Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (rooftoppers txt) 📕

pillows. That, and the nausea which now began to build inside her, promised to keep sleep at a distance.

Maureen tossed the bedding back onto the bed and felt her way across the creaking wood floor to the small bathroom that stood on the opposite side of the tiny studio apartment that had only been home for three weeks. She knew the way should be clear, but her feet still hadn’t memorized the path.

Her head still foggy from the nightmare, Maureen fumbled with the pull chain that hung along the wall next to the door. The harsh light from the single bulb disoriented her as she hunched over the sink. Staring at her reflection, she felt her knees buckle. She tried to steady herself using the sink, but it wasn’t enough.

At that moment, she lost control of herself and fell to her knees. Her stomach convulsed violently, and she only just crawled over to the toilet before a torrent of vomit erupted from her mouth. The world went upside down for a few moments, and a grizzly slideshow of the images from her sleep rushed before her eyes, burning themselves into her memory, all punctuated by the inverted U above a white door. Another convulsion drove her forward, and she spilled more of her stomach’s contents into the toilet—nothing but yellow bile and stomach acid.

The tempest continued in cycles until finally, stripped of nearly all her strength, Maureen lifted her hand one last time to the handle, flushed the last bits down the toilet, and gingerly pushed herself back into a seated position against the wall. It was only then, as she stared back through the door into the darkness of her apartment, that she became conscious of the tears slowly making their way down her cheeks. She raised a hand to her eyes and brushed away the moisture. It wasn’t much, and she wasn’t even sure why she was crying, but she felt somewhere deep inside of her a strange sense of disgust at her weakness. Her mother speaking.

Maureen quickly wiped her eyes one more time and, finding them dry again, struggled up to her feet and made her way back to the mirror. She examined her reflection. Her hair lay flat and stringy, still wet as if she had been caught out in the rain. Her eyes seemed slightly sunken in. She looked closer and saw that in her convulsions over the toilet, a blood vessel in her left eye had popped, and the white was now crisscrossed by ugly red spiderwebs. Frowning at her reflection, Maureen turned on the cold water tap and splashed her face. The water from the sink was usually cold, even when she turned on the hot water tap, but in that moment it felt as if a thousand icy needles hit her face all at once. It was both painful and exhilarating and cleared her senses so completely that she began to notice the dull throb in her temples. A headache had often accompanied the nightmares in the past, so it did not catch her by surprise. She knew just what to do if she wanted to ever get back to sleep.

Keeping the light on in the bathroom, Maureen plodded back to her bedside. She pulled the top drawer of her nightstand open and stuck her hand to the very back, searching for the familiar plastic bottle. She pulled it free and poured its contents into her hand. She turned slightly to allow the light to illuminate the dozen and a half little pink tablets until she found the half of one she was looking for. A half tablet of Darvocet, courtesy of Marie Adams, chased by a shot and a half of whiskey would get her back to sleep.

After putting the half pill into her mouth, she tipped the rest back into the bottle, and stuck it back where she had found it. She then shuffled over to the kitchen, which was really just some cabinets and a sink set on the wall with a refrigerator next to it. Maureen stooped as she reached the lower cabinets, searching for the bottle that she had taken from the bar where she spent her nights slinging drinks for the same half dozen people. In the three weeks since she started the job, she’d taken at least four bottles from the store room. It was the cheap stuff, not really fit for the consumption of decent individuals, and no one ever ordered it. Judging from the dust, she was fairly certain that Mr. Anderson had ordered the case more than ten years ago and was never going to reorder it. It might as well not go to waste, even if it did taste like lighter fluid. In truth, Maureen wasn’t scared about losing her job over some pilfered liquor. A big, fake smile, a tight, white tank top, and her most flattering pair of jeans was all it took to have her boss and those slobs perched on the bar stools ready to hand over their car keys to her. To her dismay, though, the spot in the cabinet where the whiskey usually was was empty. She forgot she had finished the bottle before going to bed.

Shaking her head, she moved over to the refrigerator and grumbled as she pulled open the door. There was still a third of a bottle of the three-dollar chardonnay, sitting on the shelf in the door next to a bottle of ketchup and four cans of vegetable juice. It was sour, and she really hadn’t liked it upon her first sip, but she’d take what she could get. There was no glassware in the apartment, and she really didn’t care to pour it into a plastic cup, so Maureen simply took a sip of the offending white wine from the bottle and sauntered back toward the pale glow of the bathroom.

She knew she had about thirty to forty-five minutes before the combination of the wine and the pill would