Bumpy Matress

Snowdrop

Late Prologue

 

 

 

How many times…no, how many billions of times have your parents deliberately insisted that you come down for breakfast when you've decided to spend the last day of your short-lived weekend savoring extra hours of sleep?

 

 

 

Scene 1: Bumpy Mattress:

 

 

"WHAT!" Jad jolted sitting straight in bed, frowning at the sky-blue corner of his bedroom wall.

 

"Are you up…?" she called again. How can I not be up after all that constant din from the bottom of the stairs? he thought, "Jad, aren't you done with lazing around…? Come down and help me with breakfast." he wiped his face with a half-consumed groan and internally cursed the fact that he got himself so provoked it would probably take him another hour to fall back asleep, tossing on the bumpy, unhealthy mattress.

 

--- --- ---

 

The small creature felt trapped for a second, but his predator's attempts would not stop him. The evil grin between his whiskers vanished as the iron fell stabbing his foot, his eyes popping out and his tongue springing out of his mouth in a shriek.

 

He could easily tell which episode was being aired without having to turn around. But no matter how many times repeated, it's always funny to see how that cat rarely triumphs over a mouse. Jad's ordinary brown eyes smiled and he lightly shook his head at the television screen across the room.

 

The sweetened water in the cylinder bubbled as he pressed down the blue release button above the glass, grabbing with his free hand the little remote control from the microwave surface and starting his favorite Latin soundtrack from the black mini system on a rear counter on the other side of the small kitchen.

 

Jad's family wasn't rich or that technologically ahead, but this stereo was one of the awards his father received for his dedication in his job as a journalist.

 

He poured the cool water down his throat and raised the volume of the music with the other hand, not too loud, being considerate of the Tom & Jerry fan in the sitting room across the kitchen whose head was visible from behind the sofa as a blue-black blob.

 

He narrowed his eyes at her head as he took another unhurried sip of water. There was something quiet suspicious about Nara that Friday morning because the dull, poorly combed blue-black fringes of her hair falling below the nape of her neck did not match the tidy outfit she fit perfectly into as she cuddled in the corner of the warm-brown sofa. She did not even laugh once like she always had at the Fred Quimby episodes.

 

"Eyah!" she suddenly jerked, hastily dusting her half-lowered head with her two palms. Without seeing her face, Jad knew her eyes were aimed at at the screen but she was not actually paying attention to the show. He could hear her whimper a few words under her breath.

 

That was weird, he thought.

 

--- --- ---

 

"L-Lice !?" Jad's thin shoulders drooped and his responding voice sounded pathetic, "D****t, Ma…You--" His suspicion had turned into a nightmare, "Tell me you're kidding." and he truly wished he could rewind the moment before his mouth hung open beneath the horrified frown, "Nara..? bugs in her head?" a shudder zapped his spine because of his old fear of crawling insects, and because the two phrases he just said did not…could not get along. His sister was ten times hygiene -conscious than any other average human being he'd known. How could she possibly have hair lice?

 

"Keep it down. She might hear you!" the mother hissed as she leaned against his bedroom door, lightly motioning her finger before her lips.

 

"But what you're saying is nearly impossi--"

 

"It has been confirmed." her voice was louder than his as she interrupted, instantly lowering it to a pinch above the whispering level, "I took her to the clinic while you were asleep." Her pose leaning against the door loosened up a bit and she crossed her arms with a sigh, "Normally, inhabitants of our town are originally unlikely to be hosts to lice or other pests. But for the past few years with the arrival of a new flood of immigrants, things have changed." Immigrants…? Hadn't Nara once complained about a new annoying foreign transfer student sitting next to her in class?

 

"Aw, man." he scratched the back of his neck glancing down at the floor as thoughts jumbled in his head, his eyes returning to the mother's troubled expression, "Ma, this is all your fault."

 

"I know it is, I know." She admitted, "I should have gone to school right after her complaint and discussed cleanliness matters with her homeroom teacher. But blaming me now wouldn't solve the problem, would it, Jad?"

 

"Well, what are we going to do?"

 

"I've already bought the anti- --"

 

"No, wait. It's not we, it's jus' you, alright?" the boy defensively interrupted, "I've got nothing to do with it and I'm staying really far away from Nara for the next six months. Now what are you going to do?"

 

"Just so you know, Jad, neither blaming me nor staying away from Nara will protect you from infection."

 

"What's that supposed to mean?" his eyebrows cringed in discomfort, "I don't underst--"

 

"Look, now, are you willing to listen to me properly or not?"

 

"Alright, alright." he rolled his eyes in submission, "Whatever it takes to end this story."

 

"I've already bought her the anti-parasite shampoo and your sister is both aware and terrified of her condition."

 

"That's great." he lightly nodded, but something didn't sound right, "Where's the bad part?"

 

"She refuses to come near it. You need to try to talk to her. Maybe she'll change her mind." Her son's eyebrows shot up in a 'what the f**k' expression, "Ya haram, (poor thing) You know how sensitive she is about her hair." he wasn't even sure if the mother was asking for his help or acting as an official lawyer for the sake of that neat freak, "She keeps telling me: 'Mama, it would be damaged from all the chemicals and eventually fall out.' It's just like the time when you were afraid of Solpadine capsules."

 

"I can't…It's too big to swallow." he sobbed clogging his right eye with the edge his palm as big tears dropped soaking into the thick warm blanket covering the lower half of his body as he sat up in bed, the red and white faintly melted capsule resting in his half-open palm. The father restlessly sighed, briefly rubbing the corners of his forehead with his fingers.

 

"Hamza," the mother gently called as her feet paused by the doorway, "Why is he crying?"

 

"I've had it, Esraa," he dryly said walking past her, "he won't take his medicine and he won't get any better. I leave him to you now."

 

"Habeeby (honey), your temperature won't go down unless you drink your capsule." She stroked her son's lowered head once and sat on the bed beside him, "Here, I'll show you a really easy way," she took the pill from his hand, "first you must drink some of the water to moisten your throat and then--"

 

"Noo…" the boy shook his head and he sobbed louder, "I'll choke, it's too big…"

 

"Yeah, okay, I can go talk to her, no problem." Jad walked past her to the doorknob and pushed it down, "Oh, wait, there is a problem." he looked at her behind his shoulder, "She won't even bother listening." This was not the boy's personal assumption. It was a scientific fact. When Nara said: no, she meant it. "You know you could always use gasoline." he indifferently said, "That's how old people used to treat it."

 

The mother's eyes slightly widened and she bit the bottom of her lips, "Wala! (informal pronoun)" she hissed,  "Don't joke around like that. Now go…Oh, and Nara's doctor warned us about persistent itching. It's a very evident sign of parasite contagion." Jad's spinal cord was immediately invaded by an ascending sensation of tiny invertebrate feet. It crawled all the way up to the back of his head and it trickled in between the roots of his blue-black smooth longish hair, "Let me know at once if you feel anything suspicious."

 

Jad turned around completely to face his mother with a sickened expression frozen on his face. He gasped as his fingernails hastily scratched the back of his neck "Aahh! There's something in my hair!"

 

His mother placed both hands on her hips, "Jad, stop it. You're scaring yourself."

Author's Note

Comments? Reviews? Ideas? Corrections?

*Image: Soft Playground
*by ~SilverFoxThief
*Link: http://silverfoxthief.deviantart.com/art/Soft-Playground-151341462