Alex rolled over in her ample double bed, feeling the 200 pima count cotton sheets brush against her twenty something dandruffed skin like a blanket of fine sand, and squinted from beneath her pillow at the pure sneeze inducing sunlight beginning to form slatted reflections through her Levilor blinds on her pale yellow walls. She glanced quickly at the red digital numbers on her black alarm clock, briefly thinking about the uselessness of an alarm clock to someone who was always alarmed but never needed to get up at any particular hour and went to bed at an even less particular hour, if sleep even decided to visit her. In fact, she had been sleeping so erratically lately, had seen for instance, 4:16 am on the clock on more than one occasion in the last week, and would probably see 5:23 am that night/morning/day as well, that she had not even thought about setting an alarm clock in weeks. It served more as an object that could potentially indicate to any unforeseen guests that a normal average twenty-somethinger who slept 8 hours a night and did laundry on Sundays and flopped around in slippers on lazy evenings lived in that apartment. Although, lately Alex was thinking about completely forgetting the concept of guests, the concept of conversation with other breathing people, because it was a long time back when she knew herself in another way, not the way she was herself when she woke up that morning and squinted at those slatty reflections that seemed to yell at her louder than the blaring alarm.

On most recent mornings, like this one, Alex yelled back to herself or out loud, depending on whether you think a tree falls even if no one hears it, Shut up Alex and rolled over, closed her eyes tightly and tried to trick her brain into settling back into sleep by recalling childhood memories, usually based loosely on old pictures of herself in various stages of her life that she had looked at habitually in her parents house over the course of the past 15 years. She either genuinely associated a specific memory with a corresponding picture, or used the pictures as the basis for self-created memories that, having been created so long ago, had become true memories in her head, despite their fictive origins. Ninety percent of the time, though, as Alex put slide after slide into her mental projector and flipped her way through them systematically, with a flash of black between each one, and a chaa-clik-chaa-clik she would feel like her left eye was watching memory slides, as her right eye was coupling the memory slides with hypothetical horrific memory slides, causing a slide of Alex with an ice cream cone to become a slide of Alex with an ice cream cone the moment before she was thrown into a lake with a rock tied to her ankle by the kidnapper who had kept her in his camel brown van for a week tied to a black and white television that blared static fuzz into her ear constantly. Even though the kidnapping, van, thrown into a lake sequence had not happened, nor would it ever happen since the real or fictive ice cream cone eating memory had passed at least 15 years ago, Alexs imagination never failed to carry her away for moments, minutes, days at times, to a place she did not want to go but was involuntarily brought to, usually on a fast, auto piloted motorcycle.

As she tried to fall asleep on such sun drenched mornings as this one, or on moon drenched nights prior to the point that she got up and resigned herself to the fact that it was fine, she was definitely just not sleeping, the process of going through the memory slides did not work effectively at bringing on sleep. In fact, it not only didnt work, but induced more anxiety and restlessness within Alexs head, leading to less sleep and more strange thoughts and wanderings that would take over her brain on and off throughout the day. She had some attic up there where a bunch of thoughts cooked fondue, drank champagne, snorted coke and made love while she walked around trying to live her life and keep them down. Even when they werent screaming or raging though, she could still hear them scampering about, causing the hard wood floor of this attic space to creak loudly, reverberating all the way down to the basement.

On this particular morning, where we began, Alex didnt have luck putting her slide projector to sleep and so at around eleven, no, exactly 11:12 am, she sat up in bed and took stock of her physical state, the way she began every day, ensuring that nothing was haywire before really getting up. First, numbness. No, she had no numbness today, all feet, hands arms and legs felt like they were receiving blood flow and were securely attached to body. Check. Second, stomach. Nope, stomach was still not feeling right because of constipation, stomach tumor, last nights pizza, nervousness, birth control pill, lactose intolerance, or sleeping pills, not sure which, but Alex decided long ago that stomach strangeness was acceptable and in fact, had become rather familiar and in a way, welcomed, because it symbolized stability, constancy, consistency. It was always there and never got worse, was just always a little off meaning there was burpiness, gassiness, acheness, but all at the diagnostic point of slight meaning that they had not progressed to severe, meaning that whatever it was, it was not deadly. Good. Check. Next, she moved to her neck area. Yes, neck still feeling kind of tight due to stress, schoolwork, too much writing, posture, the way she sat while reading, the way she ran, too much weight lifting at gym, tendonitis (provided there were tendons in the back of her necknote to self to ask doctor), pinched nerve, or general knot in area. Okay, when she had money she would get a massage. Until then, check. Moving on to heartbeat.. all seemed well with heart, steady and not too fast or too slow.moving onto head, brain, projector. Slight head ache, normal. Probably result of neck and or stomach and or pills and or tiredness. Nothing to worry about, just a slight head ache like everyone gets, like the people on those Bayer adds, like the muscularly stressed athletes across the world, like healthy beautiful actresses on the cover of People magazine did. Headache was fine, in fact, in same category as stomach butterflies and was not to be associated -until vomiting set in, which, of course, could happen at any moment with any life-threatening disease. Chuuuh-eck next to the head, physical alls good.

Lastly, head mental. Alex took in a deep breath while sitting up in bed still and noted the following: Let the Sunshine In, a song she loved as a kid, was playing on her brains record player over and over and over sort of as the background to her morning. That was normal, the song stuck in head thing, and this morning the song was playing at a fairly acceptable speed in that the voice singing it sounded pleasant and cheery, not like Alvin and the Chipmunks squeaky pitched, which is what happened on some mornings when the record speed was revved up too high, causing the song to play at a ridiculous speed, in that Alex could jam the entire songs lyrics into 30 seconds, with the crescendo part coming too fast, and the instrumental end practically on top of the second refrain. The mock speed recording mornings, however, were always preferred to those mornings (and nights) when the record player decided it wanted to listed to a scratchy compilation album that played something like, Somewhere over the rainbow.a nigga with a motherfuckingunHello, Dolly, well heeeeelooo dolly its so nice to have you back where you belong...youre looking swell dollywecantelltdollyyourestillgoingyoure stillcrowingyourestillDECK the halls with bows of holly falalalalalalalalatis the season to beSomeday youll find it the rainbow connection theloversthedreamersandmetheloversthedreamersandmetheloversthedreamersandmememememememememememememememe Shut up Alex! On those mornings, on the scratchy broken record ones, concentrating on anything but getting out of the front row of the concert was nearly impossible, and when Alex had to go out on such days, or had to talk to someone like her sister or a friend who had not caught on to the fact that she did not really have the time or want to put in the effort to be someones friend, it was hell on earth because as her friend droned on about her bad date last night, she would be trying to concentrate on the friends words while suppressing the shouting records, usually causing the friends words to become further jumbled by being incorporated into the songs playing on Alexs record player, becoming lyrics if you will to new hybrid numbers that sounded much like a soap opera set to Bjork with Santas elves as the back up vocalists.

On this morning though, the Let the Sunshine In morning, Alex felt pretty damn good and after the aforementioned exam, she got out of bed and walked over to her mirror, where she took a surface appearance inventory. She had four or five small blemishes on her chin, probably caused by birth control pills, too much stress, sweat from running, chocolate covered peanuts she ate last night, drool while she slept, or skin disease, ho hum, she would live with them. Her eyes looked good, pupils normal size, not really big and dilated like they were the one night about a month ago when she thought she was going insane for no reason, and her eyebrows felt normal and looked nice and symmetrical. Symmetry is always welcome. Body felt good. She had gained a few pounds over the last month, which was good, since people had been telling her she looked too skinny, so she began eating like a cow, ingesting everything she could find to build some hips. Now, she finally had some fleshy curves below her waist, and she looked like one of those cuteish short girls, not one of those waifish short girls, which is what she preferred, but if meant people would stop asking her to eat more then fine, shes stuff herself silly so that she could wear a size 2 instead of a 0 and people wouldnt worry about her anymore. Check. Getting plumper. Good, not anorexic, not bulimic, running but eating healthily, alls hunky-dory. Check.

Alex was feeling complete and wrapping up the mornings mental and physical inventory, and was moving on to clothing herself, signifying the start to another days as a secretly self diagnosed unstable but outwardly normal twentysomething, which had become her self-given classification. The days eventsundefined. She glanced out her window again at the sun drenched northern California green and lighter green and lightest green leafery and decided that yet again it would be a perfect 10 cerulean blue dry windy straight hair causing sharp shadow contrast day, and for the 10th time that month, she thought for a second about how she wished in would just rain so that she could run quickly to the coffee shop a few blocks away, gently squishing her sneakers in puddles, order a large coffee and a blueberry muffin for there, add the perfect amount of half and half and sugar to her coffee so that it was a nice rich brown color, maple, and then shed sit in the corner table and read and write, a little of one followed by a little of the other, followed by a little of one, followed by a little of the other, while fresh rain drops dripped slowly down the smooth light blue appearing glass that separated her from the damp flag stone veranda where she would sit and do the same on days like this day, when, dammit, it was perfect 10 sunny balmy breezy youd have to be crazy to not sit outside days. She pulled on her favorite dark but not too dark blue jeans and a soft turquoise long sleeve tshirt from the gap that fit her nicely and made her otherwise flat chest look slightly more ample than it actually was.

Dressed with no troubles, Let the Sunshine In was still playing, but had gotten slightly softer and more droned out since Alex was focusing on real, tangible things at the moment, like finding the book she felt like reading that morning. It was like the record player had moved slightly farther to the back of her studio, as to make room for things like Organizing yourself and Steps Needed to Leave the Apartment. She had misplaced the book she was reading at the time for the 10th time that week, even though her apartment was a simple studio with a kitchen corner and a bed that doubled as her couch when she felt like having a couch, which lately hadnt been very often considering the hours she kept. The bed now felt more like a cloud that sat stagnant in one corner of the apartment, inviting Alex to jump onto it, falsely promising to be soft, marshmallow like and bouncy, a perfect place to sleep, while it secretly would really make Alex feel like she was falling out of control through a midnight sky that did not have orienting stars or cushioning clouds to soften the descent.

After looking in all the likely places for her book under the bed, on the glass table that served as her desk, bill pile holder, and file cabinet, on her bookshelves and on the kitchen counter she remembered that in fact she had unfortunately left the book in her friend Jamies car and therefore would have to read something else on the Let the Sunshine In dancing light morning because Jamie was at work and would not be back in the East Bay area until after 7 that night, commuting into the city. That was fine, because Alex was luckily in the middle of at least four different books at the time, two in English, two in French because she was starting graduate school in a few short weeks and should be priming her waning accent and fluency instead of taking the easy route, which was reading good fiction by modern American authors who were giving her insight into nothing except her own self absorbed world. But, she grabbed an Oprahs Book Club novel, easily accessible on the book shelf, and one of her twenty notebooks, today the red one with the grid like paper that reminded her of mathematicians, which she definitely was not and was the reason she had chosen the notebook because it was unpredictable, it was unexpected, and it just plain did not go, except in the sense that it went because of the fact that it was opposing, but only certain people would ever understand that logic.

She locked the door of her apartment, a second floor number in an old 70s style building that once was as hip as at the Brady familys ranch house but was now resembling one of those strange motels that pop up in movies filmed in Mexico, or made to look like they were filmed in Mexico but really take place in Texas, some old Batesesque motel minus the grandma in the basement plus the smoky, dark paneled, shag rug reception area. The rent there was relatively cheap and that was the main reason she had chosen it, that, and the fact it was only a stones throw, a pebbles skip, a Frisbee toss from the Alta Bates medical center, a hospital fully equipped with both an emergency room and out patient services, making Alex feel secure on bad days when she saw 4:16am and thought she wanted to run to the emergency room just so that the wave of panic passed her, and on good days, when the records were playing slowly and she thought, hell, Im really normal today, Im so normal I think Ill go buy a sponge for my sink, get a new belt, and then eat a healthy well balanced dinner at that soup and salad place after a run , then it was good to know there were out patient services, for those people who were making it on their own, doing great, shining stars. Actually, Alex pretty much was a shiny star and had never ended up in an inpatient kind of treatment center, never been committed or whatever it was that happened to truly crazy people who lost their minds. Instead, her head was like a red granny smith apple that a worm once and a while crept into, gnawed a hole at, and settled down for a week or twos worth of vacation before he decided to bother someone else. There was always the fear that he would stay there, would procreate, would take over and the hard white wise matter of Alexs brain would turn to a brown disintegrating mush that Alta Bates wouldnt be able to save and would bring out in a bowl to her parents saying, This is Alexs apple sauce while she lay in a bed with bars and heard nurses velcro-ing her wrists and ankles as she stared at the cerulean blue patch of sky she could see from her window, still slatted with the shadows of the same sun that shone on that morning.

After locking her door, Alex walked the three blocks down her flower polka-dotted street to a small unassuming chain free store zone where she would make the fist significant decision of her day, after having decided to get up of course, as to whether she wanted coffee shop A or coffee shop B. Coffee shop A signified quiet, no lines, sterile, good coffee, yummy pumpkin muffin, okay bagel options, boring straight wannabe intellectual people and unfriendly staff. Coffee shop B signified loud, boisterous, clanking, dirty, lines, good coffee, yummy blueberry muffins, not so hot bagels, all walks of life, Spanish speaking fast-moving staff. She usually opted for B, unless in a particularly anxious mood, where the noise and Crayola crayon box of people in B might make her too self- conscious, too antsy, too claustrophobic. Today was a good day, an out patient kind of day, definitely a coffee shop B kind of morning. She slid into line, got ready to make her choices and eyed the café for an open table as she waited. The line was not too long, so she ordered her blueberry muffin and made her coffee maple in a few short minutes and scouted out a cozy corner table that would have been perfect had those rain drops been rolling down the glass, but instead, she would have to enjoy the suns warmth as it made the top of her hair hot and her jeans itchy as she sat reading. After a few nibbles of muffin from the crusty golden brown cap to the dense blueberry bread, she had her first sip of the coffee, cautiously slurping it as to avoid the burning of her top palate, which if burned would result in a good two to three days of irritating skin peeling and a blandness to everything she ate and a vow to never drink anything when it was too hot again for the twentieth time. Thankfully, the burning was averted and Alex started in on her novel just as the red digital clock in her room changed to 12:02 pm. By 12:53 pm, blueberry muffin still in her stomach, she was lying dead at the bottom of her twelve-story apartment building. And everyone would wonder what got under the skin of pretty girls with nice sheets, red digital numbered alarm clocks, and small chests.  

                                                                                   Tara Daly