Monday night weirdness, Episode 3
links to past episodes 1 | 2
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episode 3
okay, blanket girl, you think, feeling your face contort in disbelief. you really are crazy! you picked being naked and chained up in a little treehouse full of ash and toy trucks over...
(and then you realise)
...over being naked and chained up in a mental hospital -- ?
she is hugging herself again, rocking, wiping her nose. she looks up at you with a faint shaky smile. you smile back and know you look sad. you hope she is too crazy to notice your pity.
it can't be true, you think. it makes no sense. why would being tied up keep her in this dimension? dimension! now you're thinking like these people. it's not a dimension, it's just...
(tied up?)
you remember your days in the corner of the house, squirming in mayim's cords, listening to the laughter in the room, knowing you were in on the joke.
at least, you thought you were in on the joke. maybe you were just... the joke.
you think of mayim's smile, and wonder if she thinks of you like you think of the blanket girl. you wonder if she hopes you wouldn't notice her pity.
the sad drains out of you.
you feel something new: something you have only let yourself feel once or twice, because you hate how it claws at your guts.
anger.
your fists clench. the foreign emotion rises in your belly, a shout forming. you are already thinking how the word will sound when you bellow it: mayim...
before you can even open your mouth, you hear:
pop
and the bearlike figure of a man with short hair fills the space between low ceiling and warped wooden floor. he is all in white, short sleeves ending above muscular forearms.
polar bear! you freeze.
the girl in the blanket screams, curls into a filthy colourful ball, hiding her head.
polar bear man looks at you, rolls his eyes. 'christ. nice friends,' he murmurs to himself. he turns to the ball of blanket. 'come on, daphne,' he wheedles, voice soft, almost pearly, as smooth and white as his uniform. 'it's okay.'
'no,' comes the muffled voice from the blanket. 'leave me alone, rick! i'm not coming back, you can't make me!'
'be a good girl now. it's all right. tonight is tater tots!'
daphne's face emerges. 'how did you even get here? there's no way you can even know i'm here, unless -- '
'i found your stash.' rick's pearly wheedling tone is gone. 'it's over. you have to live in reality, just like -- '
'reality sucks!' daphne yells. 'go away! i hate that place, don't you -- ' rick grabs the blanket, yanks daphne to her feet. 'help me! you, what's your name? surprise boy? elf? help! don't let him -- ' jingle.
'what's this?' says rick. he pulls daphne's chained wrist out of the blanket. he whirls to look at you, bringing daphne stumbling a semi-circle as he turns. back at daphne: 'did he put... this on you?' he starts fumbling with the chain.
'screw you!' she yells at rick. 'i asked them to do it, they know how it all... works..." she trails off, pulling helplessly at rick, who is holding one of her wrists in the crook of his massive hairy arm and fiddling with the chain. 'get them!' she shouts at you. 'the people outside! if rick takes this thing off i'll go back and be stuck in the hospital and can't get back, ever!'
caught up in her hysteria, you scurry to the sunshine-yellow wall, pounding. you hear nothing outside, and the door in the wall is nowhere to be found. you call up the howl that's lurked within you since the polar bear showed up:
"mayim!"
mayim, you bitch, where are you? you are surprised at yourself. but there is a current of hurt and mean running in your blood now. you yell silently at absent mayim: you don't listen! you never did, you just laughed and made a toy out of me and...
i wanted her, you admit to yourself. i wanted mayim. you remember lying in her lap the day you were so lonely, and how she smiled down at you, and the way she stroked your hair very slowly and didn't complain that you were dirty.
but she doesn't think i'm real.
most of her radiant smiles went to crane.
you stop pounding the wall and yelling, and you squat. it is awfully quiet.
you jump up, whirl.
in the corner there is just a ring set in the floor trailing an empty chain, and a small padlock wrested open nearby.
oh Odd damn it, you think. while you were busy mooning about mayim, the polar bear stole the blanket girl. and by the same peculiar method as the robbers: popping in. he said 'i found your stash...' so: he ate the molecule paper she hid? he had to have. there aren't any windows, you can't find the door, and the ceiling and floor don't seem to have trapdoors either, so this dimension business is not just crazy blanket-girl bullshit. she got kidnapped back to -- reality? but this is reality...
fuck. it is all very confusing, and you've let the blanket girl down. okay, she was messed up, but rick the polar bear reminds you of all the jocks who used to dump milkshakes over your head in high school. and who knows what they did to girl freaks? it wasn't fair to have a jock in the day-glo forest kidnapping the inhabitants. no, no.
you scratch your chin and picture rick force-feeding daphne tater tots, and shiver.
tater tots always really sucked.
something has to be done.
"mayim!" you call again. you can't bring yourself to yell for crane.
time goes by. eventually you hear laughing outside, conversation.
relief and shame and anger explode out of you in a wordless roar. when it is over, you hear only silence. then: 'what the fuck was that?'
a part of the sunshine folds back, and the tree is open. mayim stands there, smile replaced by hazy alarm. 'was that you?' she asks. 'oh, wait. you were coming -- of course! -- " you feel your lip curl fiercely, and you point at the empty corner.
'you took her chain off?' mayim yells at you.
'no!' you scream, maddened. too many words in your head! you push past her and the other robbers and you flee, knowing you should stay and tell them about daphne, try to make them find her. but you can't stand mayim's accusing face right now. how could she be so wrong about you? all the time... never any different...
you run towards the house through the day-glo trees, hoping none of the robbers are there, wishing there were a convenient cliff to jump off instead.
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episode 4