Just The Devil An' Me

The room’s cold- well, that ain’t true, it isn’t much of anything, other than big. Just had it done, cause my old room was just too small, really. I mean, I couldn’t even roll over on the floor without hitting my bed, so you can see where I’m coming from, right? Anyway, I guess the only real reason I say the room’s cold is because if it weren’t, I’d notice. Cold doesn’t usually bother me- unless it hits my feet. I can’t stand cold feet, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Not that I’ve ever had to deal with me and cold feet, luckily enough. Other people, sure, but you learn to deal with that after a while.

The first thing I notice when I finish reading my book- which I know was good, since I couldn’t stop reading it and it’s nearing three in the morning already- is the fact that, damn, my butt’s gone to sleep. It’s probably the fact that my new bed hasn’t come in yet, and I’m sleeping on a bed that resided in some old lady’s house that my mom knew, that was never used since she never had guests and that was the bedroom she kept it in. Oh sure, it looks nice enough, all done up in some new white sheets I got, but man, it’s harder than a rock on my ass.

The second thing I notice is the fact that I stink. Understandable, really, since I haven’t had a shower in two days, and the day before yester I was at the gym, teaching kids how to do back flips on a trampoline. Oh sure, they have a blast, but I go away with a sore, stinking bod from tossing them into the air for two hours straight. And I know I can’t have a shower now, cause frankly, I do that, and I’m in deep shit. No, my shower’s fine- just got it put in, actually, it’s a nice piece of work- that ain’t the problem at all. The problem is the fact that, if I have the shower, the running water’s gonna wake up the guy who’s sleeping upstairs.

And frankly, I don’t want to know what’ll happen if I wake up the devil too early.


Part One: Vitreous Humour

So after doing piss-all for a good six hours, I finally decide that the bastard’s slept long enough, and go have a shower. I follow the usual routine, as always: start with water scalding hot, do a scrub-down, get the shampoo in, rinsed out, and the conditioner in before soaping myself up, wash off said soap, rinse out the conditioner, and do a small shave of the underarms before blasting myself with cold and then getting out. While I’m rubbing my hair dry I hear movement upstairs, but know merely by the fact that I’m still alone in the downstairs basement that I haven’t pissed the bugger off too much. I can only imagine what would’ve happened had I waited five hours instead of the six.

After combing my fingers through my hair and slabbing on some deodorant, I go back to my huge bedroom and find something to wear. Nothing special, cause I’ve not nothing special to go to today; just a black skirt- cheap and lacy, from Wal-Mart, if you can believe it- and a black-and-white-horizontally-striped sweater, aside from the usual black undergarments. It’s when I’m pulling on my socks- black-and-white-striped, of course, to match the sweater- that I hear the sound of what I think to be the back door closing. Beats me why though; the back door leads to nothing but the backyard, a small, piss-poor excuse for a lawn surrounded by fences on every side, with no way to get out but either jumping the fences into the neighbours’ yards and heading out that way, or going back inside the damn house.

Still, I don’t let it bother me, and instead just grab my oversized teddy from the bed and head upstairs. Normally I would’ve left Mr. Jangles downstairs, but I feel tired from not sleeping a wink and feel the need to lay on him while I have breakfast- if you can call it that. Just a mug of hot chocolate and a pair of chocolate chip cookies I made yesterday, and that’s it. And, to make my morning even better, the bastard comes back in while I’m eating my first cookie. “Want one?” I ask, holding out the second to him overtop of Mr. Jangles’ head, and I’m not surprised when he looks at me like I’m some sort of scum that’s on the bottom of his boot- and he’s a freaking Nazi when it comes to being clean and orderly, so that’s about the worst you can get, in his eyes anyway.

“No thank you,” he says, surprising the shit out of me for being so goddamn- if you please- polite about the whole thing. He sits down then, in the chair across from me, and looks at me in a way that finally makes me ask the question I know he wants me to ask.

“What?”

You’d think he’d be a little less see-through and wait a couple seconds, even milliseconds, after I say it, but he doesn’t even bother. Asshole. “You do realize what you’ve done, do you not?”

I resist the urge to snort. No, that’s a lie, I did snort; the fact that he’s now glaring at me lets me know I did. “Oh no, not at all, but I’m sure you’ll tell me,” I say sarcastically, which only causes him to glare at me even more, as though he hopes if he squints his eyes like that enough I’ll just go POOF and he’ll never have to deal with me ever again.

“I would think someone of your calibre-“

“And what do you mean by that?”

“-would know better then to test my patience, especially when it has already reached its end.”

I resist the urge to snort, again. And fail, again. Go figure. Instead of saying anything, however, I just pop the rest of my cookie into my mouth, proffering the second to him again. When he glares, I shrug, and take a bite out of it nonchalantly. Or, at least, what I hope is nonchalantly.

“You do realize, I hope,” he says in a voice I know could peel paint if he wanted it to, “that I’ll always be watching you now, waiting for that moment when you finally take your last breath. And when I do…”

Boring. I know a threat when I hear it, and thus, I don’t want to. Not anymore, anyway. “Even when I’m naked? You know, that’s kinda disturbing.”

He gets to his feet then, slamming his hands down on the table such that my hot chocolate does a good impression of the water in the first Jurassic Park movie (when the T-Rex was on the move). “You have already slandered me enough woman, do not do so again!”

Despite the fact that I actually am kinda-sorta shaking in my boots, I stare him down. Which is a mean feat, when there’s full-fledged fire raging in his eyes. “Oh, my. That was scary,” I say in return, my voice dripping with so much sarcasm that I’m surprised it doesn’t take liquid form and ooze out of my mouth. “Do you honestly think you can frighten me?”

He says nothing. I eat my second cookie.

Out of the blue- where did that saying even come from, anyway?- I ask him a question. “Do you know what vitreous humour is?”

He stares at me like I’ve gone crazy. It’s a fair enough assumption. “What?” he says, not the mad sort of ‘what’ as in ‘what the hell is wrong with you’, but the ‘what’ as in ‘what are you bringing that up for’.

Which is too bad, really, because I’m not going to tell him why I did. He can figure it out for himself, later, if he wants. Either way, it’s not really a big deal to me. “Did you not understand the question? Would you like me to repeat it?” I offer, causing him to give a rather angered huff and look away.

“Yes, I do,” he says, in a way that was kind of like saying ‘fine, you win, yes, I do’, which I know gets under his skin. I can’t help but smile in glee.

“Do you know what vi-“

“I said yes to your question, not to if I wanted you to repeat it!” Ah, it’s so nice to have the angry him back. Gag.

Finishing off the last of my second cookie, I pull at my sweater to get rid of the evidence- crumbs, you know. The thing’s so old- that and I love it to pieces, so I wear it a lot- that it stretches like there’s no tomorrow, and if I didn’t know any better- which I do, of course- I could have sworn he looked down my shirt. Deciding not to call him on it- I could always do it later, when I could actually get away with it- I smile once more. “That’s good.”

As I pull my mug to me and blow on my hot chocolate, I can’t help but notice that he’s staring at me like I have gone crazy. Which was a fair enough assumption. “Did that line of questioning have any point to it?” he asks, as though sure he’s going to hear no. I decide to surprise him a little with the truth, for once.

“Yes, actually, it did,” is all I say before sipping hesitantly at my hot chocolate. Damn, too hot still; ah well, I’ve burned my tongue enough before that it isn’t that big of a problem.

“…And that was?” he finally asks, in that way that lets me know he had been waiting for me to go on and had finally given up.

As such, I shrug my shoulders. Nonchalantly, I hope. “I actually was curious if you knew.” I go to take another sip- no harm worrying about burning my tongue now, when the damage’s already been done- but stop short to add on, so as to cover up my half-lie, “And one question does not a line make.”