3 in the Morning (575 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.27 on 12 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by stardamage (View user info) at 2007-11-14 22:21:20 EST
It stopped being funny somewhere around 3 in the morning, when the screaming from downstairs started. The five of us had spent a hysterically strange evening drinking, smoking, exclaiming over Iron Chef America (they were working with tilapia; one of them made ice cream, of course) and laughing at the sheer number of animals walking around; Sam had at least three each of dogs, cats, birds and ferrets and there were many duplicates and triplicates walking around the house, emitting loud and startling noises or, in the case of the three grey cats, suddenly appearing right next to you on the couch and staring at you, Sphinx-like, with unblinking yellow eyes, while another edged into your field of vision, making you think hazily about the possibility of Doppelgangers.
Sam had ordered his mother to make us chicken alfredo at midnight, to our consternation - the rest of us protested and mewled that it was unnecessary, really, but he had spoken and she bent - and she crashed pots and pans in the kitchen dressed in pink silk pajamas, muttering under her breath while we huddled meekly around the television, until a huge steaming bowl of chicken and pasta appeared on the counter, anything but magically. We weren't really all that hungry but we ate it guiltily, while Sam decided that he didn't really want any, sucking in smoke sharply as his mother stalked back to her wing, a dark maw at the end of the hallway just beyond the stairs.
Somehow we decided that it was time for bed and slumped towards the stairs at Sam's direction; Brendan and Abby climbed first while Kelsey and I lingered to pet a huge black German shepherd. A door opened down the hall and there she stood, clad not in pink silk but in white wrinkled skin, her eyes huge and vacant, trained vaguely on us. I was terrified that she'd step out of that rectangle of light spilling from her room and make towards us but Sam passed us, stepping towards her, and we hurried upstairs while he herded har back to her quarters.
Kelsey in her trusty sleeping bag, I under covers pulled up to my shoulders, we tried to sleep in a bed too big for even two of us. I thought I was dreaming the bangs from downstairs until one of the birds made a noise like a siren and she shouted at it, screaming a name that didn't belong to anyone or anything in the house, cursing Michael, damning him, asking him questions I couldn't hear, and I was wide awake.
She ceased to be eccentric mother and became furious, agonized Woman; she raged for over an hour while we two young, nervous women failed to sleep upstairs and hoped that our friends in the next room weren't hearing the same things, were dreaming better dreams. Books and glassware broke against the walls and hapless animals scattered before her; we heard their startled noises as she stormed back and forth under our bed, heedless of anything in her path, fighting Michael, murdering him, but always losing.
The silences were worse than the shouting. She could be anywhere when she wasn't yelling: in the yard, down the street, next to the pool, on the stairs...
And the door opened. I poked Kelsey hard in the ribs so I wouldn't be alone, facing this drunk, doomed Kali. I felt the sleeping bag next to me tighten up with the fright of someone too tall for it, and I pulled the covers around my chin and prayed to be asleep, or somewhere else, and all I wanted was my own mother to help me face this lost one.
Still in just her ivory skin stretched over shrinking bones, she entered, and Kelsey shrank against me. A foreign weight settled onto the foot of the bed and I heard a rustle of sleeping bag - my eyes wouldn't open of their own accord and I had no desire to force them to open and betray the fact that I was awake. A few more soft rustles. Finally the weight lifted. I peeked out from under my own eyelids - there was a terrible sad shadow hovering over us, and the remembered strength of her anger from before just made her seem smaller, frailer now. I curled up a little tighter, frightened by her anguish, and waited until the door creaked shut again, with her and her sorrow on the other side.
User Reviews
Submitted by DCWoody (user info) at 2007-11-16 18:04:29 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
Submitted by TheDoctor (user info) at 2007-11-16 15:21:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by i_can_get_you_a_toe (user info) at 2007-11-15 15:17:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2007-11-15 09:04:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't know you but I read this
http://www.ubersite.com/m/61510
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thanks FALLEN
Submitted by triangle_man (user info) at 2007-11-15 12:54:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Kali Mah yuk si day
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2007-11-15 12:45:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FALLEN (user info) at 2007-11-15 09:04:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't know you but I read this
http://www.ubersite.com/m/61510
prepare to have the rest of them +2 shortly.
Submitted by bob (user info) at 2007-11-14 23:39:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
wow...a stardamage post...i had to log in to rate. damn.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2007-11-14 22:52:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
five in the morning po' lice at ma door
glock fourty five in ma dresser draw
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-11-14 22:39:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-11-14 22:31:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by stardamage (user info) at 2007-11-14 22:24:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
(I forgot to write that the rustles were Sam's mother tucking Kelsey into her sleeping bag, not anything too sinister.)
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2007-11-14 22:22:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
nice