I'm just getting home from a long work shift, and a hell of a day. Memories of it float through my head as I try to figure out how to explain to my family what happened. They're going to have questions when they see the shiner on my left eye, and my broken glasses.
My boss had attacked me in the cooler at the height of an argument she started. She was pissed off because I helped a co-worker she recently fired get unemployment from the company. All I did was answer a phone call from his case worker, and tell the truth. Problem is, I can't keep my big mouth shut, and I told her that it was her own fault she got caught in another lie. Usually, that gets me restroom cleaning duty, or outside (super-heavy) trash can duty, but this time, she turned around and slugged me twice - once in the jaw, and once in the eye. The attack was totally unexpected. She knocked me clear across the room, into a stack of soda trays.
I've been fired for filing criminal assault charges. My boss was hauled out in cuffs, and about an hour later, the district manager came in and notified me that I was being let go because the company was considering my choice to "carry the conflict beyond the company" (call the cops on my boss for assault) to be insubordination, and therefore a firing offense. I know that the unemployment office is not going to agree with the company, but I also know it's going to take me at least a month to get through that process.
I don't want to tell my family that we just lost half of our household income for a month, and we'll only be able to recover half of that until - or if, in this economy - I can get another job.
And, oh, yeah. I need new glasses, because that punch in the eye broke the left lens in mine.
Because we can afford them, now that I'm not working.
Again.
I am feeling totally defeated, even though I know I'm not.
My husband's car isn't in his spot. Great. I wonder where the guys went. Hopefully they're not buying fast food. We can't afford it now. Then, I remember, they went out of town, and they won't be back until late. I'm home alone for the next several hours. At first I'm disheartened, but then, I figure being alone will at least give me time to get online and file for unemployment right away. I decide that's what I'm going to do.
I step inside, remove my shoes, and shake the sand out of them outside before closing the door.
I'm not alone. My girlfriend is there, sitting on the couch. When I walk in, she starts to say "surprise," but stops at "su" and stares at my face. She half-panics, asks what happened and if I'm ok, and whose ass she needs to kick for me. I still want to know what she's doing in my apartment. Where is her fiance?
Instead of answering me, she runs across the room and touches my face with both hands, looking up at me with a deeply concerned expression on her face. She sees the empty left frame on my glasses, and immediately demands to know if I got glass in my eye. I ask about the fiance again, and she says he's at work, and she just wanted some "us" time. It's been a long time since we've had a girls' day. She tells me to quit stalling, and explain the bruises. She draws me over to the couch, sits me down, and curls up next to me, staring at me with those wide, tender eyes. I tell her everything that happened at work, starting with having been given every crap duty my boss had, to the argument in the cooler, and the assault, to being fired, and being worried about finances for the next month or so until I get through the unemployment process. Before, I was just disheartened, but now I realize the position my boss has put me in, and I'm pissed. By the time I finish talking, I'm so angry, I'm actually shaking.
Her eyes widen throughout the story, her expression becoming more sympathetic. She asks why I didn't hit my boss back, and I remind her how small the woman is. I just can't. Even though she's strong, I'm bigger and stronger. And I don't hit people. I just don't. She knows that.
I'm overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and a sense of complete powerlessness. I don't want to worry my girlfriend, but I can't keep from crying. She shushes me, pulls me into a hug, wraps herself around me and pulls me down on the couch. The cushions feel oddly lumpy and hard, almost gritty, giving me the stray thought that it also needs replaced, but I'm lost in her soft, comforting affection. I let myself sob into her shoulder, frustration spilling over in the form of tears. She whispers in my ear, reminding me that this is not so bad, calling me babe, reminding me that I won't stay down like this; I never do. I'll get unemployment, and then another job, and I'll never have to deal with that bitch again.
She must be really mad. She doesn't usually use that word in seriousness.
Well, she is really protective. Feeling loved, I hug her closer and take deep breaths, trying to stop the tears. I feel soft kisses on my temple, then my cheek, and she gently presses under my chin with her fingers. I turn my face to hers, feel her lips brush against mine, and her teasing tongue...
The wrongness finally registers with me. Her tongue should feel soft and flexible, not solid, and kind of rounded. She never calls me "babe." This isn't the right apartment... we moved from here 4 years ago. There shouldn't have been sand in my shoes, because I was on the pavement the whole time. My husband's car wouldn't make it out of town. And she and I don't snuggle up like this... not any more.
I open my eyes, try to push back so I can see, and feel pressure from appendages wrapped around me, more than two legs, more than two arms. From the lips in front of me protrudes something that looks like a bug's proboscis, a long, tube-like appendage. And the couch isn't just hard and lumpy. It's made of sand. I feel new bruises forming on my temple, then my cheek, and realize that "she" wasn't kissing me. He was tasting me. My spine turns to ice, and my gut to water as I begin to understand the position I'm in. I feel so stupid!
Screaming in horror, I struggle to extract myself from the grip in which I'm held, thrashing and kicking, trying to move my arms. "Her" face wears an expression of disappointment, and then it begins to melt into something else. "Her" brow widen, and her chin narrows. "Her" eyes grow larger, darkening to a deep, impenetrable black, rimmed in darkness and bordered on the bottom by red. "Her" full lips disappear, only to be replaced by that thin little mouth he has. He slurps the proboscis back in like a spaghetti noodle. He says, "I was hoping you wouldn't notice. It's so much easier if you don't struggle. You know how this is going to end. Why keep doing this to yourself?"
My struggles don't seem to bother him at all. He lets the movement happen, not losing his grip on me, my efforts only serving to roll us off of the dune he masked with the couch illusion. Even then, he doesn't seem to lose any momentum. We land in almost the same position. With a determined look, he takes one of his arms out of the embrace, reaches up with the same fingers that seemed so gentle just moments ago, and tries to pry open my mouth. Hard as I fight, he gets one sharp claw between my teeth, and wrenches my jaw down. I try to bite, but his hands are strong. I can see his mouth opening, and that proboscis thing coming back out. Greedy anticipation fills his eyes.
I find a solid chunk of his hair with the hand of the arm is pinned under his body. I get a good grip and yank hard, pulling his head backward. He lets go of my face, and reaches back to try to find my hand. I put my teeth on his throat and clamp down. I'm unable to break the skin, but I get what I want. He forgets about his hair, and uses both of his "up" hands to push on my face, trying to prevent the bite. My other arm freed, I reach into the pocket of the armor-pants, and pull out one of those little crystals. It's no bigger than the size of a sweet pea. I put as much thought into it as I can in short order, howling my intent. I want to hurt him. He was wearing her form. I'm trying to remember a familiar word that sums up what I want this to do to him, but it won't come to me. All I can think of is "toxic."
It will have to do. I reach up and shove the little crystal deep into the end of that tube with my finger, then clamp the end of it shut with my hand, focusing on toxicity. The tube, previously a translucent pink color, turns deep red around the crystal, and his face contorts in an expression of agony.
He releases his grip on me with all four arms, half of his body rising up so he can grab at the hand holding the crystal in. With my other hand loose, I grab the tube between my fingers and the crystal, squeeze that, and push back toward his mouth. He's clawing at my clamping hand, trying to pull it off. With his two other hands, he's gripping my shoulders, trying to push me away. His eyes are wide with dismay and... is that fear?
There's a burning sensation in my fingertips, and I realize I'm running them over little tiny, spiky teeth, but I don't stop until I get almost to his lips. There, I run across something that feels almost like a cartilage joint. The thickness and texture changes there, and I can't squeeze that part shut. He makes a choking, gagging noise, and I see the crystal sucked in past his thin lips.
He shoves me away, rolling back in the sand, his body curling up, head thrown back, hands clawing at his throat. I see that behind the second pair of legs is what looks like the back-end of a wasp again, only the stinger isn't sticking out. That deep, raspy voice of his is raised in a half-yell, half growl. He thrashes, around, alternately roaring at me, coughing and sputtering, retching up some kind of black ooze, but he can't seem to spit out that crystal.
The last growl comes out almost like a whine, and he curls up in a ball in the sand, hands over his head. I can see the second pair of arms melting into his body. The legs are going, too, and so is the stinger. Slowly, he returns to the form I see the most frequently, tucked into an almost fetal position, knees up to his elbows, hands grasping his own hair.
Is he dead? Dying? Injured? I'm afraid to approach. I crouch in the sand, ready to try to run if he moves. I watch. He just lays there, uneven breathing the only movement I can see.
I stay where I am for several moments. Nothing changes, except that his breathing becomes more shallow, and then I can't tell if he's breathing at all. I watch for what seems like an eternity. He's totally still. My heart is pounding. I don't know what I should do.
Finally, I get up the guts to approach. He doesn't respond to the sound of my footsteps.
I touch his arm. I think I might hear something, but I'm not sure.
I push on him, and he rolls backward. His hands fall, and I can see that his eyes are wide open, showing not just the red on the bottom, but also the red on the top. And his pupils are totally dilated. I can just barely see a border of iris around them. He's wearing an expression of dazed amazement. His eyes turn to me, but they don't focus. Then, he giggles, madly, points at me, says "Bad," and mumbles four syllables of complete gibberish. "You are smarter than" and then he spouts more gibberish. The laughter returns. It's just about the creepiest sounding laugh I've ever heard. I back away, but he doesn't pursue. He sits up and wipes his face with his hands, his movements totally uncoordinated.
Oh, my God. He's high. I didn't shove enough of the burnt shield into him. He's not poisoned enough. I didn't kill him. He's only stoned out of his mind.
I have more. I've got to get it into him while he's incapacitated like this. Maybe I can overdose him. I grab another one out of my pocket, this one slightly larger.
Approaching him carefully, I try to figure out how I'm going to open his mouth and get it into that proboscis thing. I hold up the crystal, and he crosses his eyes trying to look at it. Then, he turns his gaze to me, reaches up with lightning quickness, and grabs my wrist with a clumsy, too-hard grip. He yanks me forward so that I'm inches from his face again, and says, as if correcting a wayward toddler, "Noooooo, now you cut that out." I try to wrestle my arm out of his grip. He leans forward on me, knocking me off balance, and I end up on my butt in the sand. He takes the crystal from my hand and pops it into his mouth. I hear him crunching it between his teeth. He says, "You should stop trying to kill me. It's such a waste of time." For a moment, he looks totally serious. Then he bursts into another laughing fit. This feels more dangerous than before, probably because he's less predictable. And he just ate my secret weapon like candy.
I back away, but he doesn't come after me. He's looking at his fingers, completely fascinated. I run back along the beach, toward the little building I'm not supposed to enter. I have to get out of here. Maybe she knows how.
As before, I don't seem to be getting any closer to it for quite some time. Then, suddenly, I'm right in front of it. Even though I'm running in sand, I'm moving way too fast to stop, and I smack right into the wall. I feel the impact of the wood against my face.
And suddenly, I'm awake, lying on the floor, face down. In my haste to run away from him, I must have rolled over in bed and fallen out. Now, I've got a sinus headache that won't go away, probably from breathing the dust in the carpet.
My girlfriend. I don't even know how to go there. "It's complicated" isn't good enough to cover the bases. We're together, but we're not. She's engaged. I'm married. Both of them are aware of us, and both have agreed that we shouldn't be kept apart, and neither of them minds. Both find the concept sexy. So, we're like a family, but we're not. They live across town. I don't do anything with him. She doesn't do anything with my husband. And I'm afraid to do too much with her, because I don't want to step on her fiance's toes. He's my friend.
But, I'm also afraid to be with anyone else. She and I have agreed to an open relationship, but I've got a pretty good sense that she gets jealous of other women who attract my attention. My husband and I have the same - open, but really not. He's ok with other women, but I'm pretty sure he's not as ok as he wants to believe he is with other men, and I'm really not interested in testing that theory.
I've pretty much made my peace with the situation, as long as no one stirs the waters, so to speak. This dream churned them up like a blender. Today is going to be a rough day. Tomorrow, I'll see her at a friend's house, where we hang out for a few hours every other weekend. That's going to be even harder.
Right now, I just want to curl up in a blanket and pretend I don't exist. Yep, a deal with something that wants to take my feelings away and eat them... is very tempting.
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