As Fear Faces (2)

13 Everything Must Come in Threes'

I walk through the streets of this town, so different from all the places I've been and all the places I want to go. They have dingy sidewalks, not sparkling like the ones I walked with Catherine on and not gold like the ones I walked upon with the Perleth. This place is strange, like a new planet filled with aliens and people that are nothing like myself. I feel out of place but light and airy. I can't think too much about anything, the pain in my mind excruciating. I know something's wrong but I don't think too long on that either. Gretchen walks into a clear door with a black rim and posters covering the windows. I follow her into the colorful store, groceries. I've never been in my whole life to a store that sells food like this. It's a small building with white walls gone yellow and white floors gone brown. The artificial light tints the store with a coffee stain teeth color, like the teeth Blaine has. His crooked mouth being the disheveled shelves in the store and his tongue being the loud people who go about, buying and pushing vapid words in and out. Gretchen asks me to grab three green peppers, ones of adequate size. I never knew peppers grew in different sizes. I walk over to a green vibrance, beautiful I whisper and stare for three moments. One moment for the pepper in the left corner stacked on top of a brown one. Another moment for the pepper right in the middle with a broken stem but the most illuminating coloration. And the last moment I take is for the yellowish pepper on the right, nevertheless a perfect size. I line them all up in my hands, every tip matches and ever bottom reaches another. I stuff them all in a bag and see Gretchen three rows over.

I'm going exploring, I tell her and put the bag in the cart. I pass the most bizarre human beings I have ever encountered. People here have distressed clothes and matted hair. One woman has a cloth covering her hair and laying on top of her head, she's undoubtedly beautiful. She reaches the highest shelves wearing her green heels and has no one around her or near her to be pushed by. She makes me wonder why I don't leave Blaine and this mess we've made and explore this new world.