Sleeping on the Floor

short story written from a girl's perspective for a change, with a little food-based symbolism! :D

The floor sure is hard, but I feel safer here...

My eyelids flutter lazily as the last scene of some evanescent dream is chased away by my approaching consciousness.

The fog hanging over me clears quickly, but the haunting faces still linger: a memento from the strange world I’m reluctantly departing from. I keep them etched in my mind for as long as I can, friends of mine in that ephemeral limbo between coma and cognizance. I know I won’t remember them five minutes from now. Sorrowful, but I won’t remember to miss them, either.

I feel my mouth inadvertently stretch open widely as another yawn escapes. I roll over gingerly, onto my side, clutching my pillow tightly to me as my knees curl in towards my chest. The position seems somehow familiar and distasteful all at once, so I  quickly abandon it, rolling over again so that I'm on my back.

I am no longer comfortable...sigh. My body screams at me through a dozen aches and pains from my toes to my head, forcing my eyes to finally open and greet the inevitable day: I sprawl over the lacquered hardwood like a dead body as they settle on the ceiling for what seems like an eternity. There’s nothing on it, my memory reminds me, and yet I see so many oddly-colored dots and strips dancing across the stucco surface.

I blink once, twice, fourteen times, barely resisting sleep’s alluring promise of inner-peace. I tell myself: “this is the daytime now, and only the wasteful sleep while the sun is up”. My conscience slowly pecks away at the edifice of my indolence until it collapses altogether.

My daily ritual complete, I rise unsteadily to my feet again.

My sensitive soles touch the carpeted ground, a rush of blood surges into my extremities, and I shuffle listlessly over to a door. My eyes accidentally glance over towards the bed, my proper bed, still disheveled and unkempt from the last time I rose from it--F**k...I bite down on my soft lower lip: chicken pyramid toothpick astronaut. Dog ketchup siphon. On I go, to the bathroom.

I close the door behind me. My toes curl up, affronted by the coldness of the tiled floor. The shades here are already drawn for some reason, so light spills in and stings my still groggy eyes. I rub at them lazily with one knuckle, throwing open the nearby shower curtain with my free hand. It needs cleaning; I need cleaning. Priorities. I turn the water on, steaming as hot as I can bare; I strip off my clothes and step inside.

The water is invigorating--for better or worse.


I’m downstairs now, wide awake. Nervous energy motivates me to find an adventure to pass the time, so I get out a skillet, some eggs, and that waffle-maker that I got as a present from....the giant, hippo-eating mantis! That’s who it was. He was a good mantis, but in the end...I think he wanted to eat me.

I’m going to eat some breakfast. I play around with the stove, and manage to get it working. I crack open some eggs, and spill out their insides onto the searing hot pan. The subsequent sizzling seems more like screaming.

I smirk: is this what the devil feels like? Delicious.

I’ve been told that I’m the devil. I’ve been called a thousand other names, some of which were new to me, all in the past week. Or was it longer? It feels like it was longer. Maybe not though.

I plug in the waffle maker, and pour some pre-made batter into the grid. I’m not careful though; I make a big mess. Ah well. It smells fantastic already!

Everything is going well now, but there is still too much silence. The great room is adjacent to the kitchen, and I head there.

 I spy the remote lying on the TV, and I walk over to retrieve it. Switching the set on, I flip anxiously through the channels, looking for anything...I don’t find it, but the noise alone is music to my ears; all of the chatter and music makes me forget myself. I walk backwards until I am at the couch, and I let myself fall onto the big leather cushion.

The TV giveth, and the TV taketh away.

I finally find a program that I enjoy. It is some generic drama, the kind where shockingly ordinary things happen to supposedly important people. I halfway listen to it, immersing myself in their scripted little world.

There are lots of colors, and I like that. The girls in it are too pretty, though... too pretty. There is probably going to be a sex scene. I can tell, because that’s what always happens whenever a man and a woman spend a lot of time talking to each other while standing approximately three centimeters away from each others’ faces. I don’t want to see that kind of obscene stuff. It only makes me sick now.

I toss the controller away from me, like it has a disease. I spring to my feet, indignant. I walk back to the kitchen, hungry.

The eggs are burnt now, but the waffles turned out fine. I did pay a lot more attention to them, since they are yummier, after all. I do feel a little bit guilty. Why should I, though? It’s not as if the eggs were paying any attention to me. The eggs got what was coming to him.

I lift the pan from the stove top and dump them.

I should have just had waffles from the start.

Reviews

[Erin]

Love it

[Breann S.]

Your use of imagery is outstanding. You picked all the right adjectives. On the other hand, I felt overwhelmed by them. I felt like because there was so much imagery, I never really got a story, just lots of summary. The best story has the perfect balance of summary, character, and dialogue. (Dialogue isn't always necessary.) For example, I got extremely interested when the narrator started to recall being called the devil and other things. There was a story behind that. Tell it! Give the narrator some conflict, other than getting out of bed. Again, your writing is great, just give the character some depth, some back story, or conflict, and you'll be set. I've yet to read any of your other works, so this may only apply to this one. Good work, though!