ficpost: "2x5x7 Questions Posed and Answered"
Title: "2x5x7 Questions Posed and Answered"
Fandom: Angel
Featured Character: Fred
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Timeline: sometime during those long 5 years in Pylea
Warnings: Mentions of drug-use, both het and lesbian sex, and Fred's totally crazy. (Also, possible overuse of personal fanon.)
Notes: Part of the 70 Questions challenge.
Disclaimer: Joss's. All Joss's!
Summary: How Fred keeps her brain intact.
Words: 2856 (including the questions, which I didn't write.)
2x5x7 Questions Posed and Answered
Crazy-sane; how Fred keeps herself busy. She's got questions running through her head, a conversation with a shrink who makes her smaller, smaller, cuts her brain into fractions. With a tenth of her brain she's one hundred times less smart, logarithmically decreasing as she becomes thinner and thinner. And the questions keep a'coming. If she can remember all the answers, she won't be crazy-sane anymore, just crazy. (Or just sane.)
1. DO YOU SNORE?
"No ma'am, not me; light sleepers don't. Snoring might bring the master-beasts back; if I don't talk if they don't see me if I keep still if I hide then they won't and so I don't."
2. ARE YOU A LOVER OR A FIGHTER?
"I run."
3. WHAT'S YOUR WORST FEAR?
A list, alphabetized, of phobias. Fear of water, fear of air, fear of running forever and no one finding her, fear of being found by the wrong people, fear of explaining it all to her parents.
She has old fears: of being caught out at smoking weed or kissing girls, fear of falling, fear of lonesomeness. But now all those fears have dissolved and all that's left is chattering fearful energy without object. Nothing to be afraid of anymore; it's all happened. It's all happening. "Being captured. I've got that one. Fear of being captured again."
4. AS A KID, WERE YOU A LEGO MANIAC?
She built things. She builds things. She will, in the future, build traps for hunters, build a hospital for cows, build a bridge to the stars, find herself somewhere that's else, build herself a way home. "Yes." She will, someday, click together bark and branches in perfectly symmetrical structures and make herself a home out of her cave-house, make herself a LEGO ™ world. "I liked to make things."
5. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF "REALITY" TV?
On TV, when Mulder got lost, Scully always came to find him.
That's your reality TV for you.
6. DO YOU CHEW ON YOUR STRAWS?
"I used to." Sometimes the made-up questions don't make sense; she just strings together words till they beg for a question mark. But some things she remembers better than the feel of her daddy's arms around her, and that's one of them, teethmarks on straws sticking into fizzy orange soda pop, chewing straws and talking physics late into the night. She used to.
7. WERE YOU A CUTE BABY?
She never was a baby. She never was an anything before she was a cow. There's cute babies in stories, but when they grow up they get lost, but they have breadcrumbs to lead them home, but someone's eaten all of Fred's breadcrumbs (not her; she never has enough to eat!) but maybe she'll get home anyhow if she wishes hard enough on -- "What was the question again?" Were you a cute baby? "I don't remember."
8. IS THE SINGLE LIFE FOR YOU?
"Oh no, not for me -- I'm a one day my prince will come gal, through and through. Get tired of waiting, sometimes, but -- someday." She didn't used to. Used to be, she liked to touch, be touched, liked girls and boys and anyone with skin and teeth, but not green skin, and not teeth too sharp, and not, and not god knows and not, anyone so small fragile weak who'd break with her. She's waiting for a handsome man. He'll save her.
9. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR KEYBOARD?
"The old IBM keyboard is ivory -- Ichabod. And the new Dell one is ebony, and we call her Scully. Called her. When -- when, you know. Before."
10. DO YOU SING IN THE SHOWER?
"I sing when it rains to keep the rain off my head, but that doesn't work so well, sometimes; and my hair gets wet. I think maybe if I sang higher, the precipitation would stop. Maybe if I screamed. It's a theory. I'm working on it."
11. HAVE YOU EVER BUNGEE JUMPED?
She fell through a portal and bounced into hell, but she never bounced back. "No."
12. ANY SECRET TALENTS?
She can touch her nose with her tongue, eat a whole pizza in one sitting, roll a joint with her eyes closed, name all the aired episodes of X-Files in order, do integrals in her head. She knows when the rainy season's coming, when monsters are nearby, where to stand so she's downwind from them. "No."
13. WHAT'S YOUR IDEAL VACATION SPOT?
"Oh God..." She tries not to. "Somewhere warm. Somewhere far away. Somewhere where I'd be allowed to... somewhere else." She tries not to. Tries.
14. IS JAY LENO FUNNY?
Her mind blinks on and off, remembers celebrities, forgets aunts and uncles, remembers late night television she watched with the girls while drinking wine straight from the bottle, forgets what Jay Leno sounded like, but remembered the high-pitched whine when the picture tube on the television went out, fizzle pop, the end.
15. CAN YOU SWIM?
"Daddy taught me, in the lake. Doggy-paddle. Course I can swim."
16. HAVE YOU SEEN THE MOVIE "DONNIE DARKO"?
There's one dimension where, through a quirk and a fluke and a certain someone building a satellite TV antenna out of tree bark and a certain amount of time travel, she has. "Not in this dimension."
17. DO YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE OZONE?
She used to, lots of them, about the hole in the ozone layer and the whales and gay rights and feminism and pride and racism and love. Then she got swallowed by a hole that chopped her brain to bits, and so, not so much, really, no, no, "No."
18. HOW MANY LICKS DOES IT TAKE TO GET TO THE CENTER OF A TOOTSIE ROLL POP?
She's made a list, the things she'll do when she gets home. She used to think it would be tomorrow or the next day, now she thinks maybe never, but it's on the list. Licking a tootsie roll pop till it's dead, counting the licks, counting the clicks. It's a long list. "I don't know." Maybe if she hedges, they won't know she's crazy.
19. CAN YOU SING THE ALPHABET BACKWARDS?
Z-Y-X-W-V-U-T-S-R-Q-P-O-N-M-L-K-J-G-H-I-F-E-D-C-B-A. Wait, no, it's K-G-J -- no -- if she learned then maybe she could -- she's said so many alphabets, backwards and frontwards, and nothing opens the portal. "No."
20. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON AN AIRPLANE?
She hasn't, for what it's worth.
21. ARE YOU AN ONLY CHILD?
"Yes." Yes yes yes. She won't tell the stories she makes about Hansel-Gretel children walking through their forest together huddled together for warmth for comfort, feeding on each other's flesh (no, no, she's got the story backwards again, no, frontwards, facing frontwards, one foot in front of the other, Gretel and her pretend-brother, strong enough to save her.)
22. DO YOU PREFER ELECTRIC OR MANUAL PENCIL SHARPENER?
"Manual." She prefers, and always has, to use her teeth to pick away at wood, chewing at her pencils like she does at her straws and at any food she can find, clicking teeth on graphite, clicking brain (it's all the same).
23. WHAT'S YOUR STAND ON HUNTING?
"It's fine; my daddy used to... you don't live in Texas without..." She wishes they'd stop hunting her.
24. IS MARRIAGE IN YOUR FUTURE?
"Yes! A big wedding, lots of guests, lots to eat, pretty dresses for all of us to wear and everything will be just like a fairytale. Please."
25. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
Alloveralloverallover the walls, she writes, questions and answers and solutions and problems, paradoxes and puzzles and stories and koans. She hates it but. It keeps her crazysane so, "Yes."
26. WHAT ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO?
Nothing you eat, and nothing you drink; nothing like latex, and nothing that stinks. "Nothing." This is a lucky adventure, she thinks.
27. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SAID, "I LOVE YOU"?
"Last night." She says it to the moons every night, to thank them for shining, and especially for darkness, to thank it for not shining, and she says it to the walls of the cave, for standing up, and to the pool of water, for staying still. She loves them.
The last time she said it to a person was -- but she's not counting days. She's lost the count, dropped it in the forest with her best pair of socks.
28. IS ELVIS STILL ALIVE?
"Anything is possible." In a multiverse this large, she's sure he is.
29. DO YOU CRY AT WEDDINGS?
"Always. Especially when they're mine." She doesn't, though. She never cries anymore.
30. HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS?
"Poached."
31. ARE BLONDES DUMB?
"Not always, I don't think. I once loved someone blonde. She was too young and had soft hair..." She was dirty-blonde, smart, shy. Fred's thoughtful over this one. Are blondes dumb? What does it mean if they are? What if you are blonde yourself? Does that mean you think you're dumb? But if you were really dumb, would you even know it? (if you were really crazy...)
32. WHERE DOES THE OTHER SOCK END UP?
Somewhere on the forest floor, mouldering, waiting, for a scavenger, a savage avenger thief, to pick it up and find her. It ferments.
33. WHAT TIME IS IT?
Her watch died the first week; they killed it, and with it, time, and with time, memory, and with memory, her, the her that used to be named Fred.
34. DO YOU HAVE A NICKNAME?
"I used to be named Fred."
35. IS MCDONALD'S DISGUSTING?
"I like Taco Bell better." And the thought of eating cows makes her stomach turn over, and she'd throw up if she had anything at all in her belly, but she hasn't eaten in days and would kill -- yes kill -- for any food, even, especially even, a Big Mac.
36. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE IN A CAR, AND WHO WERE YOU WITH?
It was a Friday. (Or maybe a Saturday -- it was late-early, when time loses meaning.) She was with two friends from school, and they were laughing. They'd had some drinks. She needed to study. She can't remember the rest. She thinks maybe, "Never."
37. DO YOU PREFER BATHS OR SHOWERS?
"Showers," but she can remember baths, and apple-scented bubble bath seeping into her skin and the look of bubbles as they grew unstable, the rainbows that swirled to blackness before they popped.
38. IS SANTA CLAUS REAL?
She was proud of herself when she realized he wasn't, but now she's not so sure...
39. DO YOU LIKE TO HAVE YOUR NECK KISSED?
Her favorite part of her for being kissed is just below her neck, just above her breast. When she imagines sex, she always begins there, because it's easiest to recall, the last lips that touched that skin. She remembers-imagines other sex, other kisses, but doesn't like, any longer, to be kissed at all. Her skin's so dry, all of it; she can't imagine anyone kissing her anywhere and not choking on her.
40. ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?
"No." She's more afraid of the suns, and who can see her then.
41. WHAT ARE YOU ADDICTED TO?
"Food. Bathing. Life. Math. Writing." Not weed, not alcohol. "Questions."
42. CRUNCHY OR CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER?
She sometimes thinks she asks these questions just to torment herself.
43. CAN YOU CRACK YOUR NECK?
"Step on a crack and... but no one warns you what happens if you open a book, who you might break. Wonder why they don't? Why they won't warn you?" Crack. Click.
44. HAVE YOU EVER RIDDEN IN AN AMBULANCE?
"No."
45. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BRUSHED YOUR TEETH TODAY?
She hasn't, not at all, not for days, not for weeks. She forgot that there was such a thing till she thought of the question. A crazy person wouldn't brush her teeth, would she? She's got to fix that. What makes a paste? Something clean, something soapy, something to kill the plaque that won't kill her. A work in progress. Toothpaste. She adds it to the apothacary.
46. IS DRUG FREE THE WAY TO BE?
"Of course it is." She'd never confess now how she spent the last three years of high school.
47. ARE YOU A HEAVY SLEEPER?
"Not anymore."
48. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES?
"I can't remember."
50. DO YOU LIKE YOUR LIFE?
"Yes yes yes." She doesn't like much. She doesn't like starving, doesn't like the cold, doesn't like the heat, doesn't like the rags, doesn't like the collar that makes your head go pop. Doesn't like the portals, doesn't like the rainbow. She does like life. She can breathe and she can reproduce theoretically, she is a self-replicating system and it's in her bones in her blood in her cells to hang on, to hold on, to keep on, to go on, regardless, forever. She clings.
51. DO YOU HAVE ANY TATTOOS OR PIERCINGS?
"That's not something a nice girl discusses."
52. ARE YOU PSYCHIC?
"Course not." She sometimes thinks she is, though. When she can sit still and listen to her heart still beating (still beating), when she feels it all settle, then she thinks that she can sense something larger, something vaster than science, vaster than the whole universe she knows. She's connected.
53. HAVE YOU READ "CATCHER IN THE RYE"?
"Can't've passed high school English without it, can I?"
54. DO YOU PLAY ANY INSTRUMENTS?
"Quit marching band to hang out with --" That means get stoned with -- "some friends of mine."
55. HAVE YOU EVER STOLEN MONEY?
She's not stolen money, but she's stolen property (herself).
56. CAN YOU SNOWBOARD?
She once dated a boy who did, took her skiing for spring break, but he wiped out and they spent the rest of the week in the lodge.
57. DO YOU LIKE CAMPING?
"Roughing it, scavenging for food, making your own way in the world -- what's not to love?"
58. DO YOU SNORT WHEN YOU LAUGH?
She hated that she did; people laughed at her and that made her giggle harder, uncontrollably, but now, but now, she laughs at the inside of the moon's eye, and no one can hear her or care if she snorts, so she does, and is glad to be laughing.
59. DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?
"It's silly; magic's just like science, but... I think there are fairies. Tolkeinian Elves. Witches, even, who'll make the world right again."
60. ARE DOGS A MAN'S BEST FRIEND?
"Yes? No?" Dogs. She tries to remember dogs but nothing clicks. Dogs aren't real, animals aren't real; human, monster, cow, who knows?
61. YOU BELIEVE IN DIVORCE?
"My brain and I got a divorce. So far it's working out."
62. CAN YOU DO THE MOONWALK?
"If you give me a lever, I could walk on the moon -- I mean -- I could take a moon out for a walk." The moon's her best friend, maybe. Lunacy.
63. DO YOU MAKE MANY MISTAKES?
"You tell me. Do I?" She thinks she only made one mistake and none since then and that mistake was -- she can't remember; if she could, she wouldn't make it again. If she erases her memory, can she erase the moment when she lost it?
64. IS IT COLD OUTSIDE TODAY?
"Freezing for a gal from Texas." Inside, too.
65. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
"Something green." Something green and spiny that prickled her stomach and made her feel fear too harshly, something toxic. Something she won't be eating again.
66. DO YOU WEAR NAIL POLISH?
That's not an item we sell in this apothecary, ma'am.
67. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN KISSED?
"Yes." Everywhere.
68. WHAT'S THE MOST ANNOYING TV COMMERCIAL?
"That one with the little boy who can't find the thing -- I don't know." She craves Doritoes and commercials. She'd watch them forever, sing along, memorize the ditties and buy their products. If she could only.
69. DO YOU SHOP AT AMERICAN EAGLE?
"I'm more of a Gap girl." That should fool them for awhile. If they think she's crazy, they should see next door, where the muskrats make their home. If they think she's crazy, they should try back in a few years. If they think she's crazy...
70. FAVORITE BAND AT THE MOMENT?
Favorite band, favorite color, favorite kind of fruit... the questions click like numbers in a combination lock, and the right sequence puts her into a fitful restless sleep till the moon comes up.
She doesn't snore.
++++++
Notes: I don't usually go all self-referential like this, but this format seemed to demand it. "i once loved someone blonde" + the thing about the socks.
Donnie Darko was released in 2001, which is the year "No Place Like Plrtz Glrb" happened. I believe X-Files was in its third season when Fred fell through her portal.
Fandom: Angel
Featured Character: Fred
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Timeline: sometime during those long 5 years in Pylea
Warnings: Mentions of drug-use, both het and lesbian sex, and Fred's totally crazy. (Also, possible overuse of personal fanon.)
Notes: Part of the 70 Questions challenge.
Disclaimer: Joss's. All Joss's!
Summary: How Fred keeps her brain intact.
Words: 2856 (including the questions, which I didn't write.)
2x5x7 Questions Posed and Answered
Crazy-sane; how Fred keeps herself busy. She's got questions running through her head, a conversation with a shrink who makes her smaller, smaller, cuts her brain into fractions. With a tenth of her brain she's one hundred times less smart, logarithmically decreasing as she becomes thinner and thinner. And the questions keep a'coming. If she can remember all the answers, she won't be crazy-sane anymore, just crazy. (Or just sane.)
1. DO YOU SNORE?
"No ma'am, not me; light sleepers don't. Snoring might bring the master-beasts back; if I don't talk if they don't see me if I keep still if I hide then they won't and so I don't."
2. ARE YOU A LOVER OR A FIGHTER?
"I run."
3. WHAT'S YOUR WORST FEAR?
A list, alphabetized, of phobias. Fear of water, fear of air, fear of running forever and no one finding her, fear of being found by the wrong people, fear of explaining it all to her parents.
She has old fears: of being caught out at smoking weed or kissing girls, fear of falling, fear of lonesomeness. But now all those fears have dissolved and all that's left is chattering fearful energy without object. Nothing to be afraid of anymore; it's all happened. It's all happening. "Being captured. I've got that one. Fear of being captured again."
4. AS A KID, WERE YOU A LEGO MANIAC?
She built things. She builds things. She will, in the future, build traps for hunters, build a hospital for cows, build a bridge to the stars, find herself somewhere that's else, build herself a way home. "Yes." She will, someday, click together bark and branches in perfectly symmetrical structures and make herself a home out of her cave-house, make herself a LEGO ™ world. "I liked to make things."
5. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF "REALITY" TV?
On TV, when Mulder got lost, Scully always came to find him.
That's your reality TV for you.
6. DO YOU CHEW ON YOUR STRAWS?
"I used to." Sometimes the made-up questions don't make sense; she just strings together words till they beg for a question mark. But some things she remembers better than the feel of her daddy's arms around her, and that's one of them, teethmarks on straws sticking into fizzy orange soda pop, chewing straws and talking physics late into the night. She used to.
7. WERE YOU A CUTE BABY?
She never was a baby. She never was an anything before she was a cow. There's cute babies in stories, but when they grow up they get lost, but they have breadcrumbs to lead them home, but someone's eaten all of Fred's breadcrumbs (not her; she never has enough to eat!) but maybe she'll get home anyhow if she wishes hard enough on -- "What was the question again?" Were you a cute baby? "I don't remember."
8. IS THE SINGLE LIFE FOR YOU?
"Oh no, not for me -- I'm a one day my prince will come gal, through and through. Get tired of waiting, sometimes, but -- someday." She didn't used to. Used to be, she liked to touch, be touched, liked girls and boys and anyone with skin and teeth, but not green skin, and not teeth too sharp, and not, and not god knows and not, anyone so small fragile weak who'd break with her. She's waiting for a handsome man. He'll save her.
9. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR KEYBOARD?
"The old IBM keyboard is ivory -- Ichabod. And the new Dell one is ebony, and we call her Scully. Called her. When -- when, you know. Before."
10. DO YOU SING IN THE SHOWER?
"I sing when it rains to keep the rain off my head, but that doesn't work so well, sometimes; and my hair gets wet. I think maybe if I sang higher, the precipitation would stop. Maybe if I screamed. It's a theory. I'm working on it."
11. HAVE YOU EVER BUNGEE JUMPED?
She fell through a portal and bounced into hell, but she never bounced back. "No."
12. ANY SECRET TALENTS?
She can touch her nose with her tongue, eat a whole pizza in one sitting, roll a joint with her eyes closed, name all the aired episodes of X-Files in order, do integrals in her head. She knows when the rainy season's coming, when monsters are nearby, where to stand so she's downwind from them. "No."
13. WHAT'S YOUR IDEAL VACATION SPOT?
"Oh God..." She tries not to. "Somewhere warm. Somewhere far away. Somewhere where I'd be allowed to... somewhere else." She tries not to. Tries.
14. IS JAY LENO FUNNY?
Her mind blinks on and off, remembers celebrities, forgets aunts and uncles, remembers late night television she watched with the girls while drinking wine straight from the bottle, forgets what Jay Leno sounded like, but remembered the high-pitched whine when the picture tube on the television went out, fizzle pop, the end.
15. CAN YOU SWIM?
"Daddy taught me, in the lake. Doggy-paddle. Course I can swim."
16. HAVE YOU SEEN THE MOVIE "DONNIE DARKO"?
There's one dimension where, through a quirk and a fluke and a certain someone building a satellite TV antenna out of tree bark and a certain amount of time travel, she has. "Not in this dimension."
17. DO YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE OZONE?
She used to, lots of them, about the hole in the ozone layer and the whales and gay rights and feminism and pride and racism and love. Then she got swallowed by a hole that chopped her brain to bits, and so, not so much, really, no, no, "No."
18. HOW MANY LICKS DOES IT TAKE TO GET TO THE CENTER OF A TOOTSIE ROLL POP?
She's made a list, the things she'll do when she gets home. She used to think it would be tomorrow or the next day, now she thinks maybe never, but it's on the list. Licking a tootsie roll pop till it's dead, counting the licks, counting the clicks. It's a long list. "I don't know." Maybe if she hedges, they won't know she's crazy.
19. CAN YOU SING THE ALPHABET BACKWARDS?
Z-Y-X-W-V-U-T-S-R-Q-P-O-N-M-L-K-J-G-H-I-F-E-D-C-B-A. Wait, no, it's K-G-J -- no -- if she learned then maybe she could -- she's said so many alphabets, backwards and frontwards, and nothing opens the portal. "No."
20. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON AN AIRPLANE?
She hasn't, for what it's worth.
21. ARE YOU AN ONLY CHILD?
"Yes." Yes yes yes. She won't tell the stories she makes about Hansel-Gretel children walking through their forest together huddled together for warmth for comfort, feeding on each other's flesh (no, no, she's got the story backwards again, no, frontwards, facing frontwards, one foot in front of the other, Gretel and her pretend-brother, strong enough to save her.)
22. DO YOU PREFER ELECTRIC OR MANUAL PENCIL SHARPENER?
"Manual." She prefers, and always has, to use her teeth to pick away at wood, chewing at her pencils like she does at her straws and at any food she can find, clicking teeth on graphite, clicking brain (it's all the same).
23. WHAT'S YOUR STAND ON HUNTING?
"It's fine; my daddy used to... you don't live in Texas without..." She wishes they'd stop hunting her.
24. IS MARRIAGE IN YOUR FUTURE?
"Yes! A big wedding, lots of guests, lots to eat, pretty dresses for all of us to wear and everything will be just like a fairytale. Please."
25. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
Alloveralloverallover the walls, she writes, questions and answers and solutions and problems, paradoxes and puzzles and stories and koans. She hates it but. It keeps her crazysane so, "Yes."
26. WHAT ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO?
Nothing you eat, and nothing you drink; nothing like latex, and nothing that stinks. "Nothing." This is a lucky adventure, she thinks.
27. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SAID, "I LOVE YOU"?
"Last night." She says it to the moons every night, to thank them for shining, and especially for darkness, to thank it for not shining, and she says it to the walls of the cave, for standing up, and to the pool of water, for staying still. She loves them.
The last time she said it to a person was -- but she's not counting days. She's lost the count, dropped it in the forest with her best pair of socks.
28. IS ELVIS STILL ALIVE?
"Anything is possible." In a multiverse this large, she's sure he is.
29. DO YOU CRY AT WEDDINGS?
"Always. Especially when they're mine." She doesn't, though. She never cries anymore.
30. HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS?
"Poached."
31. ARE BLONDES DUMB?
"Not always, I don't think. I once loved someone blonde. She was too young and had soft hair..." She was dirty-blonde, smart, shy. Fred's thoughtful over this one. Are blondes dumb? What does it mean if they are? What if you are blonde yourself? Does that mean you think you're dumb? But if you were really dumb, would you even know it? (if you were really crazy...)
32. WHERE DOES THE OTHER SOCK END UP?
Somewhere on the forest floor, mouldering, waiting, for a scavenger, a savage avenger thief, to pick it up and find her. It ferments.
33. WHAT TIME IS IT?
Her watch died the first week; they killed it, and with it, time, and with time, memory, and with memory, her, the her that used to be named Fred.
34. DO YOU HAVE A NICKNAME?
"I used to be named Fred."
35. IS MCDONALD'S DISGUSTING?
"I like Taco Bell better." And the thought of eating cows makes her stomach turn over, and she'd throw up if she had anything at all in her belly, but she hasn't eaten in days and would kill -- yes kill -- for any food, even, especially even, a Big Mac.
36. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE IN A CAR, AND WHO WERE YOU WITH?
It was a Friday. (Or maybe a Saturday -- it was late-early, when time loses meaning.) She was with two friends from school, and they were laughing. They'd had some drinks. She needed to study. She can't remember the rest. She thinks maybe, "Never."
37. DO YOU PREFER BATHS OR SHOWERS?
"Showers," but she can remember baths, and apple-scented bubble bath seeping into her skin and the look of bubbles as they grew unstable, the rainbows that swirled to blackness before they popped.
38. IS SANTA CLAUS REAL?
She was proud of herself when she realized he wasn't, but now she's not so sure...
39. DO YOU LIKE TO HAVE YOUR NECK KISSED?
Her favorite part of her for being kissed is just below her neck, just above her breast. When she imagines sex, she always begins there, because it's easiest to recall, the last lips that touched that skin. She remembers-imagines other sex, other kisses, but doesn't like, any longer, to be kissed at all. Her skin's so dry, all of it; she can't imagine anyone kissing her anywhere and not choking on her.
40. ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?
"No." She's more afraid of the suns, and who can see her then.
41. WHAT ARE YOU ADDICTED TO?
"Food. Bathing. Life. Math. Writing." Not weed, not alcohol. "Questions."
42. CRUNCHY OR CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER?
She sometimes thinks she asks these questions just to torment herself.
43. CAN YOU CRACK YOUR NECK?
"Step on a crack and... but no one warns you what happens if you open a book, who you might break. Wonder why they don't? Why they won't warn you?" Crack. Click.
44. HAVE YOU EVER RIDDEN IN AN AMBULANCE?
"No."
45. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BRUSHED YOUR TEETH TODAY?
She hasn't, not at all, not for days, not for weeks. She forgot that there was such a thing till she thought of the question. A crazy person wouldn't brush her teeth, would she? She's got to fix that. What makes a paste? Something clean, something soapy, something to kill the plaque that won't kill her. A work in progress. Toothpaste. She adds it to the apothacary.
46. IS DRUG FREE THE WAY TO BE?
"Of course it is." She'd never confess now how she spent the last three years of high school.
47. ARE YOU A HEAVY SLEEPER?
"Not anymore."
48. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES?
"I can't remember."
50. DO YOU LIKE YOUR LIFE?
"Yes yes yes." She doesn't like much. She doesn't like starving, doesn't like the cold, doesn't like the heat, doesn't like the rags, doesn't like the collar that makes your head go pop. Doesn't like the portals, doesn't like the rainbow. She does like life. She can breathe and she can reproduce theoretically, she is a self-replicating system and it's in her bones in her blood in her cells to hang on, to hold on, to keep on, to go on, regardless, forever. She clings.
51. DO YOU HAVE ANY TATTOOS OR PIERCINGS?
"That's not something a nice girl discusses."
52. ARE YOU PSYCHIC?
"Course not." She sometimes thinks she is, though. When she can sit still and listen to her heart still beating (still beating), when she feels it all settle, then she thinks that she can sense something larger, something vaster than science, vaster than the whole universe she knows. She's connected.
53. HAVE YOU READ "CATCHER IN THE RYE"?
"Can't've passed high school English without it, can I?"
54. DO YOU PLAY ANY INSTRUMENTS?
"Quit marching band to hang out with --" That means get stoned with -- "some friends of mine."
55. HAVE YOU EVER STOLEN MONEY?
She's not stolen money, but she's stolen property (herself).
56. CAN YOU SNOWBOARD?
She once dated a boy who did, took her skiing for spring break, but he wiped out and they spent the rest of the week in the lodge.
57. DO YOU LIKE CAMPING?
"Roughing it, scavenging for food, making your own way in the world -- what's not to love?"
58. DO YOU SNORT WHEN YOU LAUGH?
She hated that she did; people laughed at her and that made her giggle harder, uncontrollably, but now, but now, she laughs at the inside of the moon's eye, and no one can hear her or care if she snorts, so she does, and is glad to be laughing.
59. DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?
"It's silly; magic's just like science, but... I think there are fairies. Tolkeinian Elves. Witches, even, who'll make the world right again."
60. ARE DOGS A MAN'S BEST FRIEND?
"Yes? No?" Dogs. She tries to remember dogs but nothing clicks. Dogs aren't real, animals aren't real; human, monster, cow, who knows?
61. YOU BELIEVE IN DIVORCE?
"My brain and I got a divorce. So far it's working out."
62. CAN YOU DO THE MOONWALK?
"If you give me a lever, I could walk on the moon -- I mean -- I could take a moon out for a walk." The moon's her best friend, maybe. Lunacy.
63. DO YOU MAKE MANY MISTAKES?
"You tell me. Do I?" She thinks she only made one mistake and none since then and that mistake was -- she can't remember; if she could, she wouldn't make it again. If she erases her memory, can she erase the moment when she lost it?
64. IS IT COLD OUTSIDE TODAY?
"Freezing for a gal from Texas." Inside, too.
65. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
"Something green." Something green and spiny that prickled her stomach and made her feel fear too harshly, something toxic. Something she won't be eating again.
66. DO YOU WEAR NAIL POLISH?
That's not an item we sell in this apothecary, ma'am.
67. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN KISSED?
"Yes." Everywhere.
68. WHAT'S THE MOST ANNOYING TV COMMERCIAL?
"That one with the little boy who can't find the thing -- I don't know." She craves Doritoes and commercials. She'd watch them forever, sing along, memorize the ditties and buy their products. If she could only.
69. DO YOU SHOP AT AMERICAN EAGLE?
"I'm more of a Gap girl." That should fool them for awhile. If they think she's crazy, they should see next door, where the muskrats make their home. If they think she's crazy, they should try back in a few years. If they think she's crazy...
70. FAVORITE BAND AT THE MOMENT?
Favorite band, favorite color, favorite kind of fruit... the questions click like numbers in a combination lock, and the right sequence puts her into a fitful restless sleep till the moon comes up.
She doesn't snore.
++++++
Notes: I don't usually go all self-referential like this, but this format seemed to demand it. "i once loved someone blonde" + the thing about the socks.
Donnie Darko was released in 2001, which is the year "No Place Like Plrtz Glrb" happened. I believe X-Files was in its third season when Fred fell through her portal.