yeah," someone agreed. "I heard boys equate it to planting a facer to their balls!"

"Exactly like that!" Amy exclaimed in vehement agreement. But, unable to recognize the voice, "Who was that?" she asked.

"It's Sticks," Blaze announced, then elaborated on the exact circumstances and well-fortuned impositions from which their newly formed friendship transpired. "You've met before. Sticks is good—and oddly peculiar—company to keep around. Like a tractable, nutty house pet."

"I'm a what now?"

"I thought Cream was our house pet. What happened to her?" Amy—in the same manner as earlier—doubled down into the mic, almost as if trying to exit its metallic barrier and break into the office's squared walls in its stead.