MARBLE & SALT (Lesbian)

Chapter 2 (Part 1) FAMILY MATTERS IN BATHROOM

"You scared me to death! You've already humiliated me at the table! Isn't it enough? Have you come for more? You're too old to act like the main bitch from high school!" I blurted out the prepared speech in one breath. Of course, it sounded unconvincing and feigned.

The girl licked her lips. She keeps on standing indecently close to me for a person I met less than half an hour ago.

"Well... I wonder, when your little body doesn't not endure me, who will miss you more? Daddy or Mommy?"

"Get out of my way!" I growl. "I'm not going to listen..." I didn't finish because I couldn't say another word. Her hands were on my neck. At first, I didn't even feel her touch. It seems that she isn't squeezing it, but simply keeps her palms a millimeter away from my skin, but I cannot breathe. It's easier to move a dump truck than to throw her tenacious paws off me. I jerk my arms and legs, trying to free myself. My body is painfully demanding a breath of air: the exact eerie, tickling feeling when you hold your breath underwater a little longer than you should. It hurts. I want to go home... I want my mom. My eyes are getting cloudy.

Happy liberation comes unexpectedly.

I suck in air with an unpleasant whistle, but I still cannot restore normal breathing as if having a bronchospasm. I grab my neck trying to protect it or check if it is still there. I can't say the same about the blonde. There is nothing where her head used to be: just a nasty, bloodless stump... like a disgusting cut of a frozen meat joint. Her body stands for a while, and then slowly begins to fall, dissolving in the air. I sob like after a long tantrum, my lower lip is childishly trembling.

Through the dancing "stars" and "specks" in my eyes I notice a girl who is standing a meter away from me. She seems to be taller than I, but it's hard to tell, since I'm trembling on my bent legs leaning against the mirror. Her hair is straight, pitch black with some amazing bluish-glossy sheen. It barely reaches her shoulders, curling unruly at the very tips. In her left hand she holds a creepy, rusty hunting sword, tesak. For her convenience, it is leaning against her shoulder. She is wearing some kind of crumpled sweatpants of an incomprehensible color; one trouser leg is lifted up as if she had scratched her shin and forgot to pull it back. A simple tank top is slightly stretched and casually tucked into her pants. She's not wearing a bra, because even in the dim light of a blinking lamp, I can see her dark halos and, I would say, insolently protruding nipples. But my attention is drawn to her eyes: white irises with grayish-blue stains like in a marble. Similar, but barely noticeable lines, as if drawn with the finest brush, wriggle along her slightly tanned body. She looks like she was doing renovations in her apartment, and then accidentally ran into the rest room hall to chop off the head of some random blonde.

I know that I have to call for help, scream, maybe, but it is still hard to breathe. I cannot breathe to the very "end", to that pleasant satisfaction in my lungs, although, probably, this is a nervous hyperventilation, and not a total suffocation of my stupid, frail body. And there is nothing I need to save me from. The blonde bitch is gone... Instead, I whisper in a choked way, "Thank you." And then for the first time she pays attention to me. Her eyebrow crawls up in surprise, although her expression remains perfectly serene.

"Interesting..."

"I... Perhaps... it's time for me to go," I mumbled and stood on my leaden legs, trying to keep distance.

"It's more interesting," the girl says, looking at me with a cunning squint.

"I'm really grateful..."

"So you can see me, and you saw her too," she moves closer, leaning her rusty weapon against the wall. "I haven't met such people like you for a long time. It's sooo interesting..."

I closed my eyes as if being afraid of hers, and I tried to slip past her, but the girl did not let me pass, grabbing my forearms, pushing me back to the mirror.

My back had to feel at least some surface, but that did not happen. And again we stood in the same place, but it is definitely dimmer. The sounds of music outside the door were gone.

"What the heck is going on?" my voice seems to have cut through. "Where are we? What have you done to her?"

"I chopped off her head. Isn't it obvious?"

"I understood WHAT you cut off. Where did she go? Where did the body go? Couldn't she just fall through the floor?"

The girl is steadily looking at me, tilting her head to one side like a surprised puppy, "All strega ghosts disappear if you chop off their head with something iron. She won't be back for a while."

"What... D-Do you mean she could come back anytime?" I want to turn away from her gaze, but I can't.

"Don't be afraid, girl, your lifetime will be enough for her absence."

"What did she want from me?" I touch my neck with one hand and rough up my already disheveled hair with the other.

"Your body, of course," she answers as if stating the obvious fact that everyone should know.

"But why me?"

"I even feel a little sorry for you," she sighs. "You are an easy prey: emotional, depressed, vulnerable..."

"That's enough!"

"Don't you agree? You're just an "open door" for all evil spirits. It is strange that no one has taken possession of you before, has not entered your appetizing little body. How long would you have kept the strega in your body? A week? Maybe two? Hmm, but she had risked getting you before midnight on other witches' territory, when there are plenty of free, uncontrolled places everywhere. What did she find in you? I do not understand."

She moves even closer, almost whispering the last words into my lips. The smell of her hair is sweet and besotting, "Well, I am not a strega ghost, but such a trophy mustn't be left behind! And you will not get off with only – though, very nice – 'thank you'."