Earth Chapter 1 Part 1
Courtney woke convulsing, her soaked face slapping against drenched sheets. A snap into consciousness drew her still.
She sat up, patting and holding herself, rocking back and forth. Only, she didn’t know why. No memory, no residual feeling, just a black hole.
Nothing.
Was all that a dream? And if so, was it good or bad?
She’d no idea. But then again, a dream didn’t do that. She’d moved without her mind, jerking like she needed a straitjacket. Which wouldn’t have been fair. God had ‘given’ her enough gifts without adding seizures.
That say with her, like a lump, a tumour she’d have to remove with her mind. It could be done. She was just freaking out.
But she had the right!
It was fair to freak out! She took a breath. Who was she even yelling at? Her body? Her illness, her panic.
The sense of impending doom?
She could not get worse!
Breathe Courtney Breath!
She turned, patting her pedestal until her fingers clapped against her cartoonishly thick pink spectacles. They bounced against the back of her hand as though made of rubber.
She reacted, instinct shocking her into jumping, she missed, backhanding them.
They rose, she missed again.
They were past grabbing, but not saving. She raised her knee. It would have worked, if she were calm and someone else.
Instead there was a crack of plastic when she kneed them shut, they rose. She swung as though in a fist fight with a ghost, leaning too far to keep her balance.
Thud!
Courtney was on her stomach, face rooted in thick zebra carpet.
She groaned, squirming into the pain. Somehow, the position was relaxing, her mind flatlined until a knock on the door forced her back into reality.
The handle turned, ever so slowly the door opened.
“Mom, I’m fine.” Courtney yelled into the rug.
The door kept easing open.
“I’m naked, don’t come in!”
Mother seal team 6’d her way her in. Big brown eyes, raven dreads thick enough to rock climb with, hidden behind a sock one would rob banks with.
“Courtney, what’s happening? You fall off the bed?”
“Not in the way you think mom.”
“Okay, Cici" Her mother said, pushing each syllable in a manner which grated against her soul so hard she could hear the scraping. Her mother was naturally tall, but with her on the ground, she was overwhelming. She felt moments away from being juiced like a grape. She lost…
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“Then why did you fall?” Her mother interrogated.
“Because…” she hesitated, her flat, her mom ‘looming’… there was no fighting what was coming… giving up. “I was picking up my glasses.”
Her mother’s eyes pointed down at the carpet, from the glasses to her. The logical thing to do would have been to laugh, it should have been funny.
The last thing Courtney needed was her mother’s crushing embrace. It started with an ‘oh baby’ before she dropped to her knees and scooped her baby up, wrists locking her up in the foetal position. Knees inches from her own face. If mothers gained supernatural straight when their baby was in trouble, then her mother was professor hulk.
There was muscle enough to lift her. Courtney heard sniffing and heavy breathing; she was being rocked like a child.
“Mom, please, I’m fine.”
“I know.” She wheezed. “You can be fucking fine, that’s what I want, but...” The pressure intensified; Courtney was going to burp out her own lungs. “I’m not.”
“It’s not your fault mom. You know that.” Croaked Courtney, knees bouncing against her forehead, bullies should have been taking notes.
She said nothing, just holding Courtney, way too intimately. Courtney eyed the bed and sighed.
The pitch of her mother’s breathing had shifted, she was gone, long asleep, the intensely thick carpet, blanket enough. She held her tight, face in her mother’s hair, the smell of coconut butter masking whatever chemical mix would keep them bouncy and strong, without making it greasy. It cleared away any existentialism brewing in the last few hours, leaving only sleep.
