Episode 234: Night (Eulalee)

Creamy white skin stretched across curved knuckles and went tap tap tap. The wood door felt heavy. She bet it tasted heavy too.

She knew better than to lick doors.

Eulalee stood perfect and still, her dolls tucked under her arm and pinned to her chest, her messy curly wavy blonde brown hair… like a wheat field and like wisps of corn hair. Her messy corn wisp, wheat colored.

Eulalee waited until the door opened, and she didn’t lick it.

Then, the door opened and a short man with big body parts stood there with a bottle in his hand.

Eulalee knew better than drinking from bottles and she would be the perfect new house guest and get him a cup just as soon as he let her in.

Except he didn’t.

She stuck her hand out, her left hand even though it was weird because he had alcohol in his right hand.

“Hi. I’m Eulalee.”

The man looked at her from up to down and back up. His eyes almost rolled into his head and he ran his hand across his beard like it felt good.

“I’m sorry I don’t care more,” he bumbled. It sounds like a nice name.”

He stepped back inside her new home and shut the door.

So, Eulalee was alone. She was alone and she had no where she had to be so she chose not to be anywhere.

She walked the halls and she looked at doors and then she found him: Dark hair, skin that was well taken care of, big bushy eyebrows like fuzzy caterpillars marching across his face, and a top lip that looked one of those flappy birds anyone could draw, flying across the sea to a new adventure.

Eulalee was on an adventure, so she decided he was a clue. She was meant to be here.

Clues were very hard to find sometimes. Death wanted Eulalee to find them, it was her duty, but it was hard.

“Hi,” Eulalee said to Scipio.

He was her first love. Except Xandy. She loved Xandy. But Xandy wasn’t this kind of love. This was pure love, the kind of love birds liked to sing about while they paraded sheets through the air.

Scipio smiled, the lip birds taking flight. “What happened to prison?”

“I was going to move in with Nell and Konrad, the wings people, but Konrad shut me out.”

It sounded sad, now that she was saying it aloud. “Maybe I’m not likeable,” she mused.

“I think they’re drunk,” Scipio pointed out.

She tried to shrug, but it turned into a creepy zombie shudder, like in movies when the zombie just had an axe drive through its head abdomen shoulder through the flesh between collarbone and arm, cracking its being into pieces.

“It’s okay,” she said alongside her zombie shrug.

When she was in the big prison, she was allowed to watch movies a few times a year. Somewhere around twelve. She looked forward to movies, because they were special times when she could pretend she was somewhere else. She missed being somewhere else back then, but now that she was free from there she missed there more than being somewhere else made her happy. Eulalee was homesick, because despite being a cell, prison was predictable and safe and whenever she came home to it they were also so glad to see her. Here, no one was glad she was there.

Scipio seemed to smile at least, but now he was hesitant. She knew it was because she had twitched, but still. The clear answer was: She wasn’t very likeable.

Scipio’s body moved to a slight angle, not facing her chest to chest anymore. “I take it you need a place to stay?”

“I could find a closet,” she suggested.

He laughed. She wondered why it was funny, but she smiled because she was glad he had laughed.

“Come on,” he said. He took her hand and she felt her entire body tingle. “I can sleep on my couch. You’ll have to talk to the king and queen tomorrow though, if you’re supposed to be in prison.”

“I’m not supposed to be in prison anymore,” she assured him. And she was to be good. Xandy had told her so and because he had told her to, and she loved him, she would do it. She was going to be good until he told her not to be good anymore.

“Why’d they let you out?” Scipio asked.

He was leading her up stairs and through halls and she followed, her hand warm and cozy inside his hand. It was like a miniature prison. She liked it, the enclosed feeling.

She still had her dolls in her spare hand and she was worried she was going to trip on her laces. It was a good thing she didn’t have laces. It was not a good thing that she was worried about them. Sometimes Eulalee saw things, or she had trouble keeping things straight. She wished she knew what she was, because they had books about what people were and they seemed to help people understand it and then they could avoid problems like imaginary shoelaces.

For now, she  had a bigger problem. She was supposed to be good, and being extra good would have been being with Nell.

“Nell said I could live here, and Xandy agreed, and now I’m here,” she summarized to Scipio.

“Okay.”

She wondered what kind of okay her statement was. Maybe he knew that she wasn’t being her best good because she was in the halls with him. Maybe he just wanted to help. She wanted to hope he wanted to help. Not many people just wanted to be good.

She didn’t want to hope too much, because if she did then she could end up in prison again. It wouldn’t be so bad, except she had just gotten out.

“What’s your couch like?” she asked him.

“Like a lumpy bed.”

Her bed had lots of lumps in it when she was in the big prison. Her bed was like dreaming inside a unicorn on top of silk rose petals when she was at Xandy’s prison. She wondered if it was more lumpy than her first bed, or a little bit lumpy but more like her second bed. The second bed was nice, but if it had a few lumps it would still be nice.

Not even water could sleep on the second bed, if it had more bumps and lumps in it. The water would fall right off after becoming separated into a million pools.

“Like potatoes?” she asked. Potatoes were lumpy, and if she filled a bed with potatoes she wouldn’t sleep very well. She was not a lot of things, but she knew that if she was going to be good Scipio shouldn’t sleep on a lumpy potato bed. He deserved something better than that.

“Tonight you can use a nice one,” Scipio promised, mishearing what she said she thought. “It’s soft on top and firm underneath, so it’s perfect.”

It sounded nice.

“Why don’t I scare you?” she asked.

She scared Xandy, even though she just wanted him to be proud of her.

“Am I supposed to be scared?” Scipio almost skipped a step and his words fumbled and he cleared his throat. “Should I be?”

“No. But that doesn’t stop other people.”

She smiled, because she liked him.

He looked at her for a second and then opened a door that was not as big as the other door, but that was okay because she wanted to be somewhere small. Her head was starting to buzz and the palace was too big. She didn’t understand what she was going to do anymore; she was supposed to be with Nell. She was supposed to be figuring out what she was. She was supposed to be…. Something.

“Let me just take a shower and then you can have the bedroom all to yourself,” Scipio said.

She liked him.

He didn’t go to the shower. He picked up a remote and turned a tv on and then looked at her. “You can watch whatever you want.”

“Okay,” she replied. She sat down on the potato couch. It wasn’t as bad as she was expecting it to be, in fact it was almost nice, like sleeping with her dolls in her arms so no one would take them.

“Do you need anything before I shower?”

“No,” she replied. He had given her a tv and it wasn’t even tv day and he had given her a room that was nice and small. It was almost as small as her cell was, and it was all full of things to make it feel smaller. Not a ton of things – a couch and a tv and a table and a lamp and a dining table and chairs and a microwave.

She hadn’t been allowed to use microwaves. She would be good and not use Scipio’s microwave either, even if she got to use tv on a no tv day.

“Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.” And then he was gone.

When he was gone she used the remote to find a different show. She found one that was outside but on the tv. She liked shows with animals and trees, like they were real even though she knew they were just moving pictures.

“You like this show?” a voice said behind her. She looked back and she saw him with wet hair and the bird of his lip was coasting this time. It looked peaceful.

She looked back at the tv. “Yes.”

“Me too. This is one of my favorite channels. There’s another one that has meditation stuff that I like.” He sat beside her.

No one had ever sat beside her before. Across from her but not beside her.

“I put clean sheets on the bed for you, but I don’t have a change in clothes.”

“I don’t either.” It was okay, because she wore the same clothes many times. She would need to find out how to get her clothes delivered every three days here too.

“We can find you something tomorrow,” he told her. Then he got up and he held the bedroom door open.

She knew this one! She was supposed to go inside the bedroom and stay inside the bedroom until it was her time to come out again.

She wasn’t in prison anymore. She didn’t understand.

She looked at him through tightened eyes, that were so short they were almost closed. “You can sleep on the bed too.” She looked into the room. It was like three beds inside one bed. “It’s big.”

“I love the couch.”

“Okay.”

So it was prison, but not as much of a prison because there weren’t bars and she wasn’t locked inside. The lock was on the inside. It was a strange room.

“Have a good night? Let me know if you need anything.”

“I won’t,” she said, assuring him that she was an easy person to have around. She didn’t cause problems or fights and she made sure she stayed away from anyone who was going to.

Unless she had to fight, but that was under onl the most important of circumstances, like hurting her sister for hurting her, and it wasn’t going to happen because Xandy told her to be good.

“Why not?” he asked.

Was she supposed to need things? She could need warm chocolate milk.

“I have more here than anywhere else,” she said, instead. She wasn’t in prison and she was allowed to not need anything. “What could I need?”

“Oh, I thought you meant you wouldn’t have a good night.”

“I will,” she replied. “Have a good night.”

“You too.”

He didn’t move. She just watched him, and he looked tight and she wanted to go hug him and tell him that she was going to be good and this was okay. She didn’t want to tell him she could go sleep in a closet, because she liked his room. It was browns and beiges and his bed had whites and reds and creams. She wanted to stay.

“What do you need?” She asked him.

He did the cough thing, because maybe he was sick. “Need?”

“Want?” she asked. Sometimes people wanted things but they didn’t need them, and maybe if she asked him that way it would be easier for him to explain what was happening. She wanted him to be okay with her there.

“What did you want?” he asked her.

She didn’t want anything, except to stay there. She wanted to stay there, and she wanted to be with him because he was nice to her and he didn’t think she was scary and she loved him.

“I want to be with you forever and ever.”

“Why? You barely know me.” His voice was squeakier.

“Because…” she tried to think of words to explain how she felt. “You’re the first person who has ever looked at me and not thought I was crazy or scary or broken.”

“You don’t seem like you’re any of those things.”

She felt like those things. She felt like her mind was folding in on itself all the time and she felt like she was going to mess everything up. Forget to be good. She was afraid she was going to forget to be good, and she was going to fall inside herself, and she was going to see her sister and bad things would happen.

Scipio, though, when she was with him she felt like she was okay. He lived in a small place and she felt like she wasn’t going to get hurt there. She felt like she didn’t have to be scared because if she needed to not be scared she could tell him – he had asked her what she needed.

“Which is why I want you,” she explained. “You can see me.”

He could more than see her, he could see through all of the her that didn’t make sense to anyone.

“Let’s see how it goes?” he asked.

She didn’t want to take his bed from him. He was being nice and good and she wanted him to know that she could be nice and good too. He wasn’t leaving his room, and she wanted him to know he could have his bed back and it wasn’t mean to take it.

“Are you sleeping on the couch? Or should I move my dolls?”

Her dolls were happy on his bed. But she could take them back to the couch and sleep with the tv. It would be like sleeping outside. She wanted to sleep outside.

“Dolls, you can move them.”

She went to the bed and picked up her dolls. “Better?” she asked. “You never said what you want.”

“I’m inexperienced.”

He wanted experience. She did too. She wanted to experience lots of things.

“You don’t get much experience in jail,” she reminded him. They could have experiences together.

He laughed a little, again, and moved closer to her. He seemed tense.

“I like you so you shouldn’t be worried.” She moved closer to. Maybe he needed a hug. When they were close enough she wrapped her arms around him. She liked that she could hug him.

“I’m still not sure why.”

She had lots of reasons to like him: he was nice and he talked to her and he smiled at her and he lived in a nice place and he was kissing her.

She was kissing him.

They were kissing and she wanted more. She set her dolls aside and moved him toward the bed.

This wasn’t like Xandy, this was Scipio wanting her to kiss him. This wasn’t doing her duty either, it was just kissing.

She was kissing him, and he was kissing her, and there was a bed.

“I want you,” she whispered against his lips.

“Me too,” he breathed back.

It was the first time someone had ever said that to her. She wanted him more.

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