At first glance, Marie Carlotta Culdette was tickled pink with the interior of her most recent purchase.  The room was bare, with unwaxed ash floors dully reflecting the light sent cascading across the living room by the open door.  In both corners of the white-walled room were two nearly crystal clear rectangular windows, both deprived of curtains, and white streams of sunlight filtered in through their slightly smudged surfaces, revealing glowing specks of dust darting in and out of the band of illumination.  Somehow, the somewhat tiny square room with the two corridors leading off to the kitchen and bedroom with an adjoining bathroom appealed to her immensely, and, lit only by the warm afternoon rays of spring sun, it seemed somehow idyllic.

    And then someone turned on the lights.

    This particular action at this particular moment startled Marie and caused her to scream, not only because she was becoming so absorbed in the inside of her brand new, perfectly rectangular country house, but because, at that particular moment, one of the light bulbs in the socket affixed to the ceiling beneath a foggy globe decided that perhaps it would like to burn out now.  And it did, but only with the appropriate fanfare, which included a frightening pop.  Of course, this reaction to this particular event was particularly odd, because Marie was not the type of woman to scream her head off at anything--rats, mice, and also stalkers only made her wary, and it was rather unlike her to be startled and scream. Physically, she was a somewhat short, barely tan woman with attractive hazel eyes, a wonderfully contoured nose, and an odd cocktail of colours in her low-shoulder length hair--auburn with blonde highlights.  But mentally, she prided herself on her strength as a woman in an annoyingly male-dominated society.   Worst of all, it had been one of those stereo-typical woman screams, the kind that some male-chauvinist film director invented, and that eventually caught on and became rather popular with helpless women.  Marie was not the jumpy type, and rather fancied herself as a strong-willed woman with unfortunately caffeine-stunted growth.  She never screamed--except in the middle of the night when?

"Excuse me, Mr. Matthews, the light bulb startled me a bit," Marie explained somewhat arrogantly, stopping herself before her mind wandered back to that awful dream.  The thought of that milk-white hand crawling across her shoulder with finger motions similar to that of a spider's legs, and then that terrible cold feeling on the back of her neck, like a
million wintry streams rushing against the base of her spine, and the feeling of helpless dread that crawled over her next, and then?
 
"Oh, dear, I left my bags in the car, even my purse.  And the keys are in the ignition!  Thank goodness I don't think I locked the car doors," she rambled, wringing her hands.  She always talked incessantly when she felt  uncomfortable.  "I'm rather absent-minded for a thirty-one year old, don't you think?  At least I have nice hair? Oh!" Marie stopped herself as she realized, not only had she now presented herself as a jumpy, pompous fool with a helpless woman scream, but she had now proved herself insecure and made herself sound as though she were flirting with a real estate agent.  But then again, he was just a real estate agent, and she was unlikely to ever see him again in her life, so what did she care what he thought about her? She thought about this for a moment, and then concluded that she really did care a lot. But her mother had always told her that she worried too much about what other people thought, so she tried to swallow down the feelings pressing the part of her brain labeled "flaky New Yorker" and shut her mouth.

"Well, Miss Culdette, we all forget things," the real estate agent said smoothly.  He was a fairly tall man, with short blonde hair matted to his head and a receding hairline just beginning to show at forty-three.  His beige suit was crisp like an autumn leave, starched to an odd perfection, and a broad grin was set into his face, making Marie somewhat uneasy, because the smile did not show in his eyes.  Set like two shady emeralds on his tanned skin, the windows to the soul showed only a furtive satisfaction, as if he'd pulled the wool over Marie's eyes and tricked her into buying a house much smaller than she thought.  A house so small, Marie had discovered from a brief run-in with one of her new neighbors a couple months back, that it'd been on the market for about nine years now, and the inside, now that she saw it through better lighting, gave her little doubt that it was unattended for every one of those years.  Of course, Mrs. Gurdow had also shared with her the neighborhood gossip, and had none-too meekly raced to her car window when she saw her car coming by a few minutes ago, and offered her a fruit cake--left from the holidays, no doubt--as a "welcome to the Country" gift.  She'd left that in the car, too. Marie mentally scolded herself for wandering again.  The point was, she told herself sternly, that she very obviously knew that this house was barely the size of two trailers side by side, but it was the only thing in the price range of a single woman with a deli that was failing fast, even though it had just been opened less than six months ago.  It was not like she didn't know that, after all, though the omniscient Mr. Gavin Matthews seemed to disagree. All the while Marie had been hopelessly musing, the real estate agent in question was surveying the living room, as if he'd never seen it before.  While Marie had begun to consider the possibility of turning her deli into a semi-casual restaurant of sorts, Mr. Matthews decided to get himself out of the doorway and the minuscule house it belonged to before his claustrophobia kicked in. Putting both fists into his pockets and wrinkling up the beige coat he wore, the agent continued.
 
"Well, Miss Culdette, I believe I'll leave you to get accustomed with your new house," he offered piously, intent upon making a swift exit in the next four seconds.  "Good bye." Nearly breathing a sight of relief, he turned on his heel, and pulled both hands out of his pockets to shut the door behind him.

"Oh, do leave that open," Marie interrupted, not even realizing in her easily sidetracked mind that he was leaving until a very short moment ago.  "I have to fetch my bags." Gavin nodded, and then casually walked--as fast as one can possibly do while still remaining casual--down the slightly cracked front walk to his car, parked in the empty road, and didn't exhale until he had hastily jammed his keys into the ignition. What a nut case! Needless to say, Gavin Matthews thought Marie Carlotta Culdette more than a bit odd.  The feeling of lifting tension as he disappeared down the country road was indescribable. Meanwhile, Marie had allowed herself to become so absorbed in her surroundings that she had fallen directly on her backside while she was wavering in the fresh breeze coming through the open door, and was now fretting over whether or not she had a bruised tailbone.

When Gavin Matthews labeled Marie a nut case, he had no idea how incredibly close to the truth he was. There was a very certain reason why Marie had chosen to humble herself by purchasing the less than picture perfect county-bumpkin ranch house.  If one had seen her old flat in Denninsburgh, they would have thought her absolutely off her rocker to have left it in the first place, unless of course she was financially insecure.  But the fact was that Marie was far from being not-so-well off.

 Though her deli was rapidly deteriorating and may be on the road to yet another parking lot in the city, she had dabbled in Wall Street at a young age, upon the urgings of her rather upper-crust parents. Needless to say, her stocks were doing well at the moment, and the American stock market was a profitable wager, one could say.  And even if the value of those stocks plummeted, mother and father were all too ready to hand her a clump of hundred dollar bills, say, "Best wishes and go for it," and have her making another shaky stab at the big grown up world. Not so risky as, say, Vegas, but risky enough to cause her parents to break open their vault again.  The good Lord knows the darn thing probably had ivory locks.

 So why the heck did she leave her beautiful upper-flat, and an upper-flat with a great view, at that? And was it even mentioned that the flat also had some big windows made just to heighten the sensational scene of sunset?  Why would anyone in their right mind do a thing like that?
 
Well, the answer was simply that she was not in her right  mind, which is precisely why she moved.  Or, rather, had to move. Dreams are incredibly funny things.  They can make us wake ourselves up with our own laughter, leave us in tears, or, in this case, make us scream louder than lungs and vocal chords should allow.

 The fact was that every single night, Marie Carlotta Culdette suffered the same awful dream.  Everything was always tinted gray in this dream, cast that particular hue by a cloudy sky threatening to burst into lightning and rain.  She would just be standing in front of a stream, the waters as clear and clean as a piece of finely honed crystal, and even by looking at it she perceived that the water was sweet and pure.  To her back was a great spruce forest, nearly foreboding but mostly intriguing. She never knew how she got there.  She just was.  That was all she knew, except that the water was purer than the mind of an infant and sweeter than all the candy a child could want, and she was incredibly thirsty.
 
But when Marie stooped to partake of the fine waters, then something happened.  She had felt so serene looking at the water, knowing without anyone telling her, not that there was anyone to do this, that if she could just taste a drop of it all her fears and toil and laborious pains would wash away downstream and leave her soul free to float in unending happiness.  But just when her mouth lingered on the edge of eternally clear thoughts, that was when the spidery hand creeped over her shoulder.  That was when she could feel the arctic chill of a sharp blade against the skin at the back of her neck. She would have shivered, would have wriggled in dismay, but she was too afraid of the thin edge piercing her skin, or worse… And she was afraid of blood.
 
And all she could do was scream to the hawks gliding above in the gray sky, because there was no one else but the ghastly white figure behind her to hear.
 
And so, one morning, when Marie awoke with her spine tingling, throat drier than the Sahara, and voice cracked and raspy, she got up to get a glass of orange juice to wet her throat, and heard the sound of something being firmly taped upon her door.  An eviction notice. Because every time Marie dreamt, every time that she could not escape and her soul's freedom was denied by a pale hand with a dagger, she screamed bloody murder in her sleep and woke up the whole neighborhood and their dogs.
 
And so the only answer was to move into the country where everything was so distant that, literally, no one could hear her scream.  She had already been recommended a psychiatrist, and was scheduled to appear in her office in a couple weeks, when she could properly settle into her incredibly humble abode.  Her deli was failing, she'd soon have to call mother and father for more money, as much as she resented any hint of dependence, and furthermore, she was now officially being labeled a wacko by someone with a Ph.D..  Forget prosperous stocks, the times could be no worse.
 
But at least her tailbone wasn't bruised.

 Grasping the disgustingly sticky handles of a shopping cart, Marie valiantly marched into the supermarket, a small purse slung over her shoulder containing money and a pair of scissors to get rid of those nasty rough edges of torn out coupons.  Of all the things she was made to stand by and watch happen with no say in the matter whatsoever, badly torn coupon edges were something she simply would not tolerate. After all, if the outsides of coupons were meant to be crinkled and messy, then paper would have been made with edges like that in the first place. It simply wasn't efficient.
 
The automatically opening doors slid back somewhat violently as she approached, sticky fingered from an even stickier cart handle, and the sticky cart immediately caught its wheels in the ribbed entrance carpeting's edge.  Marie slammed forward into the sticky cart handle and succeeded to knock the wind out of herself in this manor.  Abashed, she glanced at the cloth just above the waist of her fine midnight blue suit just back from the dry cleaners yesterday and grew increasingly red as her adhesive-stained jacket would not come loose.  Separating the soft cotton-rayon mix from the cart handle, she gave her cart a hard shove to push it out of the rut.
 
Ramming her cart by mistake into a lotto vending machine, she muttered under her breath and cursed the evils of legalized gambling to make it seem as though she had just made a dent in the side of the cart for a reason.  Then, steering the wobbly wheels which rejoiced in screeching at each ninety degree angle turn, she paused not-so- briefly to
separate one of the complimentary papers full of coupons from the rest of the stack; not an easy task with sticky fingers.  When the paper was finally into the cart she had to rip it off her fingers to get it free, thus plastering a bold letter "b" onto her forefinger and contributing to an increasingly bad mood she was beginning to experience yet again.
 Removing a neatly folded, crisp piece of paper from her little purse with the colouring on the da rker end of the aquamarine colour pallet, Marie ran her fingers over the perfectly even crease in satisfaction.  Forcing a partially curled edge to lie flat, she unfolded the oblong decorative paper, garnished with pale water colour seashells and vividly coloured crabs peering out from beneath them, their tiny eyes focused on the sand coloured lines on the paper as though the blue chancellery hand ledger they supported were the key to life itself. Actually that was true, for the immaculate piece of paper was her freakishly neat shopping list.

 Skimming the paper's contents as though she could have possibly forgotten something, though her record was diminishing when she left her things in the car earlier that morning.  After unpacking her three suitcases and putting to use the most necessary items--a plush oriental-pattern carpet, toilet paper, tissues, and disinfectant--her hunger had grown on her until she plopped onto her soft little oriental rug, sat Indian style, right leg over left, and listened to the hallow sounds of her stomach growls echoing in her miniature house with only the carpet she sat upon to absorb the noise.
 
After five minutes of examining the different pitches and lengths of the sound of hunger, she resorted to shopping, because she'd eaten all of her food in her refrigerator in the week before her final eviction.  Of course her refrigerator hadn't been delivered yet, but that was beside the point.
 
Skimming the front page of the coupon paper, Marie briefly considered all the deals being offered--Butterball turkeys, store-brand veal, Dole salads, all exotic fruits, and Bailey's Irish Cream Ice Cream were all "fantastic discount specials".  Pity she didn't enjoy exotic fruits since heaven knows what kind of exotic insects might be crawling inside them, but she was rather partial to a very large bowl of ice cream now and then.
 
Shoving the adamant cart forward with renewed force, the sticky-handled squeaky metal contraption gave one final lurch of protest off the side of the ribbed carpet, and then contented itself with squealing down throughout the aisles.

Though the start did not bode well, Marie was fascinated by the fact that she could simply put her hand on a box of frozen breaded chicken and it would stick to her fingers "like magic", as it appeared to the onlookers. This made shopping quicker, since she did not have to fumble around with pulling one box out of forty, and it made for easy access to her shopping list since she had pasted it onto the handle of the sticky cart.
 
Partly condoled, she decided to purchase some Bailey's Irish Cream ice-cream to take away the rest of the stubbornly lingering after-effects of her ill fortune, and tossed it into the cart next to the various "feminine needs" items, some of the adhesive coming off with the cold surface.  Smiling, she rolled the sticky cart, the wheels screeching almost giddily, with as much grace as one possibly could considering the particular shopping cart her fingers were stuck to.
 
Browsing through the tabloid headlines, Marie waited in line for her turn to be snidely served by the young male cashier, most likely fresh out of high school and paying his way through college with a minimum wage job.  Judging by the way he was treating the woman in front of the man in front of her, he was in a particularly bad mood at the moment.  Well join the club, honey, she wanted to say, but discretion lead her to restrain herself for the moment, and she tossed a pack of gum into her cart.  She didn't chew the stuff often, but it made for something to tide you over till the next available meal.
 
As the cashier curtly muttered "have a nice day" Marie marked the young man as a good candidate for a valuable lesson requiring her excellent acting skills.  The best way to handle this kid was to give him a taste of his own medicine, and more or less out-annoy him, she decided with an all too crazed grin.  Behind her she could hear a man and a woman
chattering in low voices, and she was made alert by the sound of something in her cart shifting.
 
Looking down sharply, she saw a cute seven-year-old girl with adorably dark eyelashes and big brown eyes with long brown hair to match.  The strap of her faded sky blue shorts-overalls sliding off her shoulder to reveal the very common young girl shirt pattern of little clumps of flora, the little child was reaching over the side Marie's cart and lifting up her cylindrical Bailey's ice cream carton.  Her lips not-so-silently forming the words on the iced over carton, she looked up shyly at Marie, her hummingbird light voice quietly asking, "You eat Balley's Irush Cream ise-cream?"
 
Her heart snared for a moment by the childish pronunciation, she hesitated to regain her train of thought and then replied, "No, but I eat little children!"  Cute or not, little kids carried plantations-full of germs and this little girl was contaminating her "ise-cream".

 Eyes wide, the little girl relinquished the carton with a loud plunk and ran to throw her skinny arms around her mother's waist, the woman behind Marie.

 "You should be ashamed of yourself, scaring an innocent child like that," the mother's companion scolded, red-faced.  Decidedly assuming her role of the grouch, she turned to the couple, and immediately honed in on the ring fingers, finding exactly what she was looking for.
 
"Hmm, no wedding rings?" she answered cryptically, and turned to the cashier at the precise moment the man in front of her departed.