#my body just shuts down when i look at an undeposited check

[zippers]

does anyone else have an irrational anxiety about depositing checks?? receiving them makes me feel sick to my stomach and 50% of the time i don't deposit them. i have zero problems using checks myself. i just feel this overwhelming guilt surrounding checks.

[amovement-study]

Woolgathering

August 5th 2018

Themes: LGBTQ+ Dreams 

A/N: I don’t feel like this piece conveys the emotion I wanted to put into it, but in a way I think that’s the point of the story in the first place. I wrote this because of a dream, and then it took on a shape of its own. 

It wasn’t a bad idea at the time. Something about the red ink on a price tag seduced her into picking up the last box on the shelf. The sense of urgency and excitement quickly faded shortly after during the car ride home. Afterward, the box was left alone to the farther end of her kitchens fake granite countertop.

Once during a usual Friday night, Ophella decided to remove the device from the box. Sometimes the best distractions from perceived noise and heightened senses were anything that would remove her eyes from the screen. The episode of The Twilight Zone that night hadn’t convinced her that aliens would invade the one bedroom apartment, but it did leave her mind tickled by the possibility.

A button and a pair of headgear that resembled a scuba mask are what she paid a steep price of eighty dollars with money she could have used on something more useful like milk or tennis shoes. The machine and all its warning pamphlets were haphazardly tucked back into their box and left untouched for another three months.

“We can try it but I’m not really all that tired right now-” Shelani said. She bowed her head making her brown eyes appear larger and quieter than they actually were. Ophella flips her phone over to check the time and nods. Neither women really went to sleep till the youngest hours of the next day. On weekends like this, they would sit quietly in the living room browsing the internet or watching their individual shows until sleep begged for them. Tonight would have been no different if it wasn’t for the undeposited paycheck in her purse leaving all subscriptions on hold for the time being. Tonight they would have to entertain themselves.

“I’m not tired either. We have melatonin though.”  The tablets were bought a full year ago to help with adjusting to the time difference between Seattle and Portland. After the hasty move, the apartments empty spaces and purring boiler room next door would leave her eyes constantly shifting. It almost amused her how living alone birthed a  feeling of constant company.

Shelani’s lips stretched into a puffy mauve line. Ophella waited for her suggestion to shake hands with gently put rejection or a well-placed silence. Perhaps it had been too perverse an idea. Ophella curls herself into an apology.

“OK, but me first. On you I mean-” Shelani clarified. Her arm is thrown around Ophella’s wide shoulders. Their cheeks rub against each other and their mixing hair crunched in both their ears. The sensation brings up memories of brown butter hissing in a hot pan.

Two plastic blue cups are taken down from the cabinets with a bit of effort. Luckily some sweet tea remained from their pizza delivery earlier. Two purple tablets are scratched out of their foil wrappings and popped into Ophella’s mouth. She swallowed them dry before remembering to take a sip of her drink.  

From where she stood she watched as Shelani worked her short sable hair into a hairband found on the floor. The box is flicked open and the headgear pulled out and over the woman’s oblong head. Blindly her long fingers paw at the air.  They laughed together.

“Aren’t you afraid of seeing something weird? Like we can’t come back from this kind of weird. Dreams can be really fucked up you know-” Not that Shelani had any particular concerns in mind. Most nights were dreamless. For a few moments or so she would simply fall out of existence and back into it again. Occasionally the odd dream or so would occur, but they weren’t much to remember or enjoy. In most, she was doing painfully unfantastic things like texting or going to work. She had come to envy those who could live again through dreaming.

“I’m not afraid. It’s not like we have to talk about what we see if we see anything,” Ophella answered. Agreeing to not speak about it seemed like the safest option when concerning things as sensitive as dreams and the sort. Her offer caused Shelani to smile the type of smile she makes when she’s getting ready to make a joke. Ophella is already offended before she speaks.

“Shut up and drink your tea.” The cup is pressed to Shelani’s lips and she drinks down the sweet liquid eagerly. Then Ophella is pulled down so that her stocky legs straddled Shelani’s. The cream color of the carpet created perfect outlines of both their brown skin but burned their thighs and knees. Neither moved much as Shelani emptied her cup and rolls it away till it clinks against the balcony door. As the silence sets in between them again, Ophella feels Shelani’s forearms come to rest against her hips. With the headgear still on its hard to tell if any type of eye-contact could be established between the two.  Ophella put her hands somewhere friendly and willed herself to fight the need to announce that she wasn’t yet sleepy. Things happened in silence even if it’s more itchy than tense.

Shelani’s fingers walked themselves up her sides, rest once at her waist, tap dance on her shoulders, and come to rest on the sharpest point of her cheeks. Feeling the need to recuperate Ophella toys with  Shelani’s feathery hair. Moments like this between them were rare yet fleeting. Whenever they ended Ophella always felt like she had inhaled too soon and drowned.  

Months prior the two held hands and linked their foreheads together as they talked about the stranger sides of life-the unwanted memories and missed connections. They talked till they cried and smiled so often their jaws turned to elderly rubber bands. That night something between them intertwined along with their legs. Shelani did something out of ordinary then. She called Ophella something that left the taste of honey on her tongue and a sense of importance in her throat. ‘You’re my favorite’ she had said before pressing their noses together till their cupid bows met. Something about the word favorite did something. More platonic than ‘darling’, yet more regal than ‘ closest friend’. That encounter left a fluttering butterfly in Ophella’s chest.

“Are you tired yet?” Shelani cut in. She then yawned and removes the headset finally so that she could lay back against the floor and stretch her arms and crack her knuckles.

“No, but it looks like you better let me take your turn if you’re just going to fall asleep before I do,” Ophella laughed. Her weight comes down more comfortably until she feels the hard bones of Shelani’s hips press into her bottom. Several seconds later both shift so that they were lying side by side. The anticipation for Shelani to say or do anything unlike herself slowly starts to overwhelm her favorite friend. Anything. Anything.

“Take your turn first then. I’ll get mine in after a nap if you don’t mind too much.” The woman stretched again till her body clicks like a pen. She rolled onto her back, crossed her legs so that the hems of her pink socks lined up, and closed her eyes.

Ophella reached for the stiff instructions manual and decided that the best time to give it a look through would be now as Shelani edged closer to sleep. At first, she found herself squinting at the translated side of the instructions as if doing so would suddenly bring back three years of high school French. In English the manual reads ‘Woolgatherer: Visual REM Sleep Aid.’ It went on to use words like ‘miraculous’ and ‘simply’ and all other words that would have made her believe her purchase was nothing more than a scam if she hadn’t seen it work before.

On a whim last Christmas she and some friends traveled several thousand miles west to the coast of California. Along the sand caked docks she alone had come across a small booth offering tarot card reading and dream interpretation. She, of course, chose the latter. A pruned Asian woman dressed in emerald sat her down and offered her hot water to help calm her nerves. She found it strange then, but perhaps she was nervous to hear what her dreams would reveal about her to the stranger.

The session only lasted ten or so minutes if you don’t count the extra six it took for Ophella to relax enough to allow the woman access to her thoughts. They exchanged a few words on why Ophella daydreamed herself as a spider or a rat before the results were made clear. She said-‘You are senselessly fearful. You long for nothing short of everything’. How she got that from Ophella’s eight-eyed persona is beyond her still.

She was not fearful. In fact, she could be quite brave when she decided to be. She could dance in public if the music was good, she could hold her own against strangers if it came down to it. In college, she could walk past three men on the street with her head upturned and not feel her stomach sink to her pelvic floor. In January the power had gone out in the middle of the night, yet she braved the darkness till dawn gave enough light for her to find the fuse box.

A short-lived snore then erupted from Shelani’s long frame. She always snored but never too loudly and never for too long. When they would spend their nights together like this Ophella would sometimes wait for the snoring of her friend before browsing the internet for trashy stories to read. When the snoring came along there was no sudden noise or microwave loud enough to wake Shelani up.

The button is lovingly placed on her forehead and sticks to the warm skin. It flashes blue as it silently connects itself to the woman’s innermost thoughts. Her thin lashes danced when Shelani’s eyes began to move behind the lid. Ophella wondered then if dreaming is more like looking at something behind your lids that no one else could see. The buttons light flashes green to indicate that now was the best time to peek into her friends subconscious.

At first, nothing could be seen but static and floating black and red specs and it looks like she’s dunked her head in a seasoned soup of some kind. Then the specs stretched and grabbed hold of one another until images start to tear through the nothingness and form a single picture. The dream itself was a small and somewhat distant thing at first. Gradually it expanded forcing shapes and bodies to come into focus. From where she sat she could now see what appeared to be Shelani brushing her hair in the mirror.

The image looked like Shelani enough, though some parts of her body were smeared outside the lines like a child’s drawing. Occasionally her face would transcend comprehension and blur into something else entirely. Her movements were fluid and lacked any real thought or effort it seemed. Shelani turned after a few more passes through her hair.

Ophella watched as the vanity in Shelani’s old room stirs itself into the walls around them. If she wasn’t gripping the short wool of the carpet she would easily mistake the world around her as unstable and changing. Now Shelani stood outside her workplace speaking to seemingly no one. Unfortunately, dreams could only be seen and not heard. Her lips moved like a mannequin’s in straight chattering motions. The dream faded into nothing again.

This repeated itself throughout the night. From the couch, Ophella watched Shelani dream herself out of her twenties and into the arms of pruned old women who looked like the dried figs they’d eat together during the summer. Sometimes the settings would change with every flick of Shelani’s pink tongue. One second they would be in the stockroom of a retail store, and in the next behind a pizzeria sharing oily pepperoni with ugly pigeons.

An hour or so later Ophella could feel the pressure of the headset start to pain her temples. Her fingers slipped beneath the elastic bands to rub comfort into her skin and eyes-it didn’t help much. She rocked herself on her heels hoping to keep awake long enough to see another dream. Four in the morning turned her eyelids to weighted windows. Time slipped from her minutes at a time.

A subtle champagne graced her eyes the next time they willed themselves open. This will be the last one before she sleeps she decided. In view, bare shoulders covered in golden dew rolled themselves in slow restricted circles. The world took on a satin finish filled with a grain and noise. One pair of shoulders became two. Ophella pinched each of her fingers.

One pair of shoulders became a twisting torso with raindrops bouncing off the breasts but not wetting the canopy bed they recline on. That hopeful feeling came back. Lightning flashed behind the headboard. One head dipped back leaving the bumps of a neck exposed. Lips parted. Two mix-matched hips ground into each other as if between them were grain to make flour. Wide shoulders push back displacing rain-soaked coiled hair. Ophella gorged herself on the similarities. Knees coaxed themselves apart as a hand slipped down her shorts.

It is noted how Shelani smiled when she liked something and how her eyes closed when the other woman sucked water off her thighs. It is noted how she whispered love with bent toes and blood milked fingers. It is noted that when the other woman lifted her head her face was nothing like Ophella’s. Not hers.

Disgusted by her entrancement, but already lost to the motions of her own actions, Ophella’s body curled into itself.