the alive

Janice

There are desperate boundaries of loneliness worth crossing. Dead-end obstacle bi-fold closet door solitudes worth peeking through. Heart hammering interrupting confusion worth feeling. Sometimes the thin frosty light is the brightest smiling star reaching to hold hands from the dissipating distance of tenebrous oblivion, knowing the cosmos through long slender slits of angled louvred. Sometimes the soul washes itself in the epilogue of another thundering soul, scissoring the loins under a violating violent violet sky.

Janice hates Patricia. The young arrogant sadist teacher who abused and humiliated her. But she loves Patricia. The solid skin tight golden brown tan trapped brunette warrior who repented such abuses. But she also hates the treacherous Patricia who betrayed her own best friend and ended up abandoning her duties along with Garret. And now? In this moment? Janice loves Patricia. Janice wants to feel Patricia's inner written language tattooed into the bare vulva of her being. She wants that conversation. She also wants the conversation that they never had. Wants every bit of her abused and broken bent rusting realization. Patricia's complicated. She's horrible and beautiful and stern and vulnerable. A ghost worth resurrecting, like Terra Coal. Patricia is the curling glossy cardboard puzzle Janice wishes to fret over. In love with her paper cut pieces. And through the abstruse vermilion stains, she knows those pieces fit.

The Grand Ghost whispers profane words like silhouettes of dusty wall taxidermy to herself as she chops a cucumber into bits and pieces for the garden salad she's attempting to concoct with a small red handle tomato knife.

Her kitchen is built of bright black smooth cement countertops and black flamingo faucet spout sinks. Double oven silver stoves and instant button burning burners. Caliginous cabinetry. The backsplash is a pallid and hoary un-checkerboard of a two by six fucked up herringbone pattern. Somehow, the design looks like bones. Rectangles of an osteal shape.

Earthy spinach and celery and bits of onion layers mix with verdant peppers and tomatoes and olives. Lay like colourful corpses resting on black catafalque plates.

The mushrooms she'll chop up next are an aphrodisiac from the labs in the hospital. Janice picks one pimply fungus with her glossy sable nail polish fingers and places it into her mouth. Chews and swallows. Sighs to herself. They'll also be having crispy cast iron fried 3D printed plant based meat and twisty olive breads. The bread's a treat, more so than the blackened vodka that they'll be drinking in their hock wine glass protein shakes.

"You stupid bitch, Janice. What are you thinking? She betrayed Terra. She betrayed you. She is...Patricia. That bitch. That intoxicating vicious, damaged, drunken good time wrapped up in one desperate moment trapped in my youth. That fucking war. Oh my god...I can taste her...still. The flavour of her lips and loins are still in my mouth. Always. Fuck."

Whispers sounds of malediction at herself. Stops cutting the vegetables. Holds the countertop to balance her shudder. Looks up and watches a hologram screen above the sink. Her black wolf cut messy hair tickles the back of her neck as she tilts her head slightly further toward the images. Watches Patricia's hard physical curves work out. Closes her eyes at the thought of bathing in Patricia's sweet sweat. Watches the Ghost sit on her heels and jump up and back down over and over to the point of hurling into a garbage can. Still flushed and horny as she watches Patricia bury her face in black plastic within a red disposal bin. Witnesses Patricia's entire bent spandex ass from the surveillance position.

Sighs and feels that her loins are turning to juicy liquid in her panties by watching Patricia gag and vomit. The mushrooms are working.

Janice should be reading her daily reports about the progress of her Ghosts and their attempt to find hidden portals and any trace of David Leonard. Knows David's other first reality's an empty tomb. His armies aren't where they were. And since that idiot, Malice, broke contact with all of the other simulations, she can't easily know where those Leonard soldiers went. She has her ideas.