Felicia's face scrunched up in her sleep as her dreamscape transitioned to that familiar scene with the snakes nipping at her arms and hands. At least now she knew what this was really all about, and forced herself to remain calm as the wisps of cold air from a nearby A/C vent translated into the sensation of snakes slithering across her bare skin. She'd simply thrown her sheets off while tossing and turning in her sleep, that's all—and as long as she remained calm, the thorns would stay... uh, in her arms? Where they belonged?
The strangeness of the thought brought her to a state of semi-awareness. However, she couldn't move her body, and could still feel the slithering of snakes. They were all over her, now, not just crawling up and down her arms. She forced herself to keep her eyes closed and her breathing steady. Unlike her mother, who would have surely called an exorcist by now, Felicia was rational. This was sleep paralysis. The snakes weren't real. None of this was real... except the part where she was becoming some kind of circus freak. That part was real.
Eventually, the slithering sensation faded away, and Felicia opened her eyes to the sight of an unfamiliar ceiling. It took her a moment, but she remembered why she was here. A friend of one of her clients, an elderly woman who lived alone, had sworn up and down that someone was trying to break into her home at night—the police, never finding any evidence to back her claims, now refused to take her seriously. Felicia, having a bit of a mother bear instinct for her senior clients, offered to let that friend stay in her own house, while she would stay in the friend's home for a few nights. Also Felicia, being a night owl, was currently trying to sleep during the day, and not having much success during the current heat wave.
How can it be so hot up here in the mountains... she thought, annoyed as she slowly rose from the couch she'd turned 180 degrees to face the A/C unit in the window—which she suspected might be the cause of her would-be burglar's sudden interest in the house. Not so much "gathering" as "peeling" up the layer of sweat-soaked towels laid across the couch, she wrapped one around her waist and threw the rest in the washer, in a nearby hallway, before shambling over to the kitchen, walking off the stiffness resulting from her interrupted sleep. Now that she was having night terrors, it was pointless to try any more.
Time for some coffee, she decided, taking up her cell phone and swiping through her news feed.
Flower Power: Plant-Based Superpowers now a Reality, Claims Miami Biotech Researcher
Intrigued, Felicia forgot all about her coffee, though her free hand continued going through the motions of making it. A little skeptical despite her own experience with the thorns, which she for some reason still associated with snakes, she skimmed through the generic PR language and half-baked sensationalist keywords of the article and skipped straight to the reader comments—
Faustina
9 hours ago Nobody:
American Liberals: "Meat is Murder 2: Electric Boogaloo"
—a decision which resulted in hot coffee entering Felicia's sinuses. After a brief coughing fit, she continued reading, but the rest of the comments were really just similar memes with the occasionally toxic comment that was hidden, but she still ended up clicking the un-hide button and reading anyway. For the most part, it seemed that people weren't taking this seriously, at least not publicly. As she continued researching, she managed to find a transcript of part of the segment.
What is he, a coffee bean? she thought, bemused.
If he drinks coffee, does that make him a cannibal? she imagined somebody posting in the comments, snickering in spite of herself.
But, really... it was the first interesting thing that had happened in the news in a while, that didn't make her want to go out and deck somebody. It would also, she realized, only take one text to give her an excuse to be in Florida during the time of the summit. One of her uncle's relatives had passed away recently, and he was going there to wrap up some loose ends that nobody else in the extended family could be bothered to deal with after realizing that their names weren't in the will. As she realized her desperation for any kind of information, she sighed, pushed aside the nagging guilt creeping in from taking two vacations nearly back-to-back, and sent the text.
I'm going camping in Florida as part of a business venture.
Pack some outdoor clothes and come pick me up. 10-4 Felicia laughed audibly as her uncle agreed to this selfish proposition with no context whatsoever. He knew her well.
Her laughter was interrupted suddenly with a cracking sound coming from the A/C unit. Looking up from her phone, she suddenly realized that night had fallen in the time it had taken her to do all that research and reach a decision. Discretely opening the video recording app for evidence, she walked over to the window and tore the curtains aside, giving the would-be burglar a
Really? kind of look. But, seeing Felicia's scant clothing and nobody else in the house, the intruder only continued his work of attempting to remove the A/C with a crowbar. So, she grabbed the shotgun propped up in the corner next to the window and racked it with one arm, trying to keep her phone steady with the other.
"Say cheese!" she said ominously, capturing the masked intruder's widened eyes on video before he scrambled away into the night. Turning the phone to face herself, Felicia gave the camera the same
Really? look. Putting the shotgun down, she put on her sassiest voice.
"This is why you LIS-TEN to your elders, Mr. Sheriff!" she chastised, snapping her fingers at the camera before shutting the video off.
Friday, June 18, 10:45 PM
Felicia was awoken from her nap, not by snakes nor an alarm clock, but by the doorbell. Immediately, she knew who it was.
In the military, if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late, her uncle Jacques, 45 and a former Green Beret, would say.
The gruff military man, a Hulk Hogan-looking fellow clothed in a blue denim jacket and jeans stained with motor oil, was met first with the smell of bug spray, then the sight of his niece in combat boots, black denim hot pants, and a sleeveless black leather jacket and tank top. With a fist bump for a greeting, and a single suitcase wheeled over and stowed away in the back of the forest-green SUV, Felicia was riding shotgun without a single word exchanged between the two. Jacques turned the key in the ignition, and
music began politely blaring at just below conversation-level.
"Need a beer?" Jacques asked rhetorically, handing Felicia a can. "Beer" was an energy drink, on this side of the family.
She took it gratefully, without looking at him.
"I've got plant essence," she says simply, preempting his next question.
Jacques frowned, nodding slowly. Felicia didn't make things up for a laugh. "Well, what do you know about it?"
"Not much, but get a load of this," she said, making a fist with her free hand. Thorns emerged from the sides of her knuckles, like some gnarly-looking set of brass knuckle knives. Then, with a flick of the thumb on her other hand, she quickly punctured the can and shotgunned it. Jacques didn't even see the thorn that did it; it was there and gone in a flash. Just as her uncle is exhaling dramatically at the sight of this, Felicia crushes the empty can against the side of her face, causing it to take on the texture of bark, as though she were some kind of magical tree creature straight out of a CGI fantasy flick.
There was a reason Jacques jokingly called Felicia's energy drinks "beer." He'd been a sober man for nearly 20 years, and this was beyond anything he could dream up while intoxicated. Yet, Felicia either didn't notice that the side of her face now matched the camping gear, or she was so used to it by now that it was no longer of much concern. Oddly, the thing he decided to take issue with was her hand, reaching for another "beer."
"Well shit, Felicia, it's only seven hours to Florida from here, how many times you wanna stop?" he asked as he buckled his seat belt.
"We can be there in six hours, if you drive like me," his niece joked back.
"Not if you keep drinking like a fish, we ain't."
The flat roads of Florida had given Felicia a nice, smooth ride to nap through, after giving up trying to stay awake—but the smooth paved roads eventually gave way to gravel. Rousing slowly, Felicia felt oddly refreshed, and the sun oddly pleasant. Grabbing another "beer," she took hold of the passenger side door handle, and promptly tore it out of its socket.
"Uhh..." Felicia sat there, dumbfounded, staring at the mess of broken plastic and metal in her hand.
"Well, that was gonna happen eventually in a 20-year old car. Hold on," Jacques said as he walked around the back of the SUV to her side to let her out. In her current getup, now complete with biker gloves and sunglasses, she looked about as approachable as a barbed-wire fence, especially standing next to Jacques, who had gone very out of his way to open her door for her. She snickered a little, thinking that she might look like a VIP with a bodyguard, if she'd come wearing a suit.
"What are you smirking about?" Jacques interrupted, as though reading her mind. "Let's go see what all the fuss is about."
After taking some time in the restroom to re-apply sunblock and other things, Felicia entered the conference room just in time to know that she hadn't missed anything of value. A lot of words like "unity" were used, and Felicia imagined the speech writers, no doubt sitting in the front row, smiling and congratulating themselves.
Bunch of schlock. Keep using those Pavlovian words. Tells me whose opinion matters here, Felicia thought bitterly, walking to join the others of the Cabin 2 group.
She began aggressively brushing dandelion seeds out of her hair as she stood against a nearby wall, as though she were too important for the others. But...
God, my legs are stiff as boards, but of course, the only empty seats are next to small children, she thought, considering that she might scare them and have to deal with the mom. She'd resigned herself to standing for now, as she listened to the other introductions.
Well... life gave her lemons, alright, she thought, smirking just a little bit at Mara's "Lemon Essence." Suddenly, having her hands covered in puncture wounds didn't seem so bad by comparison. But next, to her horror, her uncle was about to introduce himself.
"You said it," Jacques interjected, acknowledging Dolly and her comment about PETA. "Name's Jacques, I'm from Oklahoma, former Green Beret. Miss Hot Topic over there, with axle grease in her hair—and daggers in her eyes—" he adds, as Felicia glares over the rim of her sunglasses at him, eyes rolled up into her brow in that
Really? look. "—that's my niece."
"Felicia," she relents, still not sitting down.
"From New York," she added, not exactly lying.
"Essence of tobacco," Jacques finishes, making the "embarrassing uncle" face and earning a few chuckles.
"I'm a landlord, here to learn about how best to serve clients with plant essence," she lied, trying to sound as boring and generic as the speech they'd all just sat through.
Now that I think of it, that's actually a good question...
