Barnyard Desires

Leona stood in the middle of the room, pointing at the ceiling. There was a small stain on the ceiling, more or less oval in shape, directly above her bed.

“It’s expanding,” she said.

Within a week the stain had tripled in size and begun to show faint signs of differentiation. Leona wondered at first whether it might be a tiny reproduction of her bed, but decided that the edges were too uneven. During the third week she was convinced that it was her own shadowy reflection, but the resemblance declined with each passing day. It was a human shape, unmistakably, but not her own.

“What delicate feet you have. I’ve never seen such feet!”

She was pleased by the sound of her voice drifting languidly through her bedroom. Her attitude toward the stain was changing. She did not deny the relationship between the stain and the rodents. No, she did not deny the unsavoury provenance of the shape but she felt that it was okay, that it was a natural part of her life.

“Where do you come from, my lonely one? Why have you chosen me?”

At other times she was plagued by doubts.

“Maybe I am only imagining,” she said. “Maybe it is my imagination, my own desire to be chosen.”

At such moments she grimly embraced her isolation.

“I have not been chosen at all,” she said. “Oh God, I will never be chosen.”