I wake at 5:32am; that’s an hour’s worth of sleep this morning. I congratulate myself and gaze blearily about my spacious bedroom. My eyes aren’t weary from sleep; I am half-blinded by a degenerative sight disorder. I slide my hand over my bed until it rests on my greasy, scratched glasses and place them on before forcing myself out of bed. I walk to my en suite and get into the shower without looking in the mirror. Wash my hair. Condition it. The creamy white suds flow down over my smooth, white shoulders and onto my breasts. The air is steamy and hot; perfectly pornographic if played the right way… perfectly illegal. My mind is blank now and all I know is that slowly, the water is growing cold. I step out. Wrapped in towels I make my way back into the main room and towards the heating vent and sit down. The air feels freezing on my dripping back and legs, but I wait.
Ten minutes later I am dry and warm, wishing I could slip back into that soft, luxurious bed and into the pleasant dreams I’d had earlier that morning; his slender arms wrapped gently around me, nestling my cheek into his long, soft hair. Eventually I manage to stand up and get dressed – my skirt is pulled up to my waist, buttoned and turned, a white polo shirt thrown over my head and a pair of 40 denier black stockings are hiked up. I’d put my shoes and jumper on later. There’s no time for breakfast so I quickly comb my hair and leave it to dry naturally. The wind will do most of the work for me. I finish getting ready, find my iPod and step out the back door. The walk to school is the same as always, lonely, empty and completely calm.
I am a zombie at Macleod College. My long, black hair curls gently around my face and throat and lays flat on my shoulders and back. I brush it meticulously every few minutes. It is my life. Biology comes and goes; I laugh at the trite and timeworn parasite documentary with everybody else, the smiles and youthful delight pass over my face but the true emotions behind them never cross my mind, they don’t even creep into the very edges. I am devoid of all that makes those around me who they are, a wolf in sheep’s clothing – but as surely I feel this emptiness, they too must feel it vibrating in their bones, that something is not right – instinctively cautious of me.
I sleep with my eyes open in maths, the teacher making no attempt to rouse myself or any of the other students. We are all dead now, if only for this 75 minutes. Nobody speaks, nobody moves. It is a classroom filled with breathing, blinking corpses, huddled in rest by the heater that keeps their skin from dimpling and their breath from fogging the air.
