It began like any other week, the wonderful joy of returning to school after having four days off for snow. I nearly slipped and fell outside of school on a patch of ice because I, being the most gifted girl of Northwest Cabarrus High, wore sandals to school that day. Once inside, I deposited my lunch into my locker and pulled out my french notebook and algebra textbook, only to be attacked by Jessica. Jessica is a friend of mine, we met in our French I class last semester, first period, shared our mutual affinity for Invader ZIM and hit it off. This morning, she came running down the hall at me and leapt. I practically climbed on top of the lockers in fright, but she missed and ran into the door, which I thought was very funny. Apparently, she did not see it my way.
"Don't laugh at me!" she shouted, rubbing her knee and forehead. Curled up in a ball on the floor, I managed to say through my tears of mirth, "Shows - you - not - to - attack - me!" Eventually I stood and offered to kiss her boo-boo's, but she declined politely as the bell rang. I hurried off to french and settled in for a "fun" day. The rest went by in a blur, though algebra made it's presence well-known with 90 minutes of unadulterated boredom. I made it home around 2:45 and immediately snuck out my stolen key to the study and hopped online. I have many candidates calling out to me, "Finish me! I haven't gone on my bloody rampage yet!" so I dutifully answer.
This is where my story takes a turn for the crazy side. You see, most people I know have identified their muses in one way or another, and I am no exception. I have three...ish. My mischievous "chief muse" is Valefor, and he's in charge of my more malevolent characters, evil and general discord. He's around the size of a large house cat, bright red in color with beady black eyes, has wings, an impossibly long tail ending in a tuft of black fur and has two small horns, just in front of his ears.
My second, and more innocent and child-like, muse is Tiny. He's small, fat and robotic. He has the ability to shape-shift into anything he wants, up to the size of a large elephant and down to the flat tip of a pin. I say this because I, being slightly more rational than most would think, believe any smaller and his density would be so great that he would sink into the ground, and any larger and his molecules would be too stretched out and his form would be incomplete. (I like science, by the way) Close in resemblance to an upright-walking goat, he will eat any kind of non-organic garbage (cans, plastic, cardboard if it isn't wet, etc...) and is what I consider to be my "inner child".
The third muse is unnamed as of yet, a patchwork doll-type girl that I think would be more logical, Vulcan even. She's still in the works as a doodle in my sketchbook, but more on her later, when she's developed. If you think my muses are odd, my friends can be worse...a literally flaming mongoose named Frank and a lobster that wears a sombrero and boots named Senor Spanky, to name a few.
Anyway, to return to the story, I imagined Valefor to be draped across the monitor as I sat down and started up the computer. Come to offer more of your inspiration?" I asked him, or more correctly, myself. "I guess, there isn't much else to do...Tiny doesn't want to play with me anymore..." he hissed back as Tiny materialized, pouting. "I don't like playing with you because you're mean!" Valefor placed a clawed paw upon his furry chest in mock-surprise. "Moi, mechant? Oh, je ne suis pas mechant!" Closing my eyes, I thought, "I've been spending way too much time in french class..."
The two continued bickering in the back of my mind in my limited grasp of french as I typed, keeping one ear tuned for the growl of a car engine climbing my mountainous driveway or the rustle of a door handle being turned. Neither occurred for a while, so I settled into a steady type, listen, type, listen rhythm until Valefor interrupted me with, "Doesn't it bother you that you converse with Tiny and I as if we were actual beings rather than your imagination?" For all I was listening, I hadn't noticed that my two muses had stopped arguing. "No," I said, because I realize that you two are me and it's like talking to myself. Plus, I figure if I'm crazy, I'll at least get one of those awesome padded cells when they commit me." That shut him up long enough for me to hear my mom pull up, and I quickly saved, shut down the computer, locked the door and dove for the living room as she rang the doorbell. I had locked the back door, thank God. This gave me time to saunter up and open the door innocently.
My mom came in bustling around to fix supper while I, (still very nonchalant and innocent) asked for her keys to unlock the study. She handed them over and I hurried off to the study, once again. Yes, I am a horrible child, but no one can turn off creativity! I whiled away my usual two-hour limit finishing off one candidate and working on another. Lest I bore you with every moment of my night, I think we'll just move on.
My week passed fairly quickly, a normal week (for me) ending with the annual second-semester blood drive. I had given blood before, in the first-semester drive, and it wasn't so bad, so I decided too again. "Hey, you get free stuff, maybe save someone's life and get out of one whole class." I told my needle-phobic friends Thursday at lunch. I signed up to go during algebra, my most hated class.
When the time came, I felt only slightly nervous. I have a low pain threshold and here I am, volunteering to be stuck with a needle. My wait wasn't long, but in the back of my head, Valefor just had to bare my fears. "Remember what Keelie said, about how when she gave blood last year and her vein popped out of her ar-" I cut him off then, the mental image I got was enough to make me shudder. "Keelie has diabetes though..." Comforting myself didn't work, so I just buried my nose in the "So you're Giving Blood" manual they forced you to read.
Eventually, my time came and I was called. They found a vein in my right arm and she went right to work, as I turned my head. A flurry of activity accompanied by a horrible cough-retch noise from my right caused me to turn my head, but my view was blocked. I saw one of the technicians throwing away a seemingly full biohazard bag and grimaced...someone had thrown up. "Ewwww....I hope they're okay..." Tiny voiced my concern, for it looked like Keelie herself was in that chair. I grimaced again however, as the person finished placing my needle and left to help one of the rookie phlebotomists (that means "someone who lets blood". Hee, I looked it up!).
After a while, I noticed I was feeling hot and nauseous myself. Everyone I knew who had given blood always told me, "Let someone know if you feel hot, it means you're about to pass out." "Ugh..." I muttered, my head suddenly two pounds heavier. Feebly fanning myself, I looked around for someone to tell but was assailed with people before I could even tell them what was wrong. They were talking to me, but it was as if someone had stuck two paper towel rolls filled with tissue over my ears. The chair was tipped back and a fan brought, but my mind was so slow in processing anything I didn't really realize what had happened until the needle was gone and the lady instructed me to hold my arm up in the air.
It was over, and my brain gradually re-awoke as I was escorted to the food table. Some of my friends were there, and Keelie joined us a moment later, already wearing her blood drive t-shirt. I asked if she was the one I thought had thrown up. "Yeah...that was me...I threw up..." she said in answer to my question, and we teased each other off and on about our "ordeal". Suddenly, that wretched, woozy feeling returned and I rested my head on the table, only to be rudely shaken by one of the "table watchers" and told to cough. I remember thinking, "Woman, my head feels like it is about to float off up to the ceiling, and you want me to cough!?" as they made me sit on an hand-truck like thing and wheeled me to another chair to lay back in. I was trapped for an extra 20 minutes.
Not that I was complaining. I entertained my slightly-delusional self by imagining Tiny perched on my knee in a firelizard-type form, chattering at me about somesuch thing. Once I had recovered enough to notice I was on the verge of babbling aloud to nothing but the air, I asked if I could get up and made my shaky way back to the table.
They let me stay for 10 minutes more, but I waited until the bell rang for third period and left about five minutes after that. Greeted with, "Hey, there's Lauren! She's been gone since 9:15 but there she is!" once I entered the Ag. Building, I smiled weakly and said, "Well, I passed out twice...what'd you expect?" before flopping into my seat to listen to speeches about puppy mills, the consumption of dogs and cats in Korea and cloning of beef cattle. Thankfully, I'd given mine (on the awful people who purposely breed cats for certain deformities) the day before, because I was in no condition to stand up for that long.
When the bell rang for lunch, I had some fun making the others who sat at my table wince and cringe at tales of my giving blood, but I still felt out of it. I could focus through pottery, and almost missed my stop on the bus because I was dozing off and on. I waddled down the street and collapsed upon arriving home, curling up in my chair and falling asleep until 6:30, when my dad came to pick me up for my every two-week visit to his house.