eno

lioness in a coma

and here we go! one, a two, a one, two three

the 10 a.m. sunlight’s dancing to this beat!

she’s sleeping on the bed
blanket around her head

and arms and legs.

“It’s beginning!” the wind says and the girl stirs in her sleep.

Something begins to happen here. Her eyes open. She sits up. She looks at her hands and back down at her sleeping torso and the sunlight’s dancing right through her skin.
The window is open now. She doesn’t remember who she is.

five fingers grip the sill. ten now.

one leg over the other leg over,

and a rush of wind paints her in the colors of the upcoming season and she begins to drift, soundlessly.
Soundlessly she leaps.

[Camera switches to angle 2]

It doesn’t end here. Now she is sitting on a lone ferris wheel. Her cart is navy blue and gold. It’s moving at a painstakingly slow pace. There are no clouds and the wind is frail. She thinks of a giant clock and her eyes become heavier and heavier…

[Camera switches to angle 1]

her body turns and the blankets wrap around and around. silent, selfish trees waving in the wind. stealing all the sunlight.

[Camera switches to angle 3]

She’s in bed with someone. That someone is asleep, pillow over the head. She is unsure whether or not that someone is a woman or a man. She can barely make out his or her features in the dark. She switches on a lamp and finds that it is a mannequin. Its chest is slowly moving up and down.

It awakens and turns its head towards her. cre-eak.

“Oh my dear, how wrong can you be?
You do not belong here, can you not see?
They will begin to envy your skin
and commit quite horrific sins.”

She stumbles out of the bed and backs up into a wall, staring at the talking mannequin. She is following the wall, attempting to get away.

“If I were you, i’d take this key
and find the door you cannot see.
But be quick!
The air will make you sick
and you will become like me.”

The girl begins to ask the mannequin a question when she finds that her voice was gone. She feels the empty space where her voice box used to be. Frustration arose within her and she quickly snatches the key away from the mannequin’s cold, plastic hand. The mannequin suddenly grabs her arm and she feels an intense pain. Her mouth opens but emits no sound and she darts out the door and into a long hallway.

[Camera switches to angle 2]

The ferris wheel finally comes to a stop and her cart stops swaying. The door unlocks and her footsteps make echos throughout the deserted fairground. She blinks and suddenly, the world is in black and white. She begins to run frantically in one direction and stumbles. When she gets up, she is standing before a giant colored circus tent with streaming red and gold ribbons and a million colored lights shooting up into the sky. The tent door is slightly ajar but it is dark inside. She hears faint music, a piano maybe? Or an accordion. She nimbly squeezes herself into the tent and into the darkness where her feet meet no ground.

She is blind. Entirely blind. Her sense of hearing is acute; her sense of touch sends shock waves down her spine whenever her fingertips come in contact with anything. She crawls around aimlessly, bumping into what seem to be couches and tall cabinets. The sound of the music is louder now. She is able to distinguish the instrument as an accordion.

Mmm heh heh. A woman chuckles menacingly somewhere behind her and she feels like a blind dog as she turns.
“Where are you?” The girl asks, already feeling defeated.
I’ve been watching you. The voice says, nestled by her right ear. Three. You are three and if you desire to leave this place you must become one again. But will you find one another? Here, let me help you.
The woman places two fingers on the girl’s forehead and suddenly she knows the outline and arrangement of the room. She feels the vibrations from each object and thought of herself as a bat.

[Camera switches to angle 1]

She is deaf.

Sitting in agony

no sound no music no wind
no car wheels no friction no heart-pounding

engulfed.
she hides herself within her blankets. digging deeper, burying herself, crawling and writhing and it’s going on and on and on and she emerges within a room with red velvet walls and a single, dimly lit chandelier.

[Camera switches to angle 3]

Intense pain fading. There is blood on her arm. The hallway seems to get longer and longer. Candles line the walls. Flickering shadows.
Small sound in the distance.

What could it be? She wonders.
cr-eak cr-eaak cr-eak cr-EAK cR-EAK CREAAK.

Doors are opening wide and mannequins are clumsily stumbling out of their deep sleep. Uncoordinated, not fooled, hungry.

Hungry. She hears their voices, all of them, a massive army of starving mannequins. They starve for life and soft skin, a heart. She sprints now, turning corners, gripping the key in her sweating right fist.

left
right
right
left
left
sl o w  s    d     o    w    n     hea vy   brEAThing.

Sees herself before her. Another her. Standing, eyes glazed over, head slightly bent. The other girl, herself, is staring her in the eye but not seeing her. She starts to speak.

“You…you are the third. I cannot see. Are you impaired as well? We are…broken and we must come together somehow.”

– silence –

“So you are silenced. We still have to find one other. You do have the key, do you not?”

She taps her pocket.
“Okay. I can feel her through these walls but i’m not sure where she is. It’s getting more dangerous by the second. We have to find her now.”

She who is silenced takes the blind one’s hand and once again, they are treading through the halls of time and space.