leeches were once considered an effective form of treatment for most maladies.

A tall, gaunt woman with an unforgiving air and an unforgivable nose came shuffling into my room today. She was harsh and frightening, an unspoken threat.  Like a whirlwind she whipped about, returning the room to it’s pristine move-in condition.  The bear was tucked away into a dresser drawer, vases and vases of bloomed flowers with handwritten sentiments were pitched, notes and glass and posies and all, every sign of life removed and distilled until there was nothing left but electrical plugs and white.  She opened the blinds too far and the starkness of the room jarred my senses, shocking me into high alert.  The remnants of Imogene that lazed about in my skin prickled under my dressings.

She moved too quickly, causing my eyelids and heart to flutter with nerves.  Every step she took had a horrible scrape-and-thud to it.  Already of a more than respectable height, I suppose she didn’t need the help of an extra inch or two but these beige-colored, government-issue heels were of no help of any kind to anybody.  Maybe orthopedic, but I didn’t look that close.  If I did I’m sure I would’ve found careful, exact stitching: “Property of One Special Agent Dana Scully”.  They were the type of very practical professional female shoe that was built to deliver a good, menacing “clack” but she moved too quickly and awkwardly, she sort of dragged her foot in a fashion that made some horrible scraping noise instead, and a thud with the stabilizing of her step. She finally stilled for a moment, veiny, claw-like hands grasped together at her chest as she rotated, cold shrew’s eyes making sure her work was to her own satisfaction.  Finally she took the edge of Imogene’s rickety folding chair and drew it over the floor producing an awful screech and squeal, all the way from the wall to my bedside.  She perched lightly and crossed her legs at the ankles and to the right, keeping the knobs of her knees pressed together like they had a nickel between them.  She rested her hands on the heavily starched oxford cloth of her sensibly long skirt and sort of just cocked her head at me.  Like an inquisitive bird. 

Imogene went from prickling to hissing, bucking wildly against that which contained her.

I looked back, equally curious.

“So. What brings you in.” It was a statement, not a question, and her voice sounded like acid and gravel.

“A good Samaritan.” I replied.

Her beady bird eyes narrowed behind a nose that crowed for attention.  “You’re quite ill,” she stated obviously.  “You very nearly succeeded in killing yourself.”

I know this woman.  I know everything about her. We meet people like this all our lives.  Despite her aviary characteristics, light and flighty and seemingly frail, she was no sparrow.  Her eyes were too fierce, too black, they darted all over my face and rarely blinked. Thin lips either set in disapproval or spilled the rigid articulation of such, her chin jutted out with a pride that becomes very great ignorance.  Her body may have been slight in it’s build but it was efficient, tense and teeming with anticipation. It looked too thin, but in reality it was just wildly lean. The way she sat on the edge of the chair, elbows bent and hands resting atop each other it was as though she were ready to take flight at any moment, ready to soar up and come screaming down at me, streamlined and practiced, to dive straight into my mouth and down my throat and burst through my body, cruel wings flapping and dripping with entrails and victory.

She was nothing but a vulture.

“I suppose you’re right,” I answered her, looking to the lake beyond.  There were no fish jumping, no ducks to name. It was like they knew a hunter was near.

She stiffened, nostrils flaring as if she could smell the death on me already.  “So you agree, you tried to kill yourself.” She statement/questioned me without really wanting an answer.  She all but licked her pencil-thin lips as her eyes bore into mine.  I could feel her scavenger’s senses sinking through what I thought was impenetrable gauze, sifting through what she saw as my remains, sniffing out the smell of death in me somewhere. 

I let my head loll to the side as I kept my focus on the lake, willing my fishy friends to the surface.

But she was relentless.  It seemed like hours of rhetorical questions that she for some reason expected answers to, and no matter what those answers were or what varying degrees of truth they contained she received them skeptically, with raised eyebrows and a menacing twitch in her jaw. Imogene’s memory went from angrily rebelling against my skin to quietly shrinking further into my blood vessels. Those eyes, piercing and attentive, searched my person for something claimed by death already. 

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. I wanted to throw myself between her and the looming, imminent danger, but there was nothing I could do.  I laid.  I looked. 

This withered old vulture droned on, encouraging me to “release my baggage” and “confront my demons”.  The acid in her voice chided me harshly for my weakness, my addiction, my obvious aching need for that girl. But the gravel… the gravel in her voice was like dry leaves over the pavement.  It whispered to every nook and cranny of myself, every sore, healing cell that I had once devoted to Imogene but now promised to save for her as I waited her return. That gravel from her voice floated gently, if not quite comfortingly, over the empty spaces Imogene had just fled, coaxing her to come out. 

Imogene, my Imogene, I’ll never let them have you.

Ravenous old carrion, she played both good cop and bad cop all at once, she threatened my will while tracking down every last hint of Imogene with a hawk’s accuracy and a bloodhound’s resolve.

Imogene, my Imogene, my want my wish my world my everything MINE.

After what seemed like forever, the yards of oxford and starch straightened out as she stood abruptly.  She towered over my bed, leaning ever so slightly and blocking my view of the lake.  I hadn’t seen fish or fowl during any of the several hours she mindfucked me anyway, so I finally dragged my eyes out of their fixed position and locked them onto hers.  Her neck never bent. She stared haughtily down that monstrous, intimidating nose, challenging me to break our mutual gaze.

“…ba-bump…”

Instantly, her predator’s stare dropped to my chest, her brow furrowing as her sight bore down on me.

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Suddenly and surprisingly, she relented. She practically smirked as she turned on her government-issue heel and shuffled out, pausing in the doorway just long enough to toss a cool “Tomorrow, then” over her thin shoulder.

And as she left as quickly as she'd come.

My chest heaved as I exhaled a breath I felt I’d held for hours.  A fish jumped in the lake outside. 

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. 

I slept soundly for quite some time, while memories of the most toxic, deadly thing I’d ever known rested safely in my failing heart, where I’d hid her.