Broken Central Air

I’m a sticky mess stuck to my bed-sheets: a Creamsicle slowly pulling - - tugging my body limb by limb from its wrapper. I’m getting more and more annoyed by the minute. My stupid fan is broken, so it teases me every fifteen seconds or so with a slight, rage-inducing breeze and for the other fifteen seconds it cackles at me.

I eye my bedroom door.

I . . . need . . . water, I utter, my mind in a clutter due to a lack of oxygen. But water is so . . . so  . . . so far a - - I cough up a dust cloud, - - way.

I have to literally drag myself to the kitchen: melting more and more with each step I take. I’m sweating my insides out, leaving a path of drips and drops like a bag of ice. It’s absolutely sweltering, I tell you. It’s like I drank a glass of sand or ate a pack of chalk.  Not chalkboard chalk, but the big thick colorful sticks of children’s chalk kids use on sidewalks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the inside of my mouth looked like a tie-dye shirt. Or an elaborate piece of blown glass because that’s exactly what it feels like every time I touch the tip ofmy tongue to the roof of my mouth --

Like I’m licking glass.

I round the corner. I see my fridge. My fridge sees me. Oh how she flirts. My salivary glands begin to moisten like I haven’t eaten for days and I’m staring at a selection of all my favorite snacks and treats. Except, snacks and treats in this case, of course, happen to be the coolness of my freezer.

I whip it open and the sensation, oh the sensation. It’s like I bit into a York peppermint patty and I’ve been magically spring-boarded to the peak of Everest. The coolness causes my cracked lips to muster a pain stricken smile. I stick my entire head in. Heaven. Nirvana. I’m saved for a brief moment from the sauna that is my apartment. I grab a solitary ice cube and place it on my cat-like tongue.

Shifth! Futh! I can’t even manage to swear. Then I remember the carnal rule about ice cube licking that I learned from the movie A Christmas Story -- very hot things and very cold things BOND TOGETHER! But it’s too late. The ice cube is attached to my tongue like an extended appendage.

Damn you Central Air. Damn you to hell.