Then There's Wilbur

Chapter 5

Diana

I have to applaud my friends for cheering me up last night.

And that kind officer for not throwing me in jail. Of course, if it ever crossed his mind, he'd still lack some solid evidence. It would take a lot of explaining (and some whining on my part), if I was asked about my plans of purchasing illegal herbs. I was told that I complain a lot when I'm drunk. Lucky for me, I was taken care of last night.

I grabbed the pillow from under my head and buried my face in it. I survived a night without getting into trouble.

Now this is what maturity is.

It's when I remember the antics that I was so set on doing before, and doing the exact opposite. Like sleeping with a stranger, for one. I've heard tales of horror about people regretting it the morning after. It's bad enough that you're vulnerable to sexually transmitted disease with one partner. What more if it was with someone you barely knew?

Now that the fog looming over my brain's taking its time to clear, I couldn't seem to remember the details on how I got home.

Slowly lowering the pillow, I caught a whiff of what I could only recall is the smell of my co-worker's cheap perfume; a mixture of an attempt to be classy, and the pungent scent of failure.

I frowned and threw the cushion off the bed. I must have cried last night. That's probably the scent I wore the whole day, yesterday.

The door opened and the footsteps immediately stopped at the foot of the bed. The curtains were draped and very little light came from the outside.

I have a housekeeper come in every week to do some cleaning. I wasn't sure what time it was, but I have a feeling she came in a few hours earlier than usual.
She always asked me if I wanted some coffee. It's like an automatic question, whenever she greeted me - regardless of the time. So what my clouded mind couldn't grasp was, instead of getting the usual 'Caffeine?', I was greeted with an ear-splitting scream.

That was all it took for my unclear mind to work on full gear. Ignoring the sudden brightness of my surrounding, it took me a while to focus on the little girl, still screaming like a fire truck siren. Her face starting to resemble the same shade of the new lipstick I got online.

I scrambled off the bed and almost tripped when I took a step towards her. That got her to stop, her eyes wide as she looked at me. I parted my hair and attempted to give her a friendly smile. I'm guessing she was about seven, her hair just as messy as mine.

She swallowed, took a step back, and broke off to a sprint out of the room.

"There's a witch in your room!" The little girl screamed, her footsteps matching my heartbeat. Fast, and nearing cardiac arrest.

She used 'your'.

Turning around, I noticed how different the sheets were from my pristine white bed covers. I looked around to see a poster of The Beatles beside a guitar. The place was cluttered with shirts and I'm not going to stay long enough to know which ones were clean and which weren't.

"I messed up," I murmured, holding the sides of my head, I let my surroundings envelop me in a state of dread. "Diana Coal, what did you do know?" I sat there on the floor and tried finding my shoes. I was well aware that I wore another woman's clothes. I don't remember purchasing an orange dress with my pay check.

A woman.

Hope rose in my chest as I thought of the scenario the woman must have found me in. I might have escaped the craziness from the others and decided to go home. Maybe I was too drunk that I fell asleep on the side of the road. She must be buying groceries then or some eggs for breakfast, when she found me. She must be the little girl's mother.