LTTLE PINK GIRL

My hands are so dry that I can almost feel the blood pumping under my skin, almost as if to say their ready to start leaking out of the chapped, pastry layers again. Washing dishes with such a strong soap never helps and the stinking lasts for about fifteen minutes (or more) after. I always inspect the cracks and crevices, bumps and corners – every little detail that might pertain to my believe that I may be a zombie. The skin is still white as my old, fluffy scarf, the nails engraved with milk specks. So I am still human, apparently, but my brain screams that he chopped off my head long ago to wear as a necklace. It’s because of this dream of mine, I know. The one where he’s over me with a large axe, the one where he chops off my head and carries it under his arm with my hair wrapped around his waist, the one where my eyes still see everything even though I’m supposed to be dead. Anyway, about my skin: I’ve taken to licking it now, just like a kitten, yup – exactly like that. He bought me a kitten once. Her name was Buttercup, named after one of the protagonist’s in ‘The Princess Bride’. He thought it was a stupid name, of course, and named the kitten Mud pie because she had a brown speck on her nose as if she stuck it in a pie of mud. I thought he was stupid for calling my choice of a name stupid, but after that he got mad at me, saying I was ungrateful about his buying me a kitten. I still called her Buttercup, though, because she was my only friend.

The only thing’s I can remember about my mother are that she handed me the movie ‘The Princess Bride’, in an old cracked case with a ripped DVD cover, on my seventh birthday and that she always refused to buy me the Barbie band aids at Wall mart. She said that they were more expensive than the normal ones just because they had designs, and even if she had a coupon, it still would be wasting a coupon if it would just reduce it to the price of the plain type. How I hated those band aids, but unfortunately, Creole markers don’t write on plastic surfaces well, so all my hearts and smiley faces would eventually fade, leaving behind smears of red and green that reminded me of my cuts and bruises.

That’s all I know, I swear. She could have had brown, black, blonde, red, or even green hair – I really don’t know. Maybe hazel eyes, or blue, or green, but I just can’t see her. My mind doesn’t know that woman any more, my heart doesn’t accept her. Now all’s I know his him, which isn’t much. Today, for example, he made me go to the store to get him some fags and Jack Daniels, but I couldn’t get them because he didn’t even give me money because he was in such a bad mood that he just pushed me out of the house, yelling what he wanted right when the door slammed in that familiar tone. So I went to Ross instead, their shelves are always so mismatched and unorganized; it reminds me of myself, so I feel that maybe the owner of the store is actually like me. Maybe. But these are items that are in the wrong place; for me it’s my mind and heart.

LITTLE BLUE BOY:

I forgot to give her money, but she’ll figure it out. She’s not that stupid…hopefully, damn it I don’t know! I hardly see her these days, hardly get to breathe her in and hardly get to think nonetheless. I noticed that her hands are dry again, though, so does that count as a point for me? Or maybe that’s just a goal – long drowned out “G-G-G-G-O-O-O-O-A-A-A-A-L-L-L!!” like on the Spanish soccer games or just a simple “Goal…” like when you’re playing a pathetically boring game of Soccer table? I actually licked them once to provide some moisture because I figured that’d work since she was doing it but then she said it felt like sandpaper, I told her it tasted like metal and glue and she started to cry. Once I thought, in surprise, that I’d always lick her hands for her, but those lips are worse. I’d honestly never lick those and I don’t know why – isn’t she my girlfriend? Oh, I forgot, it’s not the same as when she was okay and when I didn’t have a “drinking problem” (whatever that means).

Some nights I dream that my pillow has come alive and it’s strangling me, slowly taking my one and only life. I wake up to fight it with my cat-reflex moves but then I remember that I don’t have reflexes like a cat and I also don’t have their nine lives either. So I’m begging for the pillow to give my life back and I’m about to take off the shade on my lamp and stab it with the knob on top of it when she wakes and tells me to shut up because I’m banging the head board with the alarm clock. She dreams some nights, too, though, so maybe I’m not such an idiot. She also doesn’t get my jokes now, so maybe I am one.

LITTLE PINK GIRL:

It’s amazing what I’d do sometimes to get used to the pain. Once, I was biting the right side of my lip – it was chapped and sore. The pain sent a warm, sickening feeling down my torso. It felt like some large worm snuck inside and was altering my body temperature to freezing and back up to warm again along with snipping at my organs. It also made my heart beat madly and caused my eyes to water. Ironically, it hurt like hell, but I wanted it. I needed stitches soon after, sadly, and he got made because we’re not doing well with bills as it is. I say that hospitals charge too much, he says that I’m too careless and should clean more if I’m so bored.

He actually licked my hands last month and it was amazing to see him so calm, just like Buttercup, trying to help the dry flakes go away. I asked him to imagine what it would be like to have a band aid over your lips, to feel the gauzy mess on that delicate skin that people mistake for something much tougher. “You need your lips to kiss…”

And why would he say that? How long has it been since I’ve started to notice how bad things are he started to drink heavily? Too long…, I think, and blink down at my index finger. Another line of crimson twinkles at me from inside the brown and cream crevice, causing me to run to the bathroom and give those hands a scrub. And then I go back to my room and grab the best lotion I have, squirt it on two of my fingers and start going over the knuckles of my right hand, enjoying the slight ‘bomp, bomp’ sound it emits and the feeling of the looping skin in between the digits.

He came home as I was just snuggling into my blankets, I could smell the alcohol stench this far down the hall and over the starchiness of all the lotion I put on. He stomped around the kitchen, banging a mug against the counter and opening the fridge, picking up the newspaper and turning on the tele to news channel six. Our walls aren’t that insulated, so spying may seem easy, but it really isn’t. I learned this the hard way whenever I tried to sneak out some days and I would listen for him, see if he left for work yet, but I swear he has an extra sense just for me, just for my imprisonment. Finally sinking into his side of the bed that night with the same annoyed sigh as always, I heard him mumble, “We need to put some plants in the front window...it’s too bare…”

He is an odd one.

LITTLE BLUE BOY:

Being nice to her is really hard these days. Even when things are going fine, I struggle with doing activates a normal boyfriend is expected to do. Hold open the door for her? Isn’t that why they invented automatic doors, to spare males? Now they can move onto cars and we’re all set; she’ll stop glaring at me when I do something wrong on one of our dates and I’ll stop rolling my eyes up to the skies. But then there’s also “Pull back my chair for me, please, Honey” and “Could you please get me some desert, JJ?” and then “I need you to pick something up for me, it shouldn’t be too hard.” I used to do these things, all be it in a grumpy manner, but I did it, except now I know she’s too scared to even consider asking. And I’m still waiting for them to come up with a “Fake Boyfriend” robot but am I to blame or is she? She’s always been a little insecure; I think it’s her fault, honestly…

LITTLE PINK GIRL:

Who else could it be to have ruined our relationship but him? The bastard…

LITTLE BLUE BOY:

She’s just so loud with that voice of hers and those little snippy remarks that makes my skin broil.

LITTLE PINK GIRL:

I’m not to blame.

LITTLE BLUE BOY:

It’s definitely not me who’s going to take the shitty blame!

LITTLE PINK GIRL:

Stupid boy!

LITTLE BLUE BOY:

Stupid girl!