Friday Morning

Adelaide locked her elbows and stubbornly pushed down on the bar of a broom, hammering out the feathered wing from the cement. The bird had been dead for months, its two broken wings were the only remains, and they were visible from her window every morning. So at 530 am, when the first few bars of light broke into the backyard, Adelaide attacked in her yoga pants and black and pink chucks. The wings had to go.

Monday Night

Adelaide had a tendency of penning her sad stories first. Immediately upon hitting the paper, the ink in her mind began to hiss upwards in a violent evaporation, freeing her of the weight of memory. Her worst memory was very much like a pensieve, because she had stepped into it. She had stepped into the doors of that tiny white church with a crowd of black clad women behind her. The door shut between them and for one second, Adelaide was alone in the pitch black, buoyed by the space. She pressed one hand blindly in front of her and felt the resistance of thick black velvet. She ran her fingers down it and then plunged ahold, pulling the drape to the side. In that same second the women burst through behind her pushing her forth into the domed room full of people.

The arches of the room pulled up short overhead, glowing from the candles a short distance beneath them. Bright red graffiti sprayed elegantly across the ceilings, gold and black and blue and green detailed- pictures, old pictures of saints and gods and stories with which Adelaide was not familiar. She looked down at the old priest before her, the hunched wrinkle in the holy cap, who looked to the ground while teetering side to side, swinging chains with tinkling balls of incense at the bottom. Adelaide peered through the smoke behind him and felt an instant sickening compulsion to run. The casket was propped open.
The entire long summer after, Adelaide periodically suffered from swollen eyebrows, her face mildly distored, her brow jutting out on one side or sometimes both, her face unnaturally pale. Oh, Diana. On the morning Adelaide awoke to these minor monstrocities, she would spend the better part of the morning powdering her skin, pushing her hair into her eyes, avoiding mirrors and wearing sunglasses, just like a regularly beaten woman.

Tuesday Night

The chords were strummed upwards to the blue lake transposed onto the swaying velvet curtain. Adelaide swayed, attempting to recapture her youthful fascination with music- an almost paralyzing obsession. She realized the escapist nature of all her hobbies.

Adelaide looked up into the beam of the spotlight, suddenly cast upon her in the crowd..

May

It was definitely global warming. Adelaide was from the South, Florida to be exact, and she was used to the heat. But this was unreasonable for the District. And the District, though buttoned up to the neck and bursting its pinstripes with pride, was always reasonable. What was this? This stagnant sickness burped up with the sunrise, this heavy stench settling into the pores of the cds. Cooling stations were set up for idiot tourists who walked the monuments during the day. Fans were distributed. The bums hit a windfall in sympathetic dimes. Adelaide wore her slutty shirts and men did not gawk. Their mothers were dressed similarly. It was the worst time to be unemployed, with nowhere to go. Adelaide just waited. She waited for her new job to begin. She waited to move into the new apartment with the tall ceilings and eclectic decor. She waited for her Heart to call her at night, she waited to become his Live In Girlfriend. There was jack shit else to do.

One day, the sky flipped blue and the heat lifted its skirt modestly. Adelaide ventured to the park for some reading. She only had 8 dollars in her account and 3.50 on her, so she packed a soda, stole some quarters from her most troublesome housemate, and treated herself to a protein bar at the cornershop. She climbed the steep steps to Merdian park, and settled on a bench. She held Kaftka on the Shore at the perfect angle, and alternated between people watching and reading. Within minutes she was just reading, psuedo chocolate smudged on her lips. But the something caught the corner of her eye. A clattering of small proportions. She lifted her eyes slightly to the ground before her, as a duo of tall men in dirty navy clothing trudged past her. It was a plastic syringe, white and empty and small. How scandalous!

Adelaide's friend had once worked on a controversial project to distribute fresh needles on the streets. Adelaide wondered if she should bring this to him. But the men had turned around and were slowly coming back, sweeping their feet over the ground in small half steps. Omigod, would they kill her? With her information, she could surely send them away for a year or so. She desperately tried to recall the name of her great great uncle who worked for the mob and was doing time. Noone would touch her if they knew! She should have left instantly, but she had sat there like an idiot and now.. Now the men were before her!

The men picked up the syringe and slowly walked back, clucking. Adelaide needed a black coffee.