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day 1: home

sam sat at the desk in her bedroom, attempting her calculus homework. equations made spirals in her head, and she felt dizzy from numbers.

she reached out for her strawberry soda and, like most of the homework problems, she miscalculated and knocked the can over. she scrambled to lift the can back up, but her homework was already covered with a lake of soda.

"shit," she cursed, looking at the mess. she stood up, pushing her chair back, and went to get some paper towels.

she checked the upstairs bathroom. no paper towels. she checked the downstairs bathroom, under the kitchen sink, in the pantry. no paper towels.

"mom, where are the paper towels?" sam asked, interrupting her mom's tv show.

her mom went down into the basement, sam following behind. she grabbed a roll of paper towels off one of the many shelves full of crap and handed it to her daughter.

"thanks," is what sam said, but what went through her head was: gee, how convenient. why didn't i think to look there? followed by some nonsensical cursing.

by the time sam got back upstairs, the soda had congealed into a tar-like substance. as she tried wiping it up, the paper towels ripped and stuck to her desk. she kept working at it, and soon her fingers were becoming glued together.

she looked at her hands. they were sticky with the red substance. flashes of images from the hospital went through her head: the doctors' and nurses' hands covered in blood, the red rivers pouring from the man's orifices. she grabbed the scraps of paper towel and rushed into the bathroom to wash her hands. it took a couple pump-fulls of soap, but she managed to get her hands clean.

her desk was cleared of the spilled soda, but the calculus homework was stained red. for a moment she considered copying it to a fresh piece of paper, then decided against it.

"his stupid assignment, he can take it as-is," sam said bitterly to herself.

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