The Coke bottle lenses magnified Daphne’s watery green eyes as they danced over the colorful comic book pages. Her whistle was a male come-on, bandied about on the street in passing, when they liked the way a woman walked. She did it to show her excitement for her favorite character’s prowess as he battled the bad guys. Her double chin wattled with the pitch as she thumped the bed with her fist giggling at her victorious hero’s quip. Her celebration upset the box of chocolates that had been planted firmly against her side onto the soiled sheets of her narrow dorm bed. She knew she should be studying for an exam and writing a paper but the inked pages of fantasy had more allure. She tossed the confections back into the box keeping one in her pudgy fist to munch on, but got caught up in a scene as she bit into it dropping half of it down her protuberant belly. Daphne jumped and sent her hand to retrieve the candy piece. It left brown track marks on the bright pink satin negligee, which she’d worn for the occasion. She ignored the stains like she did the atomic fallout condition of her room. Daphne sucked the remnants of the candy off her fingers and pulled another comic book off the stack as she dropped the spent one on the floor. That afternoon she’d made her monthly trek to the local comic shop and bought the new issues of the fifteen series she read.

Her neck grew tired from the weight of her head being tipped forward too long, so she slide further down in the bed resting her head on the pillow rather than her torso leaning against it. She steadily grew weary as she studied the pages and drifted off to dream of erotic scenes with men in tights and their super human powers. As she dreamed, she tossed and turned wallowing in her chocolates and putting wrinkles and stains on the books still left on the mattress near the wall. Some were tossed out during her struggle. Her reading lamp was still burning brightly when she awoke at 4 a.m., a brown sticky mess with paper decorating her like Christmas tree ornaments. She cursed her clumsiness as she planted her foot on the floor and slipped on a pair of her grimy ripped underpants, nearly cracking her tailbone on the metal bed frame. The frequency of this accident earned her the nickname fumble legs. She righted herself and threw her gown onto the mounting clothes pile in the center of the floor, careful to peal off her paper treasures. She’d press them between a heavy stack of books later and they’d be good as new.

Copyright 2002 Kith Gelzand. All rights reserved.