Bubbles and Seeds (standard:other, 1162 words)
Author: vihksin	Added: Jan 27 2003	Views/Reads: 3064/2064	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
people being the saved and the saviors for others, finally finding a way to be both for themselves only.

I'm gazing out the café's window, at the gigantic neon sun melting
directly over an invisible horizontal stripe in the sky.  Now watch 
this glass of chilled 7-Up.  No really, just look, I paid three bucks 
for this.  It's so cold its sweating onto the brown counter, a perfect 
watery circle.  I squish my lemon slice into the fizzing soda, along 
with two pale seeds.  Savior-bubbles rush to gather around the poor 
victim of a seed, lift it up to the sweet surface and inevitably vanish 
with an unheard pop as the seed plunges back down to the very bottom.  
Repeat.  Such martyrdom for the seed happens over and over again, 
except for of course, the other seed--the fat one.  Too heavy with 
shame or guilt or anger to even feel the hope of being saved.  Those 
damn bubbles, Ruth would say, think they're too good for me?  Okay, 
they probably are, but you, oh slender one, you just wait til the soda 
goes flat...you'll be exactly where I am, then what?  Huh?   Well maybe 
she would replace the word bubbles with the other b- word, and so on, 
but that's exactly how she feels.  She reminds me of it every night 
over the phone.  I motion for another slice of Mom's Freshly Baked 
Apple Pie (my last slice was still frozen in the middle) to-go, since 
it's a quarter past seven and she's been calling my apartment non-stop 
for fifteen minutes. 

I push open my door and musky air sneak-attacks my nostrils as I pick up
the nearest phone. 

Yeah, sorry I'm late. 

Yes, I know you call the same time every night, for the past four
hundred-something nights. 

No, I can't guess, what happened? 

Then I begin listening.  And I begin thinking why I hadn't picked up the
cordless phone instead.  How I don't even know what musky truly smells 
like, but the word just sounds right, so close to mucky.  Ruth's 
ranting on about three pink dresses, her perfect sister Angie, and 
mandatory whorish make-up. 

Whorish make-up reminds me of girls reminds me of dates reminds me of
the calendar.  My calendar, yes; this is definitely the highlight of 
the day.  It's sad but the feeling I get when I let myself X out twenty 
days just to catch up to the present one is satisfying.  Oops, I 
unintentionally forgot to cross them out each night.  There goes three 
weeks of this crap life--flew by without me even noticing, it was so 
nice.  Ruth cuts me off with the words "no man" and "my fat ass." 

Fat ass reminds me of marshmallows reminds me of boy scouts remin--wait
a minute, if today's November 12th, tomorrow's Angie's wedding.  Not 
that it has much to do with me, except it must be what Ruth is bubbling 
and moaning about.  I ask where did she say the wedding banquet was 
going to be again, feigning interest.  I don't bother listening to her 
answer; instead I stretch the beige phone cord completely straight and 
plop into my vinyl beanbag chair and shut my eyes. 

Ruth's in front of me.  Her medium height, brown hair, medium skin tone,
brown eyes, and medium weight are all there, but not counting for much. 
 She's standing there, cheery yellow balloon tied to her wrist, all 
content like the balloon is.  Like the balloon has to be.  Then tall 
and mocha brown-haired Angie skips down the aisle in her poofy white 
wedding dress, lips lip-sticked, hazel eyes eye-lined and curves 
somehow still curving through the big dress.  The balloon suddenly pops 
without a sound and its shattered pieces morph into glass bit by bit as 
both sisters grab some.  Rubbery glass flies back and forth across the 
bridge of my nose until all is still again.  I look to my left and 
watch as the last sliver of glass embeds itself into Ruth's stomach, 
thhhuk.  A bloated lemon seed is what she's become, and to my right is 
a skinny one sporting a veil.  Before another thought, I'm run over by 
hundreds of bubbles, each with either an unruly handle-bar moustache, 
sideburns that meet at the chin, bleeding gum line, tacky fake pearls, 
bushy unibrow, unsightly bulky eyeglasses, rancid food speckled beard, 
or a pierced lip...everything Ruth has ever found wrong with her 
family. 

What's wrong with my family? 

My eyes open and Ruth's screaming into the phone that's two feet away. 


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