Reaching up, Odelia crooked an elbow over the rim of the sink and pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, standing for the first time since she'd cracked the toilet.
Her legs were more than a little wobbly under her still not inconsiderable weight, but they held.
She rubbed her tongue over her front teeth. They felt uncomfortably tight, like something was caught between them. Plucking at it with a fingernail, she worked free what proved to be the last remaining thread of the toga she'd been wearing. After contemplating this fact for a moment, she shrugged and swallowed it, like a strand of spaghetti.
The tile, spotless now, squeaked under her slimy toes as she leaned forward and stuck her head under the spigot. The water turned from lukewarm to cool as she drank, and finally to icy cold.
By the time she turned the flow off, water condensation had beaded up along the length of the brass spout, but even so, unwelcome tastes lingered. Getting rid of them would require a toothbrush, which meant she needed to get to a bathroom.
Holding onto the countertop, both for balance and support, Odelia turned around.
If she left the kitchen through the dining room, she could get from there to the shelter of a hallway without having to take more than a few steps through the living room. It wouldn't be the right hallway, the one that led to her own bedroom and bathroom, but...
Odelia paused, and then she laughed. After everything she had been through, here she was, still as obedient as a trained seal.
The rest of the family used her bathroom whenever they felt like it, so why did she feel the need to reassure herself that she had a good excuse before using one of theirs?
The shower stall in the master bathroom was not only the biggest in the house, it was also the only one with a ledge you could sit on while you washed yourself, so as soon as she was done brushing her teeth, she was going to park her butt on that ledge and bathe herself silly, Melanie's household rules be damned.
She pushed against the dining room's swinging doors, and a gust of air pushed back, stinking of grease, garbage, and mold.
The table was covered with take-out containers, and more lined the walls, piled up in untidy heaps. With every move, she brushed against at least one such stack, toppling it over, sending pizza boxes, KFC buckets, Styrofoam trays, and paper bags stuffed with trash skidding across the floor, forcing her to shuffle forward at a snail's pace for fear of impaling one of her feet on the tines of a filthy plastic spork.
She slowed even more as she approached the archway opening onto the living room.
Sunlight streamed through the sheers covering the picture window. Going by the angle of the beam, it had to be around ten in the morning, too late for the Journal Gazette and too early for the Bryan Times, so at least she didn't have to worry about either paper boy showing up.
A dog was barking. It sounded like Virgil, the Kellogg's yippy little poodle... He'd probably spotted a squirrel or a rabbit, but since he also barked every time he saw a car, person, or lawn mower, Odelia leaned against the arch, waiting for quiet to descend, just in case. While she waited, she picked up an extra-large pizza box and unfolded it.
When she finally stepped out, she did so holding the pizza box in front of her by its long edge in the manner of a burlesque dancer wielding a fan. It felt so much like entering from the darkened wings of a theater into the bright lights of center stage, she half-expected to be greeted with applause.
YOU ARE READING
Tipping the Scales
ChickLitOdelia has spent most of her life so firmly under her brother's thumb that she might as well have been an insect trapped in a chunk of amber, but now, at long last, something is happening to her. Too bad it's not a nice, normal, something, like a '...
