Comfortable Madness First PDF 4-13-18

Back in my Bed
Three faces hung in the corners, pale and swollen, tongues
hanging like slugs from their thick lips. I sat in my bed feeling sick.
I wanted sleep. I needed it but I couldn’t. Voices scraped along my
jaw bone telling me over and over that Coy was coming through the
window with a knife to kill me.
I sat with my knees tucked under my chin and tried to act
as if I were alone. Laughter crawled through the room. Something
fluttered in my belly. It could have been the baby or it could have
been gas.
I couldn’t take it anymore and went downstairs. I went
downstairs and found Tayla lying on the couch asleep. I sat at her
feet and waited for her to wake. Headlights from the street lit up the
curtains over the window. Tayla started rustling, batting at some
dream. Her eyes ran circles in their sockets. After a moment, she
woke. Surprise blanched her face.
“What?” she asked.
I said nothing. I just watched her face, her swollen eyes and
pale lips.
“Butter?” she asked.
“Can’t sleep,” I said.
Tayla sat up. She sat up and stretched.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Too much.”
She knew what I mean when I said that. She’d been with
me through too much in the past not to know what I meant.
“She hates you,” Gid said, his voice coming from the walls,
the air.
Part of me believed him. Part of me nearly got up and left.
But then part of me knew that she loved me. She’s loved me since
the seventh grade.
“Gid?”