April 18

She bent her neck back, hearing it crack, and strained her eyes against the sun. How did things always end up like this? Thoughts were swirling around her head that felt like a fishbowl... a fishbowl... full of fishey thoughts... orange.. big.. bright.. fat.. golden fish swimming around in a circle.. biting each other's tails. Damn, did they sharpen their teeth? Dragon fish.. blue fish.. purple fish.. fish with giant scales.. fish with long black thick eyelashes and red Marilyn Monroe lips. Round and round they swam.. looking for the door.
Her teeth were grinding again. It took her awhile to realize.
Luxurious sounds of the church bells floated into her ears and she saw the color purple. A memory she decided to muffle for now. That memory always tried to break thru when she wasn't ready for it.
She looked down at her hot pink fingernails and decided to go for a walk.

"Jezabel!!!???" This voice scared the fish.
She turned and gasped as her bright blue eyes took in the sight.

"Did you really think that you could fix this?" There were tears in her eyes now. Had she forgotten? Did she black out? The darkness crept up around the edges of her vision as she fought to stay awake. She needed to do something. She needed to call out.. she needed... she....

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"Yeah.. we should have gone this direction. Thanks for the advice. Glad I listened. Remind me not to in the future." His voice did nothing to disguise his disgust with her.
'Why is it that he keeps talking?' she asked herself, refusing to respond to him. They had been driving around in these hills for hours. The sky was turning an ominous gray now.. the clouds rolling and piling up on top of each other like fat bags of water. She could hear the thunder in the distance.

"You know that we're going to die out here." ... that was Herald. He was in the back. For the last 3 hours he hadn't had anything positive to say and Veronica was sure that his negative thoughts were the very source of their repetitive catastrophes.
She wanted to hit him in the face with a shovel. See? That thought was his fault.

The road was becoming even more narrow and she hadn't thought that could be possible. Andrew turned on the radio. He was still trying to get it to work. There just wasn't a signal this far out in the middle of no where but he wouldn't listen to reason and that was why they were out here in the first place, lost somewhere in South Dakota. She was trying to fill her moments with anything other than the boiling regret for even getting into this car today.

"Hey... what's that?" Andrew slowed as they came upon a collision of color and movement up ahead.

"Is that?.." Veronica's voice caught in her throat as her brown eyes peered out the windshield.

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