Novel Teaser #1

chapter 1

sigur ros

It is twelve o’clock. I should be asleep, but there really is no reason for me to be. I work tomorrow, but tomorrow evening. I can sleep in. I usually do, but lately I have been waking up unbearably early. As I wake up I feel heavy, and as I go to sleep I feel light. So heavy I can’t wake up, so light I can’t fall asleep. I’m between a constant hum of heavy and light, sleep and awake, dull and sharp. Lately, though, I haven’t been feeling sharp at all. I’m not the healthiest of people.

I’m not afraid of dying. I view it as more of an inconvenience. A stillness when you have to be loud; sleep when you have to be awake. I joke with my friends and say that I have a brain tumor, that’s why I’m so silly. Secretly I wonder if I do. Secretly, I wonder what I have. I often feel like something isn’t right inside me. I like to muse that it’s because I haven’t found the one. I’m a hopeless romantic. So, until I find my soul-mate, I’ll be sick.

Last night, I dreamt I was in a concentration camp. It was a concentration camp for American girls. I’m Canadian, I tell them. I adopt an old woman and her warm husband as my parents. Their skin is like wrinkled wax that breaks if you force it to bend. They are comforting to me, as I sit in the bright orange room with thousands of other girls, some I know and some I do not. I am clutching a photograph...of whom, I don’t know. I am also clutching a folded up American flag, as if it was just given to me by a soldier. We are about to be brought out, and my adoptive wax mother pulls out a large spreading knife, and explains she has to cut off my face. I am scared, and trust her and her warm husband no longer. I run to one of the guards and tell them to release me, that I was on my way to a talk show to talk about my bisexuality. My mother was sending me, because she wants me to be gay, I tell them. I tell them I am Canadian, and that they cannot do anything to me. The guard has brown hair, and a stern face, and she says nothing. I turn around knowing I am right, that I can leave, and I do. I suddenly feel like I am abandoning the other concentration camp girls, the poor American girls that aren’t holding a folded American flag and my wax mother and warm husband. Why did the flag forsake them? Why were they going to die? 

I’m not even sure why Oprah wanted me on her show. I’m not a real bisexual. 

Why was the room orange?

She said I could leave. I was afraid of the knife. My face.

She

She

She

Oh yeah, it was a concentration camp. Why was I there?

Where was I going again? 

Shit, the sun is bright.

Fuck.

It’s fucking seven o’clock. Haaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. Fuck you sun.

Wait, what was I dreaming? 

I’m scared, I don’t want to go back to sleep. 

They’ll take my face.

Goddamned it, I’m hungry.