Agoraphobia and Ecstasy Ch. 01-10

The fridge called to me, communicating in a strange silent language with my stomach that it had appetizing morsels that would appease my stress reaction and calm the churning of acid in my gut. As I passed by the door, I punched in the code to arm the alarm again, and unbuttoned my skirt, letting my waist feel relief from the choke hold the skirt had had on me all day. My feet slid on the ceramic tile floor, the panty hose I'd chosen making it a precarious walk. And nearly falling to my face, I gripped the bar island that separated the sitting room area from the kitchen appliances. The last thing I needed was to end up on my ass on the floor with bruises to announce my clumsiness.

I yanked those panty hose off so fast I tore them, a long run from my perfectly manicured fingernails racing all the way down the back of the right leg, and again feeling angry with myself I wadded them up and tossed them into the trash compacter under the end of the bar. The wine glasses on the wine rack which hung beside the refrigerator called my name. I chose a wide body glass and set it on the counter before pulling open the fridge to retrieve the bottle of Moscato I had chilling since breakfast, when I knew it would be a long day before it had even gotten started after burning my fingertip on the straightener and dropping my stylus into the toilet.

The first sip of wine was exquisite, chilling my tongue the perfect amount. The second was gone too quickly, me tipping the stemware up until the last drop of my sweet indulgence was drained from the glass and trickling down my throat. Another glass poured, another glass emptied and refilled again. I glanced at the clock on the microwave, six-forty-seven, but padded past it, choosing to ignore the grumbles in my stomach for a bit longer in favor of the delightful swirling in my head from the wine already. Carrying the Moscato with me, I made my way back across the room to the sofa where I plopped myself and picked up the remote, clicking the power button.

The wine on the table and my already half-empty glass in hand, I propped my feet on the glass coffee table, and listened to the chatter of a local newscaster speak about a string of robberies on the other side of town. I tossed the remote to the cushion beside me and rifled through my purse, pulling my phone out and opening the Facebook app. Keeping up with social media or news was one thing I did not do, but it was often comical to read posts from my so-called friends, their lives anything but ordinary, though I always wondered why people posted the best and worst parts of their lives essentially leaving out reality.

Jenny got a new car, a hybrid to show how environmentally friendly she was. Stewart's dog got hit by a car and needs hip surgery, poor thing has had multiple vet visits lately. Kelly was followed around her local shopping center for the fourth time this week by a strange man, and this time she called the police, who insisted she was perfectly safe the way the rest of us on Facebook told her, but the perceived threat was very real. Man, if I wouldn't love to get that girl into therapy and figure out exactly what happened to make her so paranoid.

"...third one in a string of disappearances. Authorities say they may be dealing with a serious threat and urge citizens to be aware of their surroundings at all times. There is no description for the perpetrator yet, but Police Chief O'Bannon believes they are close to discovering a connection between the victims..."

The television dragged my attention away from the drama of my phone and the fake lives of real people long enough to make me shake my head. As if it weren't bad enough that social media spread drama like the bubonic plague, the news media had to dramatize everything as if it were the end of the world. I rubbed my eyes and tipped my glass up, emptying it again, before placing it on the table next to the bottle and grabbing a throw pillow to cram behind my head as I lay back. The couch wasn't exactly comfortable, but I was worn out from the day and beginning to feel intoxicated. The sweetness of the wine tingled my insides, and I let the weights of my stressful day sink into to the tan upholstery, my limbs feeling drained of all energy.

Unfortunately, the pangs of arousal between my legs refused to allow me to relax. Sex was my stress relief, and it was only me here in this damn lonely house. Internally I cursed my damn mantra--"I don't do relationships"--because it meant a lot of NSA sex and self-pleasuring. The likes of which I had no energy for tonight despite the aching in my groin. I closed my eyes for one moment, trying to decide if I should shut the blinds to relieve the growing problem or not and found myself jerking awake.

A knock at the door roused me from a slumber the wine had pulled me into, the silver knocker placed on the solid wood tapping annoyingly, beckoning me off the sofa and toward the front of the house. I looked at microwave clock as I stood, nine-fifteen. I'd been sleeping more than two hours and my stomach was letting me have it, the wine and stomach acid from not having dinner churning up and making nausea reach up my throat. I hiccupped and a wave of dizziness made me sway a little more than I was prepared for. Stumbling away from the couch, I steadied myself with the wall for a support as I headed for the incessant clatter of whomever it was that was intruding upon my personal space that time of night.

I raised up on my tip toes and braced myself with open palms on the door as I peered through the peep hole, not an easy feat for someone as petite as myself. Genes, who even designed such ridiculous things as heredity and contracting the genetic traits of your biological parents? As if survival of the fittest had been rigged for certain gene pools to procreate and produce superior humans with longer legs and others created miniscule humans with stubby, spindly legs good for nothing. Being short had no advantages at all, unless you considered being small enough to play on the McDonald's playground an advantage. Even the BMW in my garage had to be custom fitted for my tiny appendages, with pedal extenders and a raised seat. Call it a mommy issue if you will but I blamed heredity on the great expenses to which I'd had to go in order to live life just like a normal person. First world problem, I know, but frustrating to say the least, and you wouldn't understand if you weren't a short person.

The orange Mario's logo on the ball cap worn by a burly man on the other side of my door told me there had been a mix up and my beautiful slumber had been invaded by an idiot who could not use his GPS properly. Dropping down to flat feet, I laid my forearm across the door and rested my forehead on that, waiting for a momentary heavy sensation to pass before swallowing the bile of nausea back down my throat and clearing it with a gentle cough, which stirred the wine and stomach acid making my gut churn again.

"I didn't order pizza!" I slurred loudly. It was bad; I was really drunk. And if I knew I was really drunk, so would Pizza Boy out there, with his unkempt beard laced with flecks of dead skin and fuzzy bits of who knows what. I'd only seen his face, but I'd seen enough to know he was probably a forty-something deadbeat who still lived in his mommy's basement and drank beer by the case.

"Look, lady, I just have a job to do. This says pizza for a Fox, Daphne Fox, 215 South Hickory Street." The man's voice was more annoying than his messy face, sounding like Dr. Peabody on that show we all watched as children, nasally and grating. I tried to respond, but I feared the contents of my stomach would explode out if I used my diaphragm, so instead I took slow shallow breaths hoping the urge to vomit would pass, cursing myself silently for drinking on an empty stomach. The idea of pizza appealed to me though, despite not having ordered one.

The knocker sounded again, and I quickly realized I was almost dozing standing up. It sounded like a hammer being pounded into my head and the vibration of it through the door, through my arm into my brain felt like a jack hammer, blasting away at my sense of propriety. I nearly whipped the door open and gave Fuzzy Beard a piece of my mind, but the way the alcohol had slowed my reaction time, it made the quick impulsive retort more like a lazy summer stroll through a park full of flowers when the sun is so hot you can barely breathe. But there I was standing in front of Fuzzy Beard, barely standing straight, my eyes seeing double, my body swaying uncontrollably.

"You need help, lady?"

I was drunk, not having a medical issue, yet the moron in front of me acted like he needed to be my knight in pizza armor, cotton polo stained with marinara sauce and all. My words got choked out when I tried to protest him entering my home, but I was not in any condition to protest, being guided by the calloused hand of Fuzzy Beard back through my front room to my sitting room and the sofa where I'd been sleeping.

"Damn drunks, drunk dialing and ordering with a credit card. People like you make it pointless for me to have a job. I depend on tips you know," Fuzzy Beard lectured as he propped my feet on the table and took the throw from the recliner across the room to cover me. I didn't see where he sat the pizza; the alcohol made sure of that. "You're lucky you got me to deliver the pie instead of Raymond, or you'd end up with your wallet missing. As it is, I have to go home to my children and explain why I didn't make enough tips to buy their goddamn school supplies."

I swiped at the air, hoping to reach my purse. I may be a bitch, but if I drunk dialed and ordered pizza I knew I was obligated to give a tip. I remember my dad was the pizza guy for a while, and we lived off those tips. That was of course long before the incident.

Not finding my purse anywhere, I looked up with apologetic eyes, at least I hoped they said "I'm sorry" and not some other drunken phrase he'd read the wrong way.

"Come back tomorrow--" I hiccupped again. "--and I will give you a tip then..." I fully intended to give that man a tip, despite his fuzzy, skin-flaked beard. He had been kind, and in the kind of world we lived in, kindness needed to be rewarded.

I didn't know when he left or if he took anything that belonged to me. I didn't think it would be hard to tell if something was missing or out of place anyway, not with my penchant for organization. Everything had it place, and right then my place was on the sofa, dozing off into oblivion after being tucked in by the pizza guy.

***

Chirping startled me awake. My phone danced around beneath the orange faux-velvet throw that covered my upper half. I'd wrestled with the thing all night long, it being too short to cover both my feet and my shoulders at the same time. My toes felt like icicles, despite it being mid-July and a sweltering heat wave blanketing much of Upstate New York. I groped around under the throw, searching for the menace that had awakened me, finding the phone shoved deep in the crevice between cushions. When I extracted it from its hiding spot and blinked my eyes into focus I saw Dr. Reginald Haymer's contact information flashing across the screen.

Saturday morning and good old Reggie boy decided he needed to wake me at--I glanced at the clock--seven-thirty? I silenced the call and dropped my phone in my lap, sitting up and stretching. Weekends were for sleeping in, but I was wide awake thanks to my alcohol-induced forgetfulness as pertaining to my technology, though falling asleep so early on a Friday night didn't exactly bode well for a long sleep in the next morning anyway.

I rubbed my eyes and looked down at the table, an empty bottle of Moscato sat there mocking me, next to a half-eaten ham and pineapple pizza, another few empty bottles of my favorite hard seltzer, a wine glass which lay on its side next to the Moscato bottle, and two paper plates. My neck screamed at me that I should have gone to bed rather than sleep on the couch, and I didn't remember ordering pizza, let alone eating half of it, and why had I gotten out two plates?

I massaged the back of my neck as I stood and padded to the kitchen, snagging a glass tumbler out of the dishwasher and filling it with ice and water from the dispenser on the front of the refrigerator. My head throbbed, and I felt like garbage. Drinking at home, alone, on a Friday night was not my typical idea of fun, and clearly I needed the accountability of at least one drinking partner.

The blackouts were getting more frequent lately, but I had chalked that up to my overly zealous will power forcing me to refrain from eating so much, leaving me vulnerable to a faster spike in blood-alcohol levels due to lack of anything else being in my digestive tract. The perfect body was unattainable, but tell that to my lack of self-esteem or confidence.

I turned around, leaning on the cupboard, and looked back at the mess my Friday night had left. My purse, briefcase, laptop bag, and jacket were still laying in a heap on the end of the couch next to where I had slept. My cell phone on the throw there in the impression left after I got up. The pizza box was from Mario's. I vaguely remembered a burly man with a fuzzy beard, but it was the only flash of anything in my memory that clued me in to what happened after I opened the bottle of wine. I only hoped I had given the man a decent tip.

3

The final touches in place for the article my boss commissioned me to do in place, I hit the submit button and navigated to the Zoom app on my desktop for a teleconference scheduled between my boss and me. Employee review time was something that always brought me a great deal of anxiety, though I never knew why. I'd never had an unfavorable review in my past, and I was prepared with all the proper paperwork and files, having filled out the employee questionnaire last week. Still a weight in my stomach had my fingers shivering as I typed in the meeting room access code and password.

I never felt like I fit in in the office, having scored the work-from-home position after freelancing as a writer for several years. When Gary and Barbra offered me the position as full-time writer in the sports section of the paper's online edition I had initially refused, seeing as the great Daphne Fox had way more experience in sports than I did, and I knew I would fail despite my superior writing abilities because my sheer ignorance of anything sports related would be very evident. Gary had pressed the matter, and Barbra, being the very insistent and severe person she was, had found a way to coerce me into writing in the editorial department for nearly seven months before a position in current events came open.

I'd struggled for years to land a similar position, and when they said it was in-office only, I had to reluctantly, and with much disdain on my part, though I hid that thoroughly, back out of the offer once again. Barbra washed her hands of the matter, looking to Steven Guthrie for the position, but Gary went straight to the head of HR and Mr. Nichols himself, insisting I be allowed to work from home, citing my numerous credentials of college certificates and prior experience writing for other journals.

It may have been my article on shoddy vaccine research done by the late Dr. Bradstreet published to the Washington Post the previous year that turned heads. I was hired immediately, and tech support came to my house to install the latest hardware, capable of transforming my home office into something worthy of such a massive company.

I sat there behind my state-of-the-art convertible desk, my fingers lightly tapping the keys of my Macbook Pro, always the newest version and always updated with the latest software. Gary and Barbra had not yet joined the meeting, and I awaited their stern faces, lifting my aluminum hydroflask to my lips and sipping the ice-cold water. As I set it back on the desk, I glanced out the picture window behind my computer screen, which overlooked my backyard. It wasn't much, only a twelve- by fifteen-foot cement pad enclosed by a six-foot privacy fence, but it was mine. I was proud to be called a homeowner, really.

After what had happened in my teenage years with Jessica and my adoptive family, the therapists had had me institutionalized, fearing I would be a danger to myself or others, and with much support and years of therapy, I was put into a halfway house where I struggled to even function. They didn't seem to understand my need for solitude. I was more than just an introvert. I had a fear of human interaction, not a phobia, clearly. I could speak with Daphne easily. With Dr. Haymer it was a bit harder; maybe that was why he suggested a therapist other than himself.

Looking over my tiny parcel of cement-covered Earth, I smiled to myself. I had flower boxes that grew all the color I needed, bird feeders which drew in the prettiest of species, and even a single chair and table, for those times I might feel inspired to sit outside and read a book, though I had never used it at all, and the hired gardener took care of the plants. Dr. Haymer suggested a large umbrella to shade me from the ever-looming presence of the great blue beyond that hovered overhead. I shuddered just thinking of the open sky and turned my eyes back to the computer screen where Gary and Barbra were chatting away about something. My audio seemed to be not working correctly.

A few clicks of my mouse, and I soon realized I had muted the channel at the end of our last call, which knowing me was because I'd had enough of Barbra's incessant droning on about company policy and propriety in journalism. She refused to take risks. Today I could already tell she was going to be a Karen, prattling on again before I even got the volume turned up enough to hear what she was saying. Her short brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun making the skin on the sides of her face pull back and causing her eyes to thin out at the corners as if she were of Asian descent though she was definitely German-American.

Gary rolled his eyes at her last comment which I only caught the tail end of, something about his wife's cocktail party Barbra had not been invited to. I don't really blame Gary's wife. No one wants a Karen at their cocktail party, especially not an neo-feminist--at least not one like Barbra.

I sat patiently watching the interchange until Gary noticed I was staring and then he greeted me with his typical rousing banter. "How's our favorite hermit today? Let's skip the review bullshit. You're doing just fine, my boy. Listen, I just got your email with the latest piece. This will draw a lot of sales, Kenj. The way the markets have been booming ever since that orange-faced loudmouth got elected... I'm surprised the Tribune is the only one reporting on it. You'd think the entire country would be celebrating such a high economy."

I smiled, not sure what to say. It wasn't like I was the one who caused the economy to swing upward. I didn't even pay attention to the markets really, though I had been for the past few months as I watched a particularly sneaky trader. I thought I had a lead on some insider trading that was going on, but it turned out I had been wrong. Still the information I gathered helped me with the story for about the markets rising and that made Gary happy. A happy boss is a good thing.

"How about something completely new? Something you've never done before?"

Gary looked very enthusiastic about a possible new assignment for me, but I was always nervous. They knew any assignment I took on would have to be one I could safely research from the confines of my home, which could be accomplished with the help of field photographers and private investigators when needed. Still, I had always been, and probably always would be, passed over for the best assignments due to my agoraphobia and various social anxieties. Never mind the constant urges to wash my hands or use hand sanitizer. No, I never got the big ones.