heavenlystranger

and that was my little sg break. i got a lot of writing done.
the air has been so sharp and clean here. i was riding my bike to class the other day and the air felt like clear ribbons rushing by my face. happy thanksgiving to those who celebrated. i had a tofurky and cleaned the house. my iguana is doing much better than when i first got her and she is now my little housecleaning buddy. she just sits on my shirt like a broach. yeah, i still haven't developed those pics. i will.
i didn't realize that one needed a credit card to use snapfish, so no candids yet. sorry. but it's better than having a credit card, in my opnion. today the roads were so desolate here. i went ouside and didn't see anyone. holidays are bizzare times.

h.s.

huge sample:
Jonah was the only one who was bothered by the woman. There was nothing outwardly offensive about her appearance; she was middle aged with a short mop of no-color brown hair and a propensity toward wearing floral blouses. When it rained, she wore an ill-fitting trench coat that was missing a belt. She wasnt the type of customer who chatted with the employees or ordered something strange or hard to make, so Jonah was the only one who really took note of her. He didnt like the way she ate.
She would come into the coffee shop in the early afternoon almost every day and order the same thing. Most of the time, Jonah liked it if a customer only ordered coffee because it meant that he wouldnt have to take the time to make an elaborate espresso drink. But when Jonah saw the shape of her trench coat moving past the front windows when the sun was still high, a gooey ball of dread formed in his stomach. He would give her the coffee and scone and she would sit down and begin to eat. Sometimes Jonah would make an excuse to go to the stock room so he could stand there and wait for the woman to leave, but a kind of morbid fascination always brought him back. Jonah watched from behind the pastry case as her glossed lips pulled back like waves and her monolith teeth pushed their way through the bread and fruit. Crumbs escaped the gnashing of her teeth and made their meteoric decent down to the waves and ripples of her lap. She sucked at her coffee like a dry pipe. He saw these things as if under a microscope, and he heard each crunch and smack lovingly amplified by his traitor ears. It made Jonah gag, but everyone else who shared his shift said he was exaggerating. It was during one of these times, when Jonah was watching the invisible spread of mold on the boulder crumbs in the womans gargantuan lap that the change happened.
She had come into the shop at her usual time, ordered her scone and coffee, and had begun to demolish her treat in her tractor mouth when her skin went smoke white. There was no gradual fade; it was as if someone had cut slits in the womans feet and all of her pigment fell out. Jonah looked out of the side of his eye for Lenora, who had been sharing the shift with him, but she was in the stock room. Jonah crouched lower behind the pastry case and watched the woman through the glass. Her eyes lost whatever was propping them up and fell into her head like marbles. The black sockets began to widen in surprise or fear or humor. Jonah watched as her hands and arms shrunk into themselves and became pocked and doughy. A unneeded finger dropped into the woman-things coffee mug, fizzing and steaming. Her limbs were vestigial stumps and her face had reduced itself into the lines of a crude doll. Her nose was nowhere and her once gaping mouth was a pinhole. Jonah peered into the dark of the thing, a dark which did not behave the way it was supposed to. It shifted inside of her like mercury and beneath it was something else, as if the darkness had been hastily painted over something that he was not meant to see. The stubby clay fingers fumbled at the scone and the thing attempted to eat. She pressed her face to her food and Jonah saw the dry bread, far to big for the orifice, crumble into her face. The scone lost its form, but still the thing tried to fit it in its mouth. Jonah retched. The thing made a sound that was almost sad and tried the coffee cup. She tilted her puffy head back and poured the coffee over her minuscule lips, dumping most of it onto the distended, white belly that had ripped through her clothes.