Munmun(34)

The tickle became pain, prettybad, darkred, hotsmelling.

Last thing I saw in Dreamworld was, furious rat finally swelling up like a balloon.





LIFEANDDEATHWORLD


So, Nick bites my neck and here’s what happens next.

I elbow his face before he finishes murdering me, but still major damage to the neck area forsure, permanent scars, hospital time for Warner, in jail they call it coreandteen.

The bitewound gets an infection, no surprise because it came from a psycho’s mouth, fever, rot, basically the doctor sprays me with poisons, hope the infection dies and not Warner.

A week goes by, pills and liquids keep me sleeping dreamlessly, dozing painfully. Somewhere out there my sis is maybe getting divorced and losing everything. Somewhere out there Puppyneck graduates to grownjail, maybe they kill him, eat him, no idea. Somewhere maybe Usher is alive.

One morning I wake up, the neck is throbbing but the air in my lungs feels clean, the worst is over.

“Better,” asks the doc.

“A little,” I say.

“Hope so,” says the doc. “Tonight you’re back in the cage with the others.”

Then she gives me a few hours to think about it.

Late afternoon, some guards pick me up in my bed, lower it into a box, take me out into the yard, not telling me anything.

In the yard again is Kitty.

Look at her, now she’s a girl who used to be the girl from seedflowerbirdhouse but not anymore, now a teenager, longerfaced.

Nightsky hair in a braidnest, stacks of loops like piled tires.

Rivercolored skin, muddycream with freckles and explosions.

Scrunchy lips bunching a smile of, I expect praise.

A little walleyed, specifically the right eye a littlebit wall, not quite looking at you, what does it see instead.

“I found someone’s ratballoon,” she tells me.

“Mine,” I rasp.

She expects praise for solving the puzzle of the mysterious huge ratballoon, abandoned in Dreamworld.

“Why did you lie to me,” she asks.

“I didn’t lie,” I say.

Pause.

“You told me you didn’t dream,” she asks.

“I didn’t tell you anything,” I say.

Pauseagain.

“Oh,” she says. “Right, because you don’t talk.”

I want to tell her, I used to talk, I used to babble like a happy maniac, but here in jail they just decide stuff about you and even if it isn’t true, after a while, it is.

But she’s too huge, I’m in the jailyard, still too much of a jailbird, I don’t know.

“Except you’re talking now,” she adds.

“Why do you want to study the dreams of jailedup littles,” I say.

“Well, it’s a schoolproject,” she says.

“Oh right,” I say, like I know schoolprojects.

Her lips flutter, then they tell me, “I’m studying the dreaming of unfortunates, poors, convicts, mentally ill, specialneeds.”

“Good,” I rasp, feeling bad.

Her hands twist a little, fidgety fingers hug each other, she thoughtbubbles, maybe this was a mistake.

But still she asks, “Can I dream with you sometime this week?”

My heart shudders.

“Ofcourse,” I tell her.

“Thanks,” she says.

I just stare at the ground because it’s just too hard now to look at someone who’s not from Jailworld, not a guard or grungy dave, instead this girl from a different world, different planet, someone else’s life.

“Well then,” she says. “I’ll find you in Dreamworld, or you’ll find me.”

“Okay,” I say.

But as she gets up, gets ready to step over the wall and leave my life, I say, “Wait.”

She stops, crouches over me, her breath is a room of gummy fakemint.

“I’m going to die tonight,” I tell her.

And she said whatdoyoumean, and stayed, and I told her how I got here, and the guards got moreandmore furious, but as I realized they couldn’t do anything to this middlerich princess I kept talking nonstop, huge chunks of the story, kids smashed my dad, a cat crippled my mom, we tried to find a better life at law school, Prayer got abused, Shoulderheads tried to kidnap her, a cop wouldn’t help, I scared away my sis’s kidnapper with a stolen gun and now I’m in jail and a squad wants to kill me, when I try to dream psychos bite me, life is almost over.

We were in the yard until the sun plunked into the sea and justabout the only thing I didn’t tell her is, bytheway I dreamed with you once, longago.

Before she left she told Wilt, I’m fixing this, you better keep him in hospital coreandteen tonight, if he ends up back in the cages and anything happens to him, my father will show you the inside of a grownjail prettysoon.

Wilt was sick with anger but powerless, instead just ranted to me about how that uppy bitch was going to forget about me in a few days and then we’ll just see what happens, littleshit, ohmygod, can’t wait to sponge your little drips of blood off the tile in one swipe.

But she didn’t forget,

she found Prayer and interviewed her,

found one of the Shoulderheads tramps in grownjail and interviewed her too, made a case of Maybe Warner’s Not So Bad to her cityboss dad Hue, she and dad went to the cityboss of the Dreamoughs, and the citybosses agreed to exchange the favors of, Kitty’s dad donates personal munmuns to a Dreamough publicgarden, Dreamough cityboss pardons me.