Page 16

“….bleeding! hon, it’s bleeding! Help me!”
(What happens when)
“ohh…” that high, uncharacteristic whimper of a moan, that sound that stabbed at her heart, “ohh, God..”
(the clock strikes ten, before)
“stop the bleeding..”
“I can’t, I can’t, I don’t know how, I’m scared, baby, so scared, I-” 
(it’s got to)
“Jesus…”
“someone call an ambulance!”
“there’s no one here, Pie… you have to stop the-”
(NINE.) 

She jolted awake, gasping. Her brain felt as if it were on cold fire. The images were receding now, faint but haunting. 
“Sol? Soly, what is it? Y’kay?” Dev mumbled in half sleep, groggy eyes blinking up at her.
“Bad dream.” It was light out. The clock read nine-o-clock.
“We’re late, hon. Get up.” She said hastily, tossing aside the sheets and rushing for the closet. 
It’s going to be a bad day. 
She knew this just as well as she knew gravity was what was keeping her connected with the old brown carpet of her closet. She knew it as a fact, something unchanging and unavoidable. There was nothing she could do to alter it. It just was.

And a bad day it was.
Her boss was there, waiting for her in her office, with a client she couldn’t stand. Neither of them looked pleased.
She spent the next three hours explaining to the both of them why the commercial that was going nationwide next week looked like shit (oh, but hadn’t her step-dad been amazed with it? Oh, it was “fucking brilliant” yesterday, it’s shit now!) and apologizing, apologizing, apologizing. She felt like all she seemed to do around her step-father/boss was apologize. She was then informed, once the disgruntled client had left, that she “would not leave this office till that piece of shit shines like a diamond.”

Page 17

And as that bad day waned into a bad night, she heard herself consenting her other half to go home and pick her up in a few hours’ time. She was swallowed in work.

The bad night, by now technically a bad day again, according to the clock, started to slip away from her at around 2 AM. She dozed off with the headphones cocked lopsidedly on her head, the video of a man enthusiastically explaining how his wondrous product worked on boats of every size, make and model playing over and over so she could pick out the oddities in the digital footage.

“I found it! I can’t believe I-” 
“Look at the sky, sweetie! See how strange the green is-”
(Cat, I’m a kitty cat)
“-found it, I don’t remember when I last saw it. Isn’t that-”
(and I dance dance dance and I-)
A dark purple bruise.
“-love this place… why didn’t we know it was-”
“odd? It’s been here the whole time.”
(dance dance dance)
“I swear, Soly, you’re just a big-”
(Cat! I’m a kitty cat!)
“-fuck’s sake, someone help me he’s BLEEDING!”
“-just like finding buried treasure, don’t you think?”
He’ll die he’ll die he’ll die
(meow meow meow and I meow meow meow)
“DOWN, Bo!”
(What happens when the clock strikes ten, my love?)
It’s done, alright? I have to-
“I love you, don’t you leave me, goddamnit, I love you, fuck! Stay awake-”
have to find-
(before it’s)
(CAT I’M A KITTY CAT)
“SHIT! IT’S BLEEDING!”
“DON’T YOU FUCKING DIE I NEED YOU TO GET BACK!”

(NINE)