Running her hand down her leg she reaches down to adjust the flip flop further back down her foot, rather than just curling her foot and pressing it against the floor. Leaning down, she observes her oversized reuseable canvas grocery bag, printed on it the style of the whole foods logo it reads: "WHORE FOODS". A christmas present from one of the girls she knows online, from the 'other place' she works. She smiles sweetly at it remembering opening way before the 25th and squeeing at it and sending her a very gracious voicemail an hour or two later. She only used it a couple times at the local farmer's market, as a test of bravery to herself. Retiring it to the doorknob in which it now sits. Too many people asked too many questions about it, questions she was running out of ways in her head to dance around to the uninitiated. Questions that would lead to more questions and thus more questions.
Her attempt to adjust her shoe leads to a squat, the right half of her butt resting on her calf, foot flat on the floor putting the majority of the weight on that side. The other foot and calf arched up, unable to fully squat flat. "Something to work on soon, maybe, someday. When I have some spare time and some motivation", she thinks. Resting for a moment, she looses the garbage bag from her hand completely from her grasp and onto the floor.
Committed to this micro break, she survails the room, thinking of what she needs to clean up and out of her work space. A tidy bundle of wires trails underneath her current perch and out the room. Towards the room the cables lead to a mess of cabling belonging to the most obsessive compulsive rat. A sequence of computers line the left wall, one for this thing, the other for that thing. An older one pressed into a corner she's yet to repurpose for something yet. A desk and office chair marked out with reflective tape. The rest of the room marked out similar. Here are the boundaries of which I exist, a thought she's had in lower moments. A pile of framed pictures and plaques lean underneath a window with blackout curtains draped. A YouTube plaque in front with her name, not her name, at the front.
Little light or image ever escapes this room other than what comes through the computer. A garbage can under the desk, in it an old plastic grocery bag, within that loose snack wrappers and aluminum cans. The actual reason for her being in here. A clear black on black with black straw water cup sits along side her desk the opposite of her mouse on a glass coaster from some Vegas nightclub, that's she never been to and no longer exists, beneath it.
Around the room there is a more things connected, the rigging, the lights, phones in a pile. A safe, documents and cash contained within. How much? She doesn't remember. A small plastic set of bins on plastic wheels sits idly, several clean gray towels neatly folded on top.
She knows exactly what is in the those bins. And where everything is contained within.
She sighs deeply, exhaling through her mouth, an exasperated frown appears, but only just briefly, reconstructing itself into a neutral flat face. Breathing in through her nose, she notices the smell of the room. Sterile, a heavy bleach scent across the hardwood and drywall mixture of the room. But, something else as well. A smell she can't quite place, like a almost fully decontaminated locker room. Or some lab she remembers being in, at a hospital, far from where she lives now.
It's her smell and disinfectant and previous scrubbings of the room she just couldn't get quite right. Or quite aired out. No one would notice but her, but, it's just her and she notices.
Her face begins to pucker and her hands move instinctively up to and upon her face. Tears well up and fall underneath the hands pressed tight against her face. A slight whimper fills the not empty but still empty room. The tears filling her hand and draining beneath her palms onto the floor below her. As "Melody" kneels in a doorway.
