Mimi's Demons

Chapter 5: Orange Juice

A few months after Mimi's seventh birthday, her mother took her to a special part of the hospital manned by a security guard where all the doors were locked.

Mimi's stomach hurt. Her hands and feet were cold, despite the warm Spring sun outside.

The security guard pressed a button and the biggest, locked door opened. Past it the halls were long with light green walls and white linoleum floors. The lights seemed to bleach the color out of everything, making the veins in Mimi's hands look purple.

A young man in blue scrubs gave her a green shirt and pants like pajamas and banana yellow socks to wear. She was taken to a room with only a bed and a counter that had rounded edges and a bathroom that had a big squishy pad for a door.

Mimi didn't know why, but she felt like this was a punishment. Mother had been very upset ever since she'd found out that Tom had been 'sleeping' with other women ("Multiples!" her mother kept saying) and, though Mimi knew it couldn't ever be her fault that Tom did bad things like that, the way her mother had looked at her when she'd made her breakfast in bed...

Her mother's hands squeezing hers were warm, but when they left Mimi's hands were still cold and now damp too.

"It's only for a little bit," Mom said. "To observe you on some medicine. It should make the monsters go away."

Mimi shivered. The other day seeing a monster had made her throw up in class. It had been career day and some of the other parents of the students, definitely not Mimi's, had come in. One had come in with a terrible, black thing on her shoulder that seemed to suck in the light till Mimi couldn't even make out its shape anymore. She couldn't even remember what the mother had introduced herself as. She'd just heaved across her desk.

She'd been okay with agreeing to ignore the other monsters, including the one she sometimes glimpsed under her bed. For the most part, they ran away the moment she saw them, unless they were particularly attached to whoever they were clinging to. She didn't like looking long enough to test whether they would eventually go away the longer she looked at them, nor did she hang around within arm's reach of whatever hung out beneath her bed.

Then her mother left and Mimi was given pills and orange juice.

The next three days went by in a shaking, nausea, nightmare filled blur. And not once did the devils flickering around corners or peeking at her over shoulders disappear. If anything, they just laughed harder, their usually silent cackles popping up like the crackling white noise of a missing channel on the TV.

Mimi decided then that seeing monsters was better than being in that cold place swallowing pill-flavored orange juice.

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Like meeeeeee! Comment for meeeeeeeeeeee. Maybe it will get my shoulder to stop hurting and you can call yourself a doctor. Yaaaay. Still craving chocolate. No, I'm not fat, how dare you.