BEEP. beep. BEEP.
beep. BEEP. beep.
BEEP. bee—
"Uhm- hello?"
"Thank baby Christ, you finally picked up! Good morning!!"
"Mhm, m-morning."
"For the love of God, will you wake up now?! You're already late!!"
"Uh, ah, late for what?"
"Your college test! Art History with Professor Romildo. Ring a bell?"
The darkness disappears into nothingness as Edith's eyes fling wide open. She jerks up and the glaring sunlight from her oriel windows blinds her in the process. Edith flips to her side and, in the process, falls off her Queen-sized bed and onto the hardwood floor.
"Fuck—" She groans out.
"Are you okay? Alive and living?" Comes a cheeky voice from the speakers of her iPhone. Edith squints at the zero brightness screen to see Macy's name flashing in the contact ID.
"Yeah, um, I'm good."
"Okay, see you in a bit! Bye!"
The line goes dead.
With half open eyes and a thudding heart beating ceremoniously in her eardrums, Edith looks around. Her grey comforter is pooled over her short clad legs and her greasy pillows are scattered on the floor, around the bedside cabinet.
Hm, seems familiar.
Magazines of architecture and books of design lay open and sprawled over her bed with scattered potato chips garnishing the pages and the bedspread.
Looks like home to me.
Edith stands up and scrunches her nose at the crumbs of chips that she might have had crushed in her sleep. In the empty expanse of hardwood floor was a grey bean bag, burdened under the weight of Edith's clothes— dirty laundry and clean laundry, mushed together, celebrating a no discrimination day.
Across it was a small space-themed calender sitting atop the circular coffee table reading: MONDAY, MAY 11.
How long did she sleep?
Edith tries to reel back in her head, collecting scattered memories of the weekend, and sighs when she remembers nothing.
In front of the calender are scattered papers of pending bills. Yeah. Edith remembers them. The last thing she remembers is worrying over unpaid bills and how to pay them without leaning into prostitution.
"Did I drink myself dead?" She questions to no one in particular. Her voice comes out hoarse and ragged. To her dismay she finds no empty alcohol bottles in perspective to prove a happy weekend of partying the night away.
Edith walks up to the floor length mirror, standing erect in front of the bean bag, and leans into it. She stares at her dry skin, oily pores around her nose, and the new zits that were coming into being around her forehead and chin. Hm. Looks like everyday her.
Her eyes catch the growing natural roots of brown in her hair as she cards her fingers through her dirty blonde hair to check if she had any forehead injuries or head injuries. There was not even a bump on her forehead.
Pulling her maroon crop top down, she adjusts her cotton shorts on her thighs before opening the door on the entrance.
As if on cue, she has a flashback.
A strange memory of a strange man standing on her doorstep with beautiful honey eyes, holding her job request pamphlet in hand. His beautiful lips are moving, he is speaking something, but Edith cannot quite hear it or see it clearly.
Huh?
Edith squints at the morning sun who dared to come at on schedule, everyday, and yawned in it's face, before stepping into her porch. A warm breeze embraces her exposed skin as she raises her hands and stretches her arm muscles.
Her neighborhood is as lively as ever.
"Hola Senõrita!!" Her neighbor, the rich teen guy who hated wearing clothes and lived opposite to her, waves vigorously from his balcony. His underarm-pit bush makes Edith gag early in the morning. Nevertheless, he continues waving. Man was as confident as they came.
The guy pushes out a pipe directly in front of his crotch and waters his gardens underneath.
Edith coughs out a dry greeting, tired of ignoring him ever since she had moved to Huxley, "Hola, Hola." The boy's eyebrow rise to his hairline, eyeballs nearly popping out. He did not expect being greeted back, Edith guesses.
"You look fabulous today!!" He exclaims for all of the neighborhood to hear. Now, that's too much of an extroversion for 8 A.M. on a monday morning. Edith wasn't ready for this interaction, yet.
Edith ignores him and walks out of the gate across her drying garden and steps onto the cobbled footpath with no ambition in mind. Why was she here? Why is she wasting time outside? She could not let go of the this hesitant feeling that she was forgetting something.
But what?
"Auntie Edith!! Duck!!" A child squeaks. But it was too late. Before Edith's sloppy sport reflexes could have been exposed to the world as an embarrassment to human society— an obnoxious orange frisbee had already attacked her forehead.
The plastic went smack on her nose, its force pushing Edith back with momentum.
The blonde girl fall backwards and her head hits the cobbled footpath. A sense of deja vu ensues.
Her head hitting against concrete. Her head hitting against walls. Her head hitting against the pillows.
Death from concussion?
Every incident magnifying in her head with the feeling of pain that followed it.
Like bees around honey, Edith's neighbors rush out of their confined homes to buzz around the drama, which in this case was Edith's body sprawled smack in the middle of the path.
The rich guy, Elliot, stood over her head in just his shorts. His hairy limbs on exhibition for the world to witness.
Ruth and Shaan, two of the neighborhood kids, stood beside Elliot with their puppy eyes wet with tears and lips morphed in a pout to start spewing apologies as soon as Edith would open her eyes.
Mrs. Erickson, the neighborhood gossipmonger and express knitter along with Mr. Vurther, a retired army man accompanied by his bull dog, G, completed the circle around Edith.
Mr. Vurther pokes Edith's legs with his wooden walking stick. The blonde flings open her eyes again, jerking up. "Is there someone who sings Christmas carols at midnight?" She questions abruptly.
"Auntie has gone mad!!"
"It is May!!"
"It is our fault!!"
Ruth and Shaan burst into loud wails, hugging either side of Elliot's hairy legs. The guy awkwardly tries to pat their little heads and calm them down.
"How many fingers are these?" Mrs. Erickson asks in her husky voice, bent down to Edith's eye-level and holding up seven fingers in her face.
"I don't know," The blonde pushes Mrs. Erickson's hands away from her face and gets up with ambition in her brown eyes. She needs to find that man with red hair and honey eyes. The man who came to her doorstep to offer her a job.
Yes. He must know what happened.
But, unfortunately and accidentally, she ends up stepping on one of G's toes.
The dog growls menacingly and before Edith could jump over and run or Mr. Vurther could pull it back by its leash, G bites Edith on her leg.
The blonde screams out a flurry of unhealthy curses, Ruth and Shaan wailing even louder in competition, as Mrs. Erickson and Mr. Vurther try to pull the dog away from Edith's leg.
"MY BOY IS VACCINATED! DON'T YOU WORRY ABOUT IT!" Mr. Vurther keeps on enunciating.
The blonde jerks away from the crowd, eyes tearing up for the Maely Home wasn't in her line of sight. It was not where she had seen it.
Had she even seen it?
Had she even met the Maelys? What else was she forgetting?
Or was it all in her head?
Was it all just a lucid fever dream after all?
Yeah.
There was no other explanation.
Her neighbors are fawning over her, Mrs. Erickson exclaiming something while Mr. Vurther along with Ruth and Shaan are apologizing over and over. But Edith cannot pay attention to them. She cannot concentrate to comprehend Elliot's dad jokes which were his lame attempts at trying to make her smile.
She just couldn't.
The tears wouldn't stop. It hurt.
That was a very, very lucid dream and now she feels detached from something special.
How did her brain make up so many characters?
Edith walks back inside, shrugging off her chattering neighbors, and closes the door behind her. Everything around her empty house felt normal. Looked normal. The normal she had lived and breathed for nineteen years of her life.
Why did one night's dream make her heart feel so hollow? She doesn't even remember more than half of it.
The phone beeped again. Edith picked it up to see Macy's text.
'DON'T TELL ME YOU ARE SKIPPING THE TEST ALL BY YOURSELF!! COME BACK QUICK! I AM NOT FAILING ALONE!' it read, followed by a few enraged emojis.
Edith nods, concerning for the priorities at hand. She pulls down her clothes and throws them to the ground.
THUD!
Something sounds when her clothes fall to the hardwood floor of her home.
Edith shrugs her crop top and then her shorts, wondering if she accidentally pocketed a spoon from somewhere...when a silver sheathed knife and a piece of paper falls on the floor.