The house smells like meat, slightly metallic or like burning fat.
When I was a child, I'd pull my shirt up over my head and run around the house like a stuck pig. I still do that, but only when I'm alone. Sometimes, even when I'm in public, I'll pull the neckline of my shirt up just under my eyes and squint.
I can't escape the smell of burning flesh by pulling my shirt over my head, or even by running out of the room like a stuck pig. I have nowhere else to go, so I feel my cheeks growing red from the blankets tucked around my body. The comforter is hot on my stomach, because I have the hem of my shirt pulled up over my breasts. I'm wearing my nude-colored bra, the kind you're not supposed to wear when you want to have sex the same night.
I'm not worried about having sex tonight.
The edges of my window frame are dark, and the clock reads twenty past eleven, so I know it's night. My bones feel heavy, and there's tension in my left thigh from where I stretched too hard this morning, so I know it's night. I'm alone, so I know it's night.
The redness in my cheeks has moved up to my ears, somehow starting at the back and wrapping around the soft skin, down the curve, stopping just at the tip of the earlobe. Everything is hot and red, except for the window framed by night.
When I was a child, I'd build forts of pillows behind the couch. The wall back there was cracked with age, the plaster protruding forth in a great bubble of white paint and drywall. I was in one of my smaller forts the day I knocked over the lamp. The light bulb shattered, and I cleaned up the shards one by one.
The room's so hot, and I've gotten rid of my blankets and comforter.
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