“Is that the guy from ‘Twin Peaks’?”
“Yeah I think so. You know… we’re not going to be able to stay here, you and I.”
“Oh yeah. Why not? Am I suddenly not good enough for you, Shelley?” He huffs a bit. He was expecting this sometime but hoped to delay it until after football season. He enjoyed watching 2 games in one through this dual TV setup. He wouldn’t be able to afford 2 on his own.
What could Shelley say? That the sex eventually didn’t make up for the looks? Surely he knows about the hands by now, and the hiding of the face. And it’s getting uglier, she admitted, in the bright light of day. In the dark it’s easier to pretend. She hoped she could get use to it. Not working.
That night she dreamed she was trapped inside the stomach or innards of that big stuffed purple bear in the living room, ready for birth that never came. In the dark herself. Satisfied with the lot of her life.
But she woke up, ate her Toastie Oats cereal, choco chip dodecahedron style, and, staring out through the iron grid window at the magic bus from whence they came — parked down by the water still — understood anew that she needed to be on her own for a while. She looks over at Johnny’s mug. Jeez it’s worse than ever this morning. It’s like he was made to be disgusting. And, she then realized, perhaps he was… perhaps this is all… some kind of ruse. A test. She’d had flashes about who gave her the bus, who sent her here. A woman named Wilson who was also friends with a Fox. A person who — was much like herself, yes. A *mother*, she discerned, turning her table around to stare at the bear.
Birth is what you make of it. Cradle to grave, but in the middle, always The Cross. Which she’s on. She’d been absorbed in the Omega continent’s north to south arm! Somehow that made it both more real and more irreal at the same time. Birth, she realized. It is coming. Or: not.
“Dear, sorry, you’re kind of in the way of the TV.” That grating man-child voice too(!).
She stared at it now. “It’s some kind of *test pattern*, Johnny. Get over it.” Just like this life she’s living here, she also thought.
“Oh. I thought it was a show.”
“So did I, Johnny. So did I.”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 