Insomnia

I can’t sleep and Margot’s the only one awake.

“You must be the biggest slut who ever lived.”

Not physically possible, Margot.

Her eyes surgically slice into my thick, Neanderthal skull with such striking precision that I can feel her blindly digging away in my frontal lobe in a mad search for cancerous thoughts. I’m keeping her back; ruining her perfect files. Little miss perfect is disappointed in me again, and, like a Jewish mother, she brandishes a rapier called ‘Guilt’ that she swings around fancifully to try and align my emotions to hers.

If I could only see how much the other three held me back then I would wear her all the time. If Jackie weren’t around to lose and scribble all over her paperwork then we’d probably have more money -- if Bianca weren’t so stubbornly proud then we could advance more easily at work -- if Millie weren’t such an emotional wreck then we could maintain the status quo for longer... She uses only logic and facts to present her case, a subtly manipulative technique that leaves little room for extenuating circumstances.

Ever the lawyer, all she has to do is ask the right question and she’s trapped me.

She is sitting quietly in her high-backed chair but her eyes are zeroed in on me, purposely trying to hold an edge. There’s a cup of tea sitting on a blue printed saucer next to her and she’s staring at me with such a sense of righteous indignation that it makes me want to slap her.

I pinch myself instead.

Her arms are folded over her chest like a life vest, strapping down her tiny  breasts as if they were balloons about to float away. It’s supposed to let me know how angry she is but I can smell through her rouse: it’s a defensive posture. I can imagine her holding her books the same way when she was young, pushing glasses up her freckled nose and trying to avoid eye contact with boys.

Pushing the world away is something Margot and Bianca have in common, though neither is humble enough to admit it. Margot likes to maintain the image that her social hedge was planted from nothing but the rarest of heirloom seeds and is trimmed both for aesthetics and growth but I know better. Margot doesn’t know how to handle her own emotions and isn’t about to suffer anyone else’s.

She clears her throat and clinks her teacup smartly down on the saucer.

“Are you even listening to me?! I don’t do this for my own benefit, you know!”

I bear her scrutiny, figuratively bending over for easier insertion. Her voice carries all the sweetness of a grapefruit as she runs down the laundry list of CONS she has bulleted for convenient harping, reading each one off of a color-coordinated notecard complete with headings, commas, and semicolons all in the right place.

It’s no surprise that Margot’s technique for character building is to lecture. She was the only one paying attention all those years ago when mom and dad would sit me down to dole out a punishment, painstakingly making sure that I comprehended exactly why I was in trouble whilst trying to keep Bianca from blurting out, “JUST SPANK ME ALREADY.”

I simply stare into the space around her eyes, allowing mine to go unfocused for a moment. I can see her mouth moving but don’t need to pay careful attention to the words. It’s always the same with her: this is unladylike behavior, what about feelings, you haven’t been completely honest...

All of a sudden I’m paying attention again.

“I haven’t been completely honest.”

The words stick in my craw and I have to cough them the rest of the way out like a fisherman retrieving an embedded hook. My mouth suddenly feels full of cinnamon and there’s a metallic tang originating from the back of my tongue.

“What? I’m pretty sure he got the idea that you were seeing other people when you stopped sleeping with him for a while and then talked to him about ‘boy trouble.’ If he doesn’t know what that means then he’s retarded and doesn’t deserve your pussy anyway.”

Jackie’s finally awake.

She fell asleep on the couch last night with her elbow thrown over her eyes in order to block out whatever sunlight might try to disturb her come morning. She and Bianca sleep the latest and stay out the longest so I wasn’t expecting to hear from her at all when Margot sat me down in the living room and demanded that we get to the bottom of things.

“How long have you been awake?”

Jackie hasn’t moved an inch. Her chest is still rising and falling slowly; a convincing counterfeit of sleep but she swallows and then wiggles into the cushions, clearly awake but without intention to stir.

“Long enough,” she replied vaguely, the last vowel stretching out as a yawn pulled the word apart like taffy. “I dunno why you’d think anyone could sleep through all your bitching anyway. Give the girl a break, will you? She obviously feels bad.”

“How can you just lay there while we’re heading towards disaster?!” Margot screeches, her teacup rattling on its saucer as she grips the arms of her chair with her perfectly manicured nails.

Jackie lifts her elbow just enough to peek a disbelieving eye at the clock hanging over the bench and then to Margot. “It’s only not even 8 am and you’re already this worked up?” She shakes her head and then lets her elbow drop back into place.

“SOMEONE has to get worked up around here!” she wails, frustration clipping her tones as she stands up, suddenly filled with nervous energy. She puts both hands on her hips and leans towards the sleepy figure on the couch. “We’ve got you out there dangling your pussy around for any boy to have, Millie’s upstairs in her room crying because she thinks she’s letting herself and everyone else down, Bianca is bound and determined to get us FIRED, and YOU...!” As she whirled around to point a finger at me, Margot misjudged her enthusiasm and knocked her fine blue-printed china cup and saucer to the ground.

I look up just in time to hear it break into several pieces, staring at the carnage on the floor while Margot throws her hands up in disgust and storms off to get the broom and a towel.

Jackie lifts her elbow once more and smirks. “Better be quiet if you want to have the Captain all to yourself,” she taunts right before rolling over and going back to sleep (or pretending).

“Oh sure, make light of this!” Margot sourly mocks as she starts to sweep the jagged shards of china into the open mouth of the dustpan. “Jackie, you said yourself that the other two were not even good in bed so I don’t know why you won’t just stick with the roommate for now. There’s already too much on our plate to be adding more stress so carelessly.”

Now that she has a task to do, Margot’s words come out more freely and with less hostility. Her eyes are on the floor, carefully making sure to get any and all fragments out from underneath her chair and the table beside it. She’s always been the nervous one, the one who can’t shut off her brain long enough to enjoy the moment for what it is. Margot has to know everything before she can make a decision, has to scientifically run around and label everything in her perfect world. To her, “How Doth the Busy Bee” is not a poem but rather a mantra, and the devil will play in her idle mind.

With something to do, she can finally say what she wants without everything coming out wrong and colored with emotion.

I yawn and wipe my hands over my face. I can see a vague reflection of myself in the window and don’t need to look closer to know that my eyes are strung with ruby lines, informing any who can see me that my night was long and is still not over.

“All right, I’ll stop seeing everyone but him.” My voice is weary with sleep but traced in grit that promises results. I look up from the floor to look at Margot’s back as she faces the garbage bin. Sh is dumping the wreckage into the trash and stiffens as if she’s being lied to before slowly turning her head to examine my face for deception.

Even Jackie lifted her head, shooting me a curious look.

“Really? After all that work I put into getting the hot one to chase you?”

Seeming to know her own tendencies, Margot grabs a sponge and starts to scrub at last night’s crusty dinner remains on the kitchen table. Staring at the project at hand, Margot’s distracted voice comes through slower, but much clearer: Boys like to chase, Jackie. There’s no work involved if one of them is attracted to you. It’s not like you made him wait very long anway...

“Tch,” Jackie scoffs but remains silent. The truth requires no rebuttal.

“I mean it. I’ll take myself off the shelf for a while.”

“You mean you’ll stop sleeping with everyone but your favorite, right?” Marot translated, boiling down my choppy sentence to it’s thickest, ugliest part. She stopped scrubbing and looked up at me.

Yeah Margot. Everyone but my favorite.

She held my gaze for a long time, auditing my resolve through slitted eyes the same way I do to sniff out thieves and liars. After a moment, she simply nods and then scoops the table crumbs into her hand and disposes them into the trash. There is something about the way her lips are pinching together that makes me think she’s just manipulated information out of me...

Soon after, she’s at her desk again, dipping a feather quill into a crimson bottle of ink to add the word “favorite” in the appropriate column.

A Day With Bianca

Like a true stowaway, Bianca has slunk into work with me every day for the last two weeks.

Just like Lucifer, she sits on my shoulder and feeds my tired skull a constant feed of terrorist propaganda. Now I know how Eve felt, standing there at the dawn of the world, staring at a crimson apple that would open her eyes to the Knowledge of the Gods. Lucifer knew exactly what to say in order to twist her mind. He did not appeal to her sentimentality or treat her like a child, but rather, insinuated that the gods were withholding something wonderful that rightly should belong to her as well.

Unbeknownst to me, the serpentine Bianca slithers up my leg while I’m changing for work, shaping to the contours of my skin so that those bitter thoughts sound and feel like my own. Denim jeans skim over her black scales and I shift further and further off of center, now wearing a face that pulls the corners of my mouth down as I imagine all of the sniveling faces I’ll have to endure.

All of a sudden, the dark thoughts that I keep to myself morph from macabre indications of my character into a healthy bleeding of negativity -- or so Bianca whispers.

“WHAT IS SHE DOING?” Margot shrieks, gesturing wildly to my car as it trundles away, abandoning her and Jackie in the driveway while Bianca makes sour faces out the back window.

“I don’t fuckin’ know, takin’ her to work, apparently,” Jackie replied, shrugging a shoulder. She casts an annoyingly poignant look to Margot as if to remind her not to ask stupid questions, her eyebrows lifted.

Margot ignores this silent beckoning to shut up and calm down and walks right down the driveway to stand in the middle of the street, waving her arms over her head to try and flag me down in the rearview mirror.

“WAIT FOR ME!”

She jumped up and down, flailing in vain to grab my attention. For once, she is not tutting about like a hen but is in full crisis mode, allowing cars to drive around her as she hold onto hope while I’m stopped at the stop sign.

But, to her dismay, I drove off.

Slumping, Margot slapped both hands onto her forehead and stared at the ground as she trudged up the driveway. “Oh my god, oh my GOD, she’s going to get FIRED! She can’t lose her job! She doesn’t even have a bank account yet for Christ’s sake, and Bianca is just going to fuck everything up, like always!”

Margot has worked herself into a frenzy at this point, nearly tearing clumps of her corkscrew curls from her fuming head.

Jackie’s sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, sipping on a pony-necked beer. The way her entire body slouches against the soft leather suggests that she has not a  care in the world. She’s the roamer, the gypsy, the “I’ll play the hand I’ve got until it’s my turn to deal,” kind of lady who simply knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that there’s nothing alive that can get in her way.

“Jesus girl, have a little faith,” she says, settling down into the seat so that her neck was pillowed on the back of the chair, her legs out straight. “She’ll let Bianca out for a little run around the warehouse and then she’ll put her away and feel awful about it for days. It’s been like this ever since she’s had a job. Thought you’d have that written down somewhere, indexed and alphabetized,” she finished, her tone clipping into irritation once again as her eyes lazily slide from a frazzled Margot to the street, where she wished Margot would return.

At work, I walk from the break room and out onto the floor, wearing a special kind of hateful mask that took all day to make. Bianca twisted the right knobs and tempered her flame so that the thoughts merely simmered in the back until the recipe was complete and I was flaky and crusty by the time I clocked in.

“Oh, that’s quite a frown!”

It’s an office lady who has the misfortune of saying something. Some chubby bitch with pumps and silver jewelry who sits on her ass all day while I sweat and toil.

Victim number one, Bianca purrs lowly, her words sliding into my ears as her forked tongue, always saying two things, tickles my doubts away with feather-light touches.

My eyes cut to the woman, who is still looking at me. I wonder if she’s seen Office Space and knows how much she’s reminding me of that lady: Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays.

They’re not the Mondays, lady. I hate my fucking job and right now, I hate you.

Or so Bianca says. She can get pretty butthurt about the smallest things.

Make it quick. Make it sharp.

I suddenly smiled and watched the wrinkles on her face deepen as her smile opens to match mine, revealing straight but yellowing teeth. You can see the glitter in her eye is due to pride at having cheered me up.

And then, after a single second, I let the smile fall right back into the frown she’d first commented on and watched her face scrunch in confusion right as we are about to pass each other.

“Better?” I asked in a dull, club-like tone, maintaining eye contact in order to savor that sweet, sweet pout on her pretty little face.

Looks like “the Mondays” are contagious.

Victim number two, she softly declares as I approach Gary, the first shift man I see for a grand total of 10 minutes a week who originally garnered Margot’s attention because of his sloppy work ethic.

I’ll make him wish he’d done what Margot told him to when he had the chance.

Without preamble, I threw my purse under the table and slammed both hands on the desk.

“Seriously, --”

He cut me off, mocking me in my own tone.

“Seriously, don’t start that again. You’ve been mean to me ever since I met you and I’m just...I’m done with it.”

I can see how nervous I make him immediately and instantly know that I can overpower him: his pupils are dilated, he can’t stop fiddling with things, his posture is starting to slouch, and I am barely getting started.

Maybe he’s been dreading you all day. Looks like he did all the hard work for you.

“You leave this place a mess every time I come in here and I’ve asked you before to clean up your shit before you go! I have to clean up my shit, Ben has to clean up his shit, we ALL have to do it. I don’t have time to clean up after you AND myself, just take care of it before you go!”

“Why don’t YOU take care of it?”

Without missing a beat, I raised a finger and jabbed it in his direction, glaring up at him with full force.

“FUCK you.”

I can see his resolve crumbling like old stone and kick into overdrive. All of a sudden, Bianca’s forked tongue is darting out of my mouth and my heart is pulsing so loudly that all I hear is the steady thump-thump-thump. My whole body is alive and singing as a surge of adrenaline pumps into my system and I plant my feet for the fight.

Gary’s internal compass told him to run, and that he did, though not without failing to frighten me into defeat by threatening to talk to a superior.

You terrify him. You can smell it, I know you can.

I watch him walk away, still playing with my prey like a cat waiting for the mouse to stop struggling. He’s complaining to the man on the other end of the machine, obviously flustered and worked up.

Meanwhile, like the villainous witch I am, I simply smirk and watch the dark spell unfold exactly the way that I...Bianca... planned.

This is what you are, she reminds me, holding my chin between her fingertips as she assumes a humanoid shape again. Her black eyes hold me captive and suddenly I can’t tell if I’m looking at her eyes or staring too deeply into my own pupils. This is what you do best. Don’t let the others distract you with so many pretty shiny things that you forget how deep your blackness goes.

There it is. The reason she slunk with me to work: to show me my baser nature. The lesson she so patiently waited to deliver was as petty and hurtful as she.

Don’t ever forget who and what you are.

Don’t worry, Bianca.

I won’t.