Everthing looked different

Everything looked different in the morning. She had hauled open her eyelids, weighed down by the drama of the night and lifted her bottom to try and untwist her nightdress. She slipped her leg out sideways from under the duvet and put one foot on the floor and there was a heavy pause. Her other foot wasn’t following quite as willingly as she had hoped and the upper half of her torso was as perfectly still and flat against the mattress as it had been in the seconds before she awoke.

Yesterday all her troubles had been so ordinary. Yesterday, she had been shopping in the January sales and indulged her passion for shoes. Somehow it seemed justifiable to buy limitless pairs of shoes provided that they were displayed with a red sticky label. Red was this season’s colour for Pamela and the shoes were red. Shiny red patent with three inch stilettos. And a matching handbag of course with a large buckle which reminded her of the way her new dress (in red) was pinched in at the waist by a wide leather belt (also new).

Red must have been on her mind. It’s a dangerous colour and Pamela felt dangerous. Her dreams that night had her doing dangerous things, driving a mini down the hill where she had been brought up but there were no brakes. Her red stilettos were pumping at the pedal and scuffing the back of the heels. She did a handbrake turn and caught a glimpse of her patent leather handbag in the footwell. There was a car coming down the hill and a car coming up the hill. A cyclist. A cyclist wearing a red jersey. There was a lot of blood flowing onto the tarmac. It didn’t match anything else at all.