Sunflowers - Medusa x Blind Woman Short Story

10k Novel Snippet

NOTE: This is a first draft and is subject to change!

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        Medusa has been sitting on the tiled shower floor for twenty minutes. The warm water beats down her trembling body. One arm is hugging her legs while the other rubs at her neck.

        "I'm safe. It was just a dream," she says to herself for the twentieth time.

        Another twenty minutes pass until she's calmed down enough. She doesn't feel the softness of her robe as she wraps it snug around her wet body. Nor does she feel the cold hard countertop under her palms. She gazes down to make sure the floor is still there.

        Arachne gave her some techniques to use for when this happened. She called it derealization. First thing she said to try is to identify the feeling to help lessen the intensity of it.

        "I am feeling scared because of a bad dream I had. Which is causing me to feel unsafe. I don't like feeling like this," she says to herself.

        She looks at the pinky sticky note: I honor and validate my feelings.

        "And it's okay to feel this way. There is nothing wrong with the way I feel."

        She takes deep breaths to help ground herself. She wiggles her toes against the plush dark purple rug before the sink. Calista rubs her head against her temple. She pets her with two fingers. The rest of her snakes gather around her hand. They intertwine around her fingers and wrist, leaving kisses all over with their tongues.

        The tightness in her chest eases, but it still hurts. She grabs her phone from the nightstand and plugs her earbuds in. Arachne said listening to calming music can help. She opens her music app. She finds a playlist titled 'songs that feel like a warm blanket out of the dryer' and presses shuffle.

        The song begins. She crawls back under her covers. A few songs play and she feels the same. She grabs the remote for her small moonlight and presses a button. The light fades into different colors. She makes a game out of it and tries to guess which color will be next.

        Blue. Green. Orange. Yellow. Like Ruth's favorite pair of converse with the sunflowers on them. The knot in her chest loosens a bit.

        Red. Blue again. Pink. Like the bowl of pink Starburst on her coffee table.

        Purple. Like the scrubs she wears to work.

        Medusa names something related to her for each color that pops up until she falls asleep.

        A door slamming in the hallway wakes her up two hours later. She gasps and sits up. Her snakes hiss at whoever did that. Honestly, other people live here. Be considerate.

        She groans and drags herself out of bed. Her snakes hiss in protest. She's drained from earlier and wants nothing more than to sleep for a few more hours, but she has therapy at ten.

        Rain outside knocks at the window. She yanks the black curtains open. Dark gray clouds blanket the sky. A crack of lightning lights up the buildings and her room for a moment. Now she really wants to get back in bed.

        She checks the time on her phone, hoping she can get a few more minutes of sleep. It's almost seven. The selfie she and Ruth took yesterday stares up at her. She smiles.

        She remembers that Ruth spent the night and goes into the living room still wearing her bathrobe. She is asleep on the couch. The blanket is tangled in her legs and her t-shirt has hiked up, showing off her soft stomach. She has a small diamond belly button piercing. Medusa fixes the blanket.