Blossoming Madness I

“The bunnies, the bunnies!” he sang to me.

“Can I eat them?” I questioned, my face merely inches, no millimeters, from his. 

“No, Fia” he whispered while brushing my hair from my eyes. “Time does not allow it.”

“Then, will you kiss me?” I said nervously, biting my lip.

“Time does not allow...” he trailed off while his eyes fixed on something behind me. 

“Go! Run! Now!” he screamed as he vanished.

The thunder rolls across the sky, carrying heavy rains that break in through my window, waking me to the torturous night, Startled by the banging window, I sit up in bed. My breath comes out harsh and shallow.

“The window” I breathe. 

Shakily, I climb out of bed and stumble over to my now soaked carpet just below the broken window. 

“Great. Now the stinkbugs will have a nice, damp environment.” I sigh.

I reach to close the window but then stop. There’s...something out in the thick rain. Barley noticeable, I quints to be sure, is a teenage boy with hair matted and tangles against his scalp. 

“Andrew?” My voice wavers, I clear it and shake my head.

I squinch my eyebrows in confusion just as the boy walks three more paces and then vanishes. Jerking backwards in shock, I slam the window down, loose my balance, spin around quickly, my ginger hair flying out of its loose ponytail and promptly fall to the floor.

Well, that was graceful.

My hand suddenly flies to my mouth while the other goes to my churning stomach. Am I nauseous from the sudden spin? Or perhaps the apparition outside my window... I’m not given much time to think it over as I begin to retch silently. All the while, I know that I won’t vomit. I never do.

“Oh god, I’m becoming delusional.” I whisper as the retching ceases. 

I glance up at the clock that reads three twenty-seven. My suddenly aching body slouches against my looming dresser and I sigh.

I let my eyes wander around my room. My mother had recently cleaned and I can barley recognize any part of it anymore. The mirror was clean of any sticky notes, the bookshelf colored coded and cleared of any loose papers, and the floor was actually visible. Unfortunately, this new found floor had also produced three dead stinkbugs from the previous hell- I mean- summer. The closest one to where I was sitting had been affectionately named Name.  

“This wouldn’t be so bad if this had been the first time, you know?” I began the nightly ritual of conversing with Name.

“I mean, I could understand a once a month sort of thing. Maybe even once every few months but seriously every night? Can’t I just sleep for one night?”

It didn’t respond.

Every night around two or three I will wake up for no apparent reason, and simply lay there waiting for sleep to reclaim my body. At the most, I will be able to sleep for an hour before it was time to begin the day. Sometimes I will pick up a book (an overdue library book, no doubt) or if it happened to be too late to go back to sleep I will get dressed and sit cross legged on my floor and stare at my alarm clock while I wait for it to go off. This has been going on for a few months now. You’d think that I would sleep more often, considering, but no. No such luck. I think the fates are punishing me simply because I’m a ginger. Even on Saturdays, in desperate attempts to amuse myself, I try and personify the sun in my mind as cliché as possible despite the early hour. The last attempts had been . . . well . . .  

The sun peers over the edge of the curtain, creeping in on tip toes.

The blooming, yellow sun grew out of the window, screaming at my eyelids, alerting me of the blasphemous early hour.

Hey sunshine! Oh wait, that’s me! Ah, I’m such a jokester, aren’t I?

The glorious yellow orb rose over the horizon like a...like a...well like a really good simile.

The sun becomes more annoying with every morning as I grow more irritated by the lack of sleep. That and the fact that the sun is just inherently annoying.

Unfortunately, it is a Tuesday morning. Not one that a teenage girl should generally have sleep issues on. Really, teenage girls should have no sleep issues whatsoever unless it’s because of a guy. I think day dreaming would be an acceptable reason to be away. So, in true form of my teenage girl-ness, I turn to face the slashing rain outside my sealed window again before closing my eyes, trying to find that beautiful dream boy again...