1.

The goosebumps. The goosebumps, they were authentic. Dermal anchors into the reality she wanted to know nothing about. The reality of the vacuous house-that-is -not-a-home, where windows were never opened and the smell of fermenting garbage mingled with pretentious patchouli perfume. The reality of citrus servitude, of shoes that were not hers (28 pairs worth of coquetry, elegance, refinement and ignorance that was not hers) at a door that was not hers. A cupboard of exotic spices that were not hers. A child that was not hers. A life that was not hers.

She was inclined to overdramatization. Authorial omniscience is not required to know that the tears, threats, tearing of clothes, turmoils, trials and tribulations that we witnessed in the mirror were all fake. Affected. Artificial. Concocted. Fabricated. Simulated. (consult the dictionary of synonyms for further clarifications.) Even that desperate self embrace that could have fooled a less keen eye, yes, even that was make-believe. The gestures were those of someone well-versed in the conventions of bathos: a hypocrite in the leading role of a harlequinade on pain, Little girl blue in an age of gender correctness, a mind turned magenta, a dompteur in the menagerie of grotesquely disproportionate MEmotions. Ernesta has found the Eye.

The Other was having a bath. That simple. He advocated the art of skeletal sentences. None of this baroque gravity in tone or rococo frieze- sentences. Soberness. No tautology. And the use of verbs, for god's sake. Verbs! Pragmatism. Cleanliness in style. As I was saying, He was having a bath.

Her head: a cornucopia of thoughts sprung out of perversity. Some of such sort, that sharing them would have been indiscretion. Her only excuse, the intimacy this opuscule would provide between her and the Other. But perhaps some other time. She is after all a pleasure delayer. And do not be mistaken: this is her game. I might type with a sympathetic hand, but she generates the chaos.

Anyway. All in good time. The hymen-hymn will be sung. Legs will spread with angelic innocence and then with the crude shrewdness of a Circe in demise. Lugubrious caverns will be explored. This I promise.