061906 Re-Visioning "Walking Dead"

When Lauren woke up, the dark still permeated the room and hid her from herself. She was aware of only the buzzing of the alarm clock and the dead feeling in her limbs. She often felt this way when she was in a deep sleep, so deep if felt as though she had left her body for some other context and she was called back suddenly, with out warning. Something akin to meeting a cool body of water. Cold enough to shock the senses and pierce through every nerve ending and retrace back to the spindle of nerves at the spine and retreating through the base of the neck into the brain.

A tiptoe in and gradual ease the body into the cold, letting it swallow the body lovingly. This is the way Lauren likes to wake up, but sometimes slow tripping fast and plunge the water overtakes, it doesn’t taste with lips and tongue and throat first, but devours and immediately in the stomach. Disoriented.

Lauren’s limbs felt dead and heavy. She blinked and started at the black ceiling, wondering if that was really up or not. Finally, she rolled on her side and met the red digital output of the alarm clock. The mechanical reverberating waves of sound filled the darkness and defined the faces of the walls, the door frame, the door, the anonymous metal of the door handle.

Her hand fell like it would take centuries to reach the snooze button, the kind of deliberate movement seen in esoteric action scenes in a movie. Her fingers didn’t find the button right off, she fumbled and stretched, losing the effect.

Her face pressed into the pillow, that smelled faintly like old sweat and dust. The bus, she thought to herself. Why do I have to take the bus?

After beating a fist into the bed, Lauren pushed herself up and went through her normal morning routine. She washed her hair, cleansed her body, she combed her wet hair, put on lotion that smelled of rich vanilla-like flavor, she clothed and fed her body, gathered her things, books, lipstick, cell phone, pens and pencils, a mirror and her spare set of tweezers (just in case).

The bus was supposed to arrive, according to the information posted on the website, at 6:20. She would be at school by 7:54, which would give her exactly 6 minutes to get to class. The cell phone rested in her front pocket, where she could check the time repetitively.

Black spray paint adorned the plastic shell of the bus stop shelter, fogging over advertisements for women’s razor’s and a new movie with the current hot starlet. Lauren flicked a glance over these, she checked the bushes around the bus stop and felt the darkness of the morning closing in on her like an ill-fitting glove.

Cars cantered by on the street in slow trails of light, but she couldn’t detect the low drone of a bus engine anywhere in the distance.

“Why did I have to drive without insurance?” she asked aloud, shaking her head at her own stupidity. The accident hadn’t been that bad, but she had hit a Lincoln Navigator. The lady had come out of the driver’s side, well-manicured, left hand heavy from the weight of her wedding ring, screaming, “my child, how could you?”

Lauren was properly horrified and mistakenly apologized at the scene of the accident. Her own car had the most damage, a front end of twisted motor. The woman and the child were fine, healthy. Lauren stayed in her car, gripping the wheel, looking from her hood to the woman’s rear fender.

The cop started off nasty, especially after he found out she had no insurance, “money for college,” she had mumbled. Her vacant eyes and face void of motion caused he to give her a breatha-lyzer. After the tow truck towed her car to the impound, he realized she was merely stunned by the accident and not under any influence.

Lauren noticed some flicker headlights in the distance and a faded display the read “Downtown.”

“Morning,” she muttered as she flashed her pass. The bus driver smiled and boomed, “Morning, Honey. You just go on and have a seat there.”