February 2021 Flash Lit 6 - Feeling Some Kind of Way

Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: “Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2

 

 

 

“That’s it?” Bonnie said.  “You’re done?”  The bacon grease sizzled and spat in the pan, a few droplets leaping out to burn in pinpricks on her forearm.

 

“Yes,” Colt said.  “Like I said last night.”  He had a duffel bag over his arm along with his computer bag.  Bonnie didn’t look up from the pan, but she saw the expensive sneakers, the just-faded-enough jeans, the ironic t-shirt anyway.

 

He shifted his weight.  “I’ll come back for my other stuff on the weekend.”

 

“Fine,” she said.

 

He shrugged.  “What do you want me to say?”

 

Bonnie didn’t answer.  She put the last few strips of bacon on the paper-towel-lined plate.  She heard the door close behind him.  Her sinuses felt like a sponge left sopping in the sink overnight—too full and dank-smelling.  She poured off most of the drippings in the pan and fried three eggs in the last bit.  Then she ate them and the entire pound of bacon standing at the counter, even though the smell made her want to puke, even though she wasn’t hungry.  She left the pan on the stove, the dirty plates on the counter.  She dialed her job, told Clive she was sick, and shuffled back to bed.

 

She woke up in the peculiarly golden light of afternoon.  The sheets and blanket were tangled around her legs.  She felt wrinkled, unwashed, fuzzy.  She probed the other side of the bed with one hand the way she used to poke at the space where a baby tooth used to be in her mouth.  Was she ever that child?  Who was she now?

 

“I need to pull myself together,” she said, out loud.  The bedcoverings fought her, but she was no triceratops, helpless against the sucking tar pit of despair.  She won.  Her prize was throwing up in the bathroom, brushing her teeth twice and flossing them, and showering.

 

Then she cleaned.  Stripped the bed, scrubbed the kitchen, even vacuumed.  She piled Colt’s things into garbage bags and lined them up in a neat row by the door so he wouldn’t even have to come inside.

 

The bell rang.  She opened the door to find a FedEx guy handing her an envelope.  “Sign here.”

 

Bonnie zipped open the envelope and found a sheaf of documents.  Her uncle had died.  Her uncle?  Did she have an uncle?  She had never met him.  And he left her his house and some money, if she would agree to one stipulation:  she had to change her name to Butterfly.

 

“Butterfly,” she said.  “I could be Butterfly.”