"I Have Been In You"

The bedroom is pink. A soft and warm and pleasant kind of pink that colors the frilliness of a little girl’s adorable yet uncomfortable “Sunday best” dress.

Beatriz is in the satin bed playing with a tiger-sized Minino. She appears happy as the darling beast lies on his back across her lap and purrs contently as she scratches his belly, but then the room’s color changes to a blind white and Minino is suddenly gone.

Beatriz is confused and fretful over her vanished pet, but a door burst open loudly, like a landmine exploding and Seth strides into the room, filling it with a large, towering presence. He grows larger with every step he takes and has to bend and crouch with the encumbrance of his swelling size.

When he is closer to the bed, he bends his head so that he is face to face with Beatriz. He does not look pleased.

“Bee, are you going to spend all day in bed?”

She doesn’t answer, she feels suffocated.

“GET OUT!” he screams at her before turning back to leave in a voice that is not his, shrinking and disgusted.

She floats down a hallway she doesn’t recognize and comes across a little boy playing with a Godzilla action figure. He appears to be four or five, somewhere in the “cute little angel” age range, dressed in little boy’s pajamas with bare small feet.

The boy, with the same hair, eyes, and complexion as Beatriz, smiles sweetly and waves at her. She smiles back and kneels to kiss him on his cheekbones, he giggles, and she hugs him.

She floats away and the boy cries after her, “Don’t leave me, Mamá!” and she calls back, “I would never, mi vida.”

The scene changes abruptly to what looks like Beatriz’s living room only much larger and spaced out. There seems to be a cocktail party going on, the place is packed with many people who are faceless and blurry and even though they don’t seem to talk, they make “talking” gestures while holding colorful drinking glasses and there are “talking” noises.

Beatriz is pushing past crowds of people, looking for someone. She reaches a clearing to find Dorian, just kind of standing there, as if frozen, and…is that Darkstar?

She tries to make it over to them, but gets absorbed into a murder of party-goers. It is a group of young women that look familiar to her, their line of conversion sounds familiar also.

The one with the heart-shaped face regards Beatriz with a smile that looks more like a sneer and asks, “So, what’s the most romantic thing Seth ever did for you?”

Everything freezes as they await her answer.

“He let me be on top.”

The group is still frozen, but the party continues. She breaks past them to get to Dorian and Darkstar, but they’re not there, instead she finds David and a hot feel of fear pulses in the pit of her.

She finds herself in a bathroom painted an ugly maroon. David’s there with his wolf’s grin.

“Babe, I know I done ya wrong, but don’t do this to me.”

The scene changes again. They’re cuddling in the satin bed but the room is now orange. Their mouths aren’t moving, but they’re talking, the voices sound tape recorded.

“I should marry you, Beatriz.”

“Then why don’t you?” She sounds hurt.

He pulls her to him tighter and kisses her forehead.

“Marriage would ruin us, you know that.”

The room turns red.

The party lets out and Beatriz is starting out front of a very large house while people stampede out. She hears a man weeping and tries to find him, but it’s not a man, it’s the boy. She runs to save him from being trampled and when he is picked up, he stops crying and smiles again.

Beatriz wakes up in her bed and feels the lump of Minino sleeping on her thigh over the blanket. She grabs him gently as she sits up against the pillows and holds him close, happy that he’s here with her and not Seth.