D.C. Roberts

When I Change Clothes

The view never changed. Always summer. Always day.

Sometimes I’d wake up to find myself wearing boots and a thick coat. Why I put them on was beyond my understanding, but even when I felt the sweat build from underneath, flowing down my body like a stream—a brine—I never had the desire to take the winter clothing off.

I had grown used to the unexpected change in clothing. Some days a suit. Other’s a pair of swimming trunks and a tank top. They always clipped on secure, never too big or small. They never wrinkled, tore or lost color.

Stiff, but reliable.

I lived alone up until recently.

She was different. Huge eyes. Long lashes. Her legs weren’t as stiff as mine. A giant towering over me—her shadow consumed my very existence. Her arms were like noodles, and face oddly constructed.

But those eyes. Those eyes were like nothing I’d seen before.

The way they drooped from her face as if rocks tied to a string and sewn into her head. One higher than the other. Just looking at them caused me to cringe.

Her eyes seemed. Hairy?

When she’d lay on her stomach, dust and string stuck to her—lifting from the carpet. Her face covered in them, but her eyes. Black specs of dirt, lent that rested upon the floor—everything. It stuck to those large bulging pebbles.

And she didn’t blink.

She walked—moved about erratically as if being led by an unnatural force that only she could see.

Is this what they call ‘filled with the spirit?’

I watched in amazement as she danced and flew across the town, out of my sight—gone.

I was frightened, but not enough to scream—or lose sanity. I was afraid because, behind the smile, I knew her eyes cried for moisture.

I woke up the next morning to the same view, but I saw her lying against the town's out walls upon walking to the window. Her face was clean—neat. Eyes still bulbous and face deformed, but she was more pleasant to gaze at. Her hair had frilled up, but it was messy to begin with. Before I walked away, I saw something shoot from out the sky, beyond our plane of existence. Or maybe, I had just become aware of it.

It lifted the top of my roof off and split the house into symmetrical halves—the flooring shaking but keeping form. I fell on my back and went stiff. My joints locked in place. My mouth shut, and my eyelids lifted—opened and refusing to close.

They burned. My eyes burned profusely, but I could not blink. A creature with five appendages came into the house—its body never-ending. It took hold of me—and lifted me into the air.

The wind blew past, drying my eyes even further. And when I came to a halt, I was face to face with a being—beyond my recollection. It starred me up and down. Another creature—like the one holding me closed in.

It went black.

I woke up in my bed—still day outside. My heart thrashed within my chest cavity, threatening to tear through. I placed my hand against it—trying to calm myself. I came to pause as I grabbed hold of something hanging from my neck. I looked down into what was in my hand—a tie.

I was now in a suit.