She took the straw into her mouth and inhaled the strange gas. Salvinorin A. It bubbled away in a beaker suspended above her head, on a roller like an IV. She lay in bed with blankets that were the stars of the night sky. The moon was snoring. Hot air steamed from two craters on its surface. The steam rose in columns that rose into the sky and all the way to earth. And she felt herself flip upside down as the tumlbed through the sky and tucked her knees in tighter to her chest.
The tank bubbled. Toot toot goes the tugboat! She laughed out loud. She was only dozing, not really sleeping, but the pictures dancing through her mind kept pulling at her like the hands of children. And she wanted to play, oh if only to play in the heat of the sun in summer and popsicles and swimsuits and getting sprayed by the hose. The cool gas poured out like a cloud from the place where she pressed her lips. So when not inhaling from it she had kept it stopped up with her thumb. But now her hand lay lax and the cloud spilled out like a spirit or ghost of mist off the bed and settled into a stratum just off the floor, heavier than air, it sought the lowest point.
Blue flames licked the bottom of the kettle. Her mother dozed in a chair. When it came to a boil she shuddered, almost imperceptibly for a moment, her eyes remaining closed. She leaned forward quickly, and they snaped open as she pounced up like a great cat onto her slippered feet and padded her way to the stove. The dishes from dinner lay by the sink, washed and drying. She ran the tap until it was good and hot to scald the teapot.
Would you like some tea honey?
No thanks mom, it's time I went to bed.
Okay. Goodnight honey.
She tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, never finding a comfortable position, her neck always feeling to high or too low. Infomercials for memory foam pillows kept floating through her head, the x-ray pictures of the human spine and how it bends when lying on a normal mattress with a normal pillow. The graphic showed bright red glowing from these points of torsion. She could feel it pulsing in her neck. The cleaning lady must have given her some other pillow, her favourite pillow must be somewhere else. It must have got mixed up. Was it in her brother's room? She pictured him sleeping soundly and it filled her with rage. She snapped open her eyes and flipped over onto her back. It was then, suddenly, that she realized how sleepy she was, how late it must be, or early. There must have been a phase shift.
The pictures on her wall looked eerily down at her. Behind glass they seemed withdrawn, distorted, reflecting the light from the hallway. The faces in them, stern, old Victorian faces presided over the whole scene like a three-headed magistrate, dispensing forgiveness, mercy and clemency. Two rhinoceros beetles fought in a ring of salt on the dresser. Kabutomushi. A scorpion sat in a ring of fire dug in the sand. Men were gambling, passing money back and forth furiously, chattering over the smell of hot metal, seared steak, welding fumes, the sound of wind out the window. It was open a crack. The drapes, diaphanous, danced with a ghost. The breeze was cool and yet she felt warm, as if she was sitting beside her grandfather's fire, that he had kindled in the fire place in front of her as she watched. She helped him carry the wood in from the back room and he placed the logs carefully in its great jaws. Just enough newspaper for kindling, he would ask her to light a match.
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