My Haunted Home: Stories by Hood Victoria

Author:Hood, Victoria [Hood, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FC2

The Lemons, Mmm

There is a woman in my dreams whom I dream of. She is somewhat like a spider and also a cat and also me. Sometimes I see her at the grocery store, mixed among the fruits, always near the lemons. She doesn’t seem to want to talk to me. She seems more like a reminder, like a yellow light, like a report card. She doesn’t speak, but she stays, always visible.

In my dreams we are sometimes friends, sometimes foes, sometimes almost the same person. In my dreams there are no faces, only holes that lead to bodies that lead to roads of disappointment. In my dreams there are sometimes legs and arms and torsos, but the heads are always elsewhere, always busy; they couldn’t make the appointment. In my dreams I stare, longing, wishing I knew what she looked like in reality.

At the grocery store, near the lemons, she seems to be with friends. Always too busy for me but always there to see. She seems to be gloating, to be showing me that she is real enough to exist with the lemons. I think she’s trying to make me jealous, if she thinks it bothers me that others know her too, that I didn’t just dream her up. Her need to prove her realness drives me insane. I ignore her while she ignores me, but I think we’re really side-eyeing each other. I can feel her turn yellow and rotten as she wishes I would pay attention.

This woman doesn’t have a backstory, she doesn’t have a tragic youth, she isn’t someone to care about or feel bad for. I think of her, of who she would be if I could decide her fate. I think of the facts that she wishes no one knew: she clenches her jaw at night, she gets turned on when someone tickles her gently while licking her teeth, she wears a night guard to protect from her teeth wearing away. I don’t know about her parents; she doesn’t talk. I don’t know her favorite color. In the reality where she lives it is all black and white; she never knew what color the lemons really were.

I think she follows me, but it takes her too long to get from place to place, and that is why I only see her at the grocery store and in my dreams. I grocery shop every day because I’m terribly forgetful and not very responsible. I don’t even buy lemons, so I don’t know why she waits there. The first time I noticed her I had to do a double take, and she whipped her hair over her shoulder like in one of those commercials. She is very conceited.

I think lemons signify the way she views herself in this place of trying to be cheerful, trying to be something that tastes sour but refreshing, something people want when they’re hot and need to cool down, the zest that makes fish taste good and the way that people always furnish their apartments with more and more and more lemons.

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