Emma's Comprehensive List of Injustices.

1. The name Renesmee.
2. The Genocide Studies class that is too full for me to now enroll in.
3. The timing of my writers block.
4. The fact that Twilight is now only showing one session a day, and yet, is not available on DVD for me to peruse at my own pleasure.
5. The sense of equilibrium I was 'blessed' with.
6. The high chance that I will genetically inherit my mother's thighs.
7. The bogus nose I have. All the better not to smell you with, my dear.
8. Global Warming.
9. The melting of snow, and in fact, the existence of Summer and Spring altogether.
10. My love for Cabriolet Crysler Cruisers juxtaposed with the unmerciful amount in my bank account.
11. My penchant for nachos and mint icecream, in direct review of point number 6.
12. That Edward Cullen is real to me only throughout non-waking hours.
13. That it does not snow in Sydney.
14. That my year 12 excursion to Rome was inexplicably cancelled.
15. That Meryl Streep has been nominated for 14 bloody Oscars, and as yet, has won only 2. Unfair to the max!
16. That seasons 1 and 2 of The Nanny have been released on DVD, and yet, the four delightful seasons remaining are still confined to tape.
17. That I now live nowhere near my two favourite stores in the world: Berkelouws, and Vinnies (which in Paddington, was three stories high!)
18. That I dropped avacado onto my new (and favourite) jeans yesterday, and am having extensive issues getting it out.
19. That I have to wait so long for the remaining three Twilight movies to be released.
20. That my year 12 business teacher gave me 99% in an assessment [placing me 2nd], because she thought that it would encourage me to 'Strive harder in my class' - WTF?!! Worst injustice EVER!

Ah, life is so unfair.

Burst.

He throws his rattling laugh at her. Unintentionally perhaps, but it still has the same nails-down-a-chalkboard effect as it bounces down the hallway. She grits her teeth. Clenches maybe? No, she clamps her mouth shut trying to subdue the hate that bubbles like acid in her stomach. She can feel it eating a hole clean through her.



It wasn't fair.



He had gone ballistic when he discovered the letters, words, sentences she had scratched into the backs of the doors. Things she had read, lyrics that got stuck, names of people that filled her head, going around and around."She had trusted many, but been unfamiliar with almost everyone but you." It scared her to have a mind so full- It felt like being on the boat in "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory" with Gene Wilder muttering away.

The only way she could fix it was to lay on her stomach in the half-darkness at dusk and scratch them out. "What happens in the heart simply happens."
Day after day for weeks she had methodically emptied her thoughts in the quiet rooms, while he sat, clutching a warming beer and watching mindless televsion.
Out of sight, out of mind.

He hadn't caught her in the act. It had been an unfortunate accident, the way the afternoon sun climbed in through the slanted blinds lighting up the raw markings like a neon sign in his peripherals."Gustav Flaubert"

Ballistic.



What hurt the most though, was when he took the desk key that she had used. It was a small, brass key her mother had carried on a red ribbon. After her mother left, she had taken it upon herself to be the keeper of the key. She had worn it around her ankle, and without the comforting weight- she felt lost. Like she had been cast off, into the same royal blue abyss her mother inhabited.



But she hadn't been cast off. She was tied to him by a thin red ribbon, reeled in by his rattling laugh.
Sitting at the end of the hall, curled like an unborn child, that laugh filled her until she thought she would burst.

Goddamn Summer.

Heat.

It broils beneath the surface of my tortured scarlett pores. Like the firefly, I too now pulse with a glow through the darkness; I am the light behind an open oven door.

My body - coloured red with the finess of a kindergarten savant - pulses vibrantly with pain, and will, I know, continue to change hue. Once a healthy alabaster, the angry primary will, sooner or later, give way to bilious yellow blisters that pop to leave behind raw, pink rings, and grey scales of dead skin. These I shall scrape away, just as one scrapes the blackened corpse of over-cooked toast. I relish the thought.

I feel rubbery and swollen - a basketball brilliantly baked by febric asphalt. Heat eminates from me as the bleak stench of decay eminates from a bloated corpse. I can see it creeping across the room, its gummy hands unpocketed and trailing over everything. Hot to the touch.

How I long to roll about in snow! To sizzle and steam until cooled and happy. Alas, I can do nothing but swelter and complain until the ruby layers rot.

I loathe summer.

Swelter.

The world is in slow-motion. It's like being submerged- I can feel the damp tendrils of hair snaking their way down my neck, trying to find a reprieve. Sweat pools in every concievable place. Inconceivable places. The air is gelatinous. I just want to escape.
I fan myself with ratty, dog-eared books piled up beside the bed. I sweep my fingers across salty skin, trying in vain, to absorb the liquid heat.
Flowers wilt. Posters peel. Feet expand.
My skin is soggy. All the water in the world has been dragged through hell and left hanging in the air- shimmering and damp. It clings to everything.

_____

I wake, wondering when we got a waterbed. I wonder why the water bed is leaking.
The darkness has disoriented me. I am scorched and thirsty. I must have become a vampire. This heat is not humanly possible.
Everything smells like salt and skin.
Sitting up, I run my thumb across your brow, your lip, your collar-bone. You are still there, hidden beneath a blanket of Summer.
Damn Summer. When will this ease up? Nights are meant to be cool, I want to be tangled up in you, but this heat makes me irritable. Some twisted part of my brain must tell me that being a bitch will lessen the invisible flames that are eating me alive. But nothing helps.
I'm prickly and hot and I'm sorry.

_____

That Star- Ted Hughes

That star
Will blow your hand off

That star
Will scramble your brains and your nerves

That star
Will frazzle your skin off

That star
Will turn everybody yellow and stinking

That star
Will scorch everythig dead fumed to its blueprint

That star
Will make the earth melt

That star. . .and so on.

And they surround us. And far into infinity.
These are the armies of the night.
There is no escape.
Not one of them is good, or friendly, or corruptible.

One chance remains: KEEP ON DIGGING THAT HOLE

KEEP ON DIGGING AWAY AT THAT HOLE.