Simply Human

Chapter Three ~ Nightmares

        "Arielle, is that you?" Melanie asked as I opened the door to my house.
        Who else could it be?, I thought to myself. "Yes, Mel, it's me," I said instead. As usual, she was concocting something vile in the kitchen. Not on purpose; she just wasn't a very good cook.
        "Do you mind coming in here for a second?" she inquired.
        Instead of responding, I looked longingly up the stairs at my blue bedroom door.
        "Pleeeease, I need your help," she begged, aware of my indecisiveness.
        "Alright," I sighed as I made my way to the kitchen.
        She was crouched down with her head inside the cabinet beneath the sink. I heard clinking and clanking.
        "Isn't this a job for the plumber?" I asked as I walked in.
        "No, its just clogged," she responded with her head inside.

        "Plumbers fix that too."

         "Not if I can do it myself," she said with an enthusiastic, determined voice. That was Mel: always determined and positive. It drove me crazy sometimes.

         "If you say so," I whispered as I quietly walked out of the kitchen.

        I'd made it just past the living room when I heard "Arielle Efua Larsen!"

        Shizz-noddle! I was so close to my room. Sulking, I turned and made my way back to the kitchen partly annoyed that she'd noticed I'd left and partly because she'd said my middle name wrong. It was a Ghanaian name-of-the-week name my mother gave me. Efua was the name girls born on Friday were called.

        "You're not slick,"she said with her head still under the sink.

        "And you're not a plumber, but as humans, we all believe we are good at something even when we most certainly aren't," I sassed back.

        This caused her to get out and look at me. For a long, long time.

        "You have a twig in your hair,"she finally said after staring at me for thirty-five thousand years.

        I instantly thought about Kyle, which made me smile.

        "Why are you smiling?" Mel asked.

         "What do you need, Mel?" I asked rather than answering her question. It was my turn to stare at her.

        She had brown stuff on her clothes, sweat on her forehead and a whole bunch of tools in her hands. No gloves, no apron. Figures, I thought.

        "I need you to hold these tubes together while I glue them."

        "What tubes?"

        "The ones beneath the sink," she said. "Come on, hold them together."

        Knowing I couldn't get out of this because she was so damn determined, I reluctantly put my bag down and made my way to the sink. The second I bent down to do whatever it is plumbers do, some brown stuff squirted on my clothes.

        "Ewwww!!!" I screeched as Mel began to laugh at me. The nerve! This made me even madder at her.

        "I am NOT doing this, Mel. Call the damn plumber!" I shouted as I grabbed my bag and went straight to my room.

                             ~°~°~°~°~°~

        After I'd taken a much-needed shower and eaten my weight in pizza and fries, -- no way I was going to eat what Mel cooked -- I crawled into my covers and attempted to go to sleep. It was 10 pm. Minor problem was that ever since my parents died, I'd been having more nightmares and less sleep.