It wasn’t Candy

One morning, or possible afternoon, I awoke from a sleep.  I was in my bedroom of the apartment we moved to after the hurricane. I had a daybed. It was white. The room was white. The blinds were white. The sun would stream in through the blinds magnifying the whiteness of this room. My memories of this room were bright but the times were dark. I was still sharing a room with my sister. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There was something stuck in my eyebrow. I yanked it out and cursed my gross sister for eating candy in the bed, crunching on lollipops, causing me to have candy stuck in my eyebrow. I flopped back onto the bed and looked over the books on my bookshelf. There also happened to be a bottle of flea and tick spray for my cat on the shelf. I wanted a book, but instead stared at that bottle. I was transfixed by the picture of the tick in particular. Almost as if under a spell, I lifted myself up from the bed and went back to the bathroom and looked in the direction where I flung that piece of candy. There it was. A tick, fat with the blood of my face, crawling away. -Jessica M.