Laughing Gas

Her nametag reads Dresea.

Short raven hair that looks dyed, somehow strange paired up with her celery colored eyes. She has a pretty smile. They say it takes 17 muscles to smile; I'm too tired to use them and simply nod as I pick up my backpack. The magazine pages shut on a perfume ad for "Mysterious." She waits for you to notice her, fall for her, and then before you know it, she has disappered from your life.

I sit in that leather dentist chair. Hate how it squeals and squeaks as you climb into it, as if advertising your weight. Anxiety has completely vanished, replaced by an eerie sense of calm. I wonder how Marie Antoinette felt as the blade loomed over her head.

He walks in wearing the standard white crisply-laundered coat. You would think these medical professionals would learn to wear red coats by now. Blood stains would not be easy to hide on this wonderful canvas. He briefly explains the surgical procedure. I can see his mouth move but I can't hear the words. He seems to be behind a pane of glass.

The gas mask is placed over my nose. I feel a shortage of breath as the gas works its way down my throat. Dresea's words completely evade me as I feel the pulse in my neck beating harder and harder. I am dying I am suffocating breathing through a tube attached to tanks in this oral surgeon's office while this woman lulls on about thinking happy thoughts.

My limbs no longer respond. I half-expect to turn around and see my own body, eyes wide and dead like a doll's as I float off. Sleep overtakes fear. I am so tired I just want to shut my eyes and forgot about the operation. I hear him ask if the gas is too powerful but I simply stare. He cracks a joke. I smile and it sticks, pasted behind like a Chesire smile. Dresea laughs and says I can close my mouth.

Shots of anisthetic shoot through in my mouth. I feel the needles piercing my gum but my mind has zoned out. Suddenly nothing matters- my mother's short temper, the disgraceful grades at school, the upcoming recital - nothing matters anymore.

As the gum numbs it gets harder to swallow. I ask Dresea if this is supposed to happen. She laughs and says It'd Better Be Or You'll Be Screaming Bloody Murder In A Few Minutes. The conversation turns to school and meanders off to guys from Leigh. Amazing what the gas can do - I would never have been caught dead talking about hot guys while I was sane.

He opens my mouth. I can hear nasty scraping of metal to bone yet I cannot feel a thing. I sit there, lost in my own daydreams as they cut away the gum and expose the tooth underneath. The noises stop as I feel string repeatedly brush against my lip. I know they have begun to stitch the skin upwards, yet I am completely out of it, dreaming of things I'd never do.

The trip to Wonderland ended in 40 minutes.

Juliet's Last Letter

Dear Rose Mortmain,

You left with the autumn's golden gilded pages, the scent of coffee and chocolate lingering in a trail of whispering footsteps. I watch your figure growing distant, ascending somewhere I cannot belong.

You could taste the scent of other flowers out there, superficial pleasures of crystal sugar petals and wisps of perfumery, meeting the Lilly, the Daisy, the Orchid, because you are Rose. Why stay rooted to the soil to the dirt when the sunlight favors your beauty and no one will notice those prickly thorns?

I am Juliet. I watched you turn to plastic, dancing in that plastic masquerade, surrounded by those faces we worshipped and those faces we hated. The pendulum heart once swung in my favor has now recoiled.

I waited a year for your reply but by then the mask sunk into your skin.

Without you, Rose, Juliet no longer exists. Juliet lives through letters, but without correspondants, letters are but memories fading to dust. Girls in black moth dresses sifting through our dust. Who? Rose Mortmain has long disappeared.

A Capulet once followed a Montague to the grave.

Die Juliet.

-J. Kitteridge