A drink, bubbling with an ashy rage, simmered at her hands. She cupped a shelter around it, keeping the stained mug home without actually having to make contact with heated clay.
“Have some,” he encouraged. “It’s good for you.”
Something in the pit of her near-empty stomach told her otherwise. Nothing that orange could possibly be good for you.
Sipping a short breath of air, she grimaced as she peered skeptically past the soft stream skirting off the surface of liquid. “I don’t know about this.”
“Sure you do,” he urged. Wrapping his hands around her knuckles, he pressed her palm against the mug and suggested the cup to her mouth. “Try it.”
And on the two words that promised her excitement, perchance a hint of mysterious joy, she took a heaping gulp of a rancid orange that slowly clawed down her throat in an unnerving move. It was too late to spit at that point.
Lifting both palms to attention, she gaped with wide eyes, suspended in a chilling shock that ripped through the cord of her spine. The aged lines across her mitts that etched her entire life history slowly blended into a shady blur – she watched, astonished, as her fingers became translucent, then eventually clear.
She was no longer.
He smiled, also fading in sync to the silvery chromatic shift in her skin. Slacking the tension in his shoulders, he clicked his tongue twice and immediately all color flushed back into place on his own body, down to every last freckle kissing the collarbone.
I think she meant to follow suit. She seemed to be clicking her tongue as well, slightly bucking forward with lips rounded open as a woman would don a coat of mascara. Yet I could hear nothing. Soon enough I realized why she was choking on air, wheezing a sputter that began turning down in volume to a low muffle… Her tongue was no longer there.
To both our horror, he grasped at a limp, pink lump of fleshy tongue tucked away in his pocket. “Oops,” he chuckled. “Looking for this?”
She screamed and screamed, and probably screamed some more, but no sound could brave to leave her lips. Silently and invisibly, she cried out to the world that could no longer acknowledge her existence. Dipping from visibility, she peered at others with a seeping desperation. I watched as the amber of her iris gave way to the chestnut oak chair behind her.
He clicked his tongue, twice again, and vanished as my mother had, few seconds prior. I sat in the room for eighteen straight hours, staring at the empty seat. It didn’t seem real. Who could I tell? Who would believe me? I kept it to myself for years.
Until adoption day. Today. That’s when potential parents like you came rounding about the house, poking your noses into our rooms and scaling us in cuteness like we’re puppies fighting for attention on display. So, hey, shoot me. I lied.
I pretended it never happened, put on a fake smile, and here I am. You sure picked the jackpot, man. Don’t worry — I’m sure there’s some kind of return policy. You’re not stuck with me forever.
But do you think I can sleep here tonight? I swear I don’t snore.
Read Me 