anna
12 May 2004

She awoke in the blurred gradual manner in which most naps seem to end. 
There is a period of denial and choice but if you don't seize it, the 
options lift. She had slept for fourteen hours the night before. 

She sat up.

Anna rubbed at her eyes and then involuntarily clutched at her stomach. 
She felt nauseous from excessive sleep. She sat on the couch, her legs 
tangled in the knit blanket with the silken folded ends, and contemplated 
her options. A glass of water would help but not remove the 
restless-yet-exhausted edge. Food was far too heavy a concept. The pills 
were gone and coffee would add to the queasiness.

A shower. She padded down the hallway, past Heather clicking at her computer, 
past the cat crunching deliriouslyat dry red xs. Anna snapped the light to 
the bathroom on and shur the door firmly, locking it with a slight smile 
bourne on a wave of solitary freedom. The water would help. The unnamed 
worry that had nudged her into an early morning nap would melt under the 
needles of city water and the physical discomfort would, at the least, lessen. 
The tap turned with only slight resistance and it took a minimal amount of 
effort to shed the strappy top and black yoga pants.

Anna did not confess it to others because she did not know what words she 
could use. The tile, set in the 1940s (by her amateur estimation), sent shivers 
up her spine that hot water couldn't salve. She nudged the plastic shower curtain 
closed with the long nail of her right index finger and perched in the middle of 
the tub on the balls of her feet. She appreciated the water but cringed at the 
curtain's deposits of brown nold and the clusters of hair she didn't feel were 
her duty to remove.

She had just began to lather her short self-styled hair (a courage no one would 
acknowledge much less respect) when her eyes seemed to rest in unconcious 
insistence upon a clump of hair behind a particularly large spot on the curtain. 
She continued to stare without thinking until the voice - that which whispered 
of death and decay and antique dust, all the nameless unuttered fears which 
guarded her days and ruled her nights - pointed out that the pattern of movement 
which ushered the spent water toward the drain did not reach that section of 
the curtain.

[CLIFFHANGER! Meaning... I fell asleep and am not in the mood to continue this right now.]