Crimson Rivers

1) Crooked Painting

Sadie found her gaze fixed on the crooked painting hanging on the grey wall across from her.

Her cigarette slumped between her fingers and a bit of ash trickled down onto the bed. She shivered, sitting on top of two layers of ratty blankets sticky with something that didn't smell too pleasant.

The painting showed a brown cow looking straight ahead with a dandelion tucked behind its ear. An endless sea of wheatgrass trailed behind, accompanied by drops of blue flowers with their petals dancing in the wind. She stared into the cow's big brown eyes, unsure what she was feeling.

A splotch of dark red covered the left-hand corner of the painting, layered across the fluffy clouds. Sadie ignored it.

She asked herself why she was doing this. There were a thousand other things she could've been doing and yet here she was, trapped. Caught in a staring contest with a cow which may have never been anything more than a thought in the artist's mind. Or maybe this was a real cow, a cow that bathed in the sun on a summer day, letting the wheat cushion its body. A cow that lived a full life, frolicking in a place which seemed made for it. But little did it know, it was the puddle and the world was just the hole which fit it. Sadie couldn't even remember the last time she saw or even heard an animal other than the birds constantly circling overhead, waiting for their next meal. She wondered how they could still be hungry with so many corpses plaguing the streets.

A bout of arguing reached Sadie's room, drifting through the cracked window and landing at her doorstep. Arguing became a kind of comfort in a way, a reminder that she wasn't alone. Something to ground her.

"I know you ate those crackers, you whale!" Jerry yelled, standing right outside Sadie's door.

But he wasn't talking to Sadie. He was talking to Beth, the overweight woman who'd worn the same pair of yoga pants since the day she first joined the group. Beth had almost become the punching bag of the group, someone to lob fat jokes at and blame for every misfortune.

"I didn't eat shit! I haven't eaten shit in two days!" Beth retorted, matching Jerry's volume.

Sadie turned her gaze away from the painting and towards the conflict, waiting to see if things would escalate. They always did.

"I've got a kid to feed and you're over here placing your greasy ham-hocks on my rations."

Actually, Jerry had two kids. A son of his own DNA and a meek daughter inherited from a loveless marriage. Sadie wondered how someone could so casually dismiss one of their own.

"Fuck off, Jerry. I can't take this anymore. Go take your paranoia somewhere else." Sadie listened to Beth's steps grow more distant as she walked away.

"Come back here!" Jerry called.

Sadie breathed a long sigh and forced herself out of bed, discarding the sticky blanket onto the splotched carpet. She flicked the cigarette into her trash. She knew it was only a matter of time before she heard Jerry's fist pounding against her door so she took preemptive action. It didn't seem like a coincidence to her that all of Jerry's disputes seemed to always take place outside her room. For a misogynist, he sure liked to involve Sadie in everything.

She was technically the leader of the group, but it'd been weeks since she'd led anything. People seemed to have given up on Sadie, but Jerry, for whatever reason, was not one of them. Fran also seemed to care too.

Sadie knew it was only a matter of time before she ran out of her meds but didn't expect the crash to be so severe. For weeks she'd been stuck in bed, listening to her screaming thoughts which were only occasionally interrupted by the shambling steps of her group. The empty bottle of antidepressants rested on her bedside table, almost mocking her. A constant reminder that she couldn't even do the bare minimum of throwing it in the trash. A part of her was holding out hope that the bottle would refill itself. Much stranger things had happened before.