Thank You Very Much for Watching

Once upon a time (a time that was all times and every time, except perhaps three Tuesdays from the second Wednesday in March at half-past four), a fat woman rides a tiny pony wearing nothing but a black lace corset with a bodice so red it drips, mingling amongst the syrups she pours directly into her mouth, leaving the waffles bare and sweating butter--

Where the fuck am I?

I can feel darkness beneath me, squeaking at irregular intervals that irritate my sense of symmetry; it covers me to the chin, straightjacket tight, and dances somberly before my vision.

In a few stretched-out, disoriented seconds, faint lines trace themselves into existence. They’re blacker than the nothingness I’ve woken up to--somehow my dresser and desk have learned to draw in negative space.

They’ve been doing this trick for awhile now, not nightly but close enough so my brain is only vaguely impressed until it remembers and looks at the numbers.

3:47. From my angle, the digits tilt like a skyscraper with a mean streak.

“You don’t scare me,” I mutter. Lying doesn’t convince anybody, but my hand does by snaking out and turning the alarm clock around to face the wall. “Ha!”

But it’s a weak victory, as I haven’t actually won.

No, my brain reassures me, you can go back to sleep any time you want.

“Right,” I tell it, pushing the covers away and swinging my legs over the side of the mattress, feeling the invisible tape keeping each eyelid rolled up neat as sausages, “but I don’t want to.”

Sausages? Why not waffles?

“Because waffles aren’t neat,” I say, and realize the profound truth in this. “They’re very messy, covered in butter, and syrup you have to wipe off the plate before it congeals…”

A pen, where the hell is a damn pen and piece of paper upon which I shall record this new, brilliant philosophy for future generations to marvel at and write books about and argue over--

In the kitchen lies sanity, the white smooth capsule form, the kind that if swallowed two at a time chased by a tall glass of water (but not--I repeat, not--by caffeine) will make me think of shopping lists and cell phone calls and polite, glossy women’s magazines until I start dreaming of the fat lady again. So I aim myself in what I perceive to be the right direction.

Click. My toe screams and shoves me onto the floor ass first. “Ow! Dammit! Motherfu--”

“This morning I awoke and I felt unholy,” confesses a voice above my head.

I am ridiculously grateful, for the voice has stolen the pain and replaced it with a very poor substitute of curiosity.

Craning my neck, I see a square of light. The shadows around it have been startled into stark relief.

“Who left the fucking remote in the middle of the fucking floor?” I growl, unnecessarily. It was me, of course. There’s no one else.

There use to be. We use to be in--

“--love,” falls softly out of the television. An old woman, face framed by gentle white waves of hair and enormous round glasses, smiles at me. Although I’m quite sure her hands have done nothing less innocent than kneed cookie dough, I get the feeling she understands.

“No matter how far you have strayed, no matter what you have and have not done,” she continues, “He will always be there to welcome you back.”

I watch, fascinated by the young fool wearing the nose ring who sobs a palate of makeup onto the old woman’s pantsuit shoulder and wails, “Here is my repentance! I give it to thee and ask for mercy!”

“Yes,” I say, thinking of strong shoulders and an unshaven jaw, blinking away the tears suddenly crowding my eyes, “yes, I accept your repentance--come back, I forgive you…” Wait--did he wrong me or did I wrong him? Oh, hell, it doesn’t matter at this point--

The old woman addresses me directly. “That, dear faithful viewer, is our show. Thank you very much for watching.”

A test pattern jumps onto the screen.

“No!” My fingers reach hopefully behind me but grasp only sheets and air. “No, wait! You can’t leave, it didn’t work!”

An hour later, I take two pills and wake up recalling nothing except a dull ache around the edges.