Erato's Musings

They had met by accident. Matthew had been assigned to room 21, but was put in room 12 because of a number-dyslexic nurse. Henna was properly in room 12. They sat in silence for hours, neither giving a large enough damn to make idle conversation.

"Henna," he said finally, speaking apparently to the wall. When neither the wall nor the girl responded, he went on speaking. "You had an allergic reaction to henna." His eyes rolled toward her. "Tramp stamp?"

"Oh. You're speaking to me?"

"Yes, you."

She woke herself from her blankness to look at him. He looked back at her from the next bed, that striking smile stitched ear to ear. "Hello, Henna girl. I'm Matthew. I've never failed at anything except dying."

“You bitch, you broke it.”

“I did not break it, and I’m not even convinced that it can be broken.”

Henna knelt on the cracked kitchen floor, cradling the strange creature’s head on her lap. She stroked its sleek head, running her palm from its odd funneling proboscis to its many-ridged flexible spine. Its body seemed so small, yet solid. Rigor mortis had set into it quickly, it seemed.

“Explain this, then,” Matt said, shaking the poor beast’s pronged tail at her. “Explain why this isn’t wagging with joy.”

“Maybe you broke it, think about that. I wasn’t in here either, maybe you killed it earlier and now you’re just trying to pin it on me out of guilt.” She paused to look down at the beast, and then back up at him. “What is it, anyway?”

A beat of silence followed her question as he sought the proper name of their peculiar felled friend. “Well, it’s… I remember seeing one in a really old housewife magazine. A vagum? A vagume? I think it’s called a vagume.”

“Legume?”

“That’s the one.”

“Are you trying to tell me that this is a peanut, and that it crawled into our kitchen to draw its last breaths?”

“Well. Yes.”

“I thought peanuts were smaller?” She had never actually seen one, and usually deferred to her much older and assumed to be more knowledgeable lover for matters of the unknown.

“Yes,” he said, now safe in the certainty that she had no better idea as to what it was, either. “Yes, it is.”

“Well, fuck,” she said, “crack the bitch open, I haven’t eaten since yesterbrekkie.”









y'all figured out what they're talking about, right?

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