Sheets

Julia Breitkreutz

In your new apartment, the sliding closet doors are mirrored. Scratches cover the aluminum surface, and along the top edge, you notice slivers of tape. You imagine the woman who lived here before. Twenty-two and bubbly. Blasting Lady Gaga from a shitty speaker while taping overexposed Polaroids along the perimeter of this mirror. College friends framed in little squares (two of whom will stick around) and crumbled concert tickets. Mementos.

You imagine how the girl must have stood before the mirror—mini skirts and bodycon dresses tossed onto the unmade bed behind her. She’d be wearing a matte lipstick two shades too dark that brings out the bags beneath her eyes. Her mouth would be hanging open while she applied her waterproof mascara, laughing at something her friend (who is on speakerphone) said—smudging her eyeliner in the process.

You were once that girl.

#

You don’t like how the bed is facing that mirror—not one bit—and so during your first night in your new place, you use thumbtacks to pin a blue bed sheet over the closet doors. Blood stains turned dark brown inhabit the center of the wrinkled sheet. An oblong stain the width of a soccer ball. Small, misshapen circles splattered around the large stain. You squint. A Rorschach test. You make your vision go all blurry, and you swear that the stains are shifting, pulsating.

You remember that night. 

The Extra Heavy Maxi Pads, the box of Midol Complete on your bedside table. The wet dish towels you pressed against your belly had turned cold. You needed to toss them in the microwave again, but you couldn’t drag yourself out of bed. At some point, you fell asleep—wet hands covering (squeezing) your abdomen. Curled into a fetal position, you shivered beneath the duvet. Your blood leaked right through the pad, drenching your underwear, creeping down your thighs, before eventually seeping into the sheets, into the mattress. The next morning, a thick, rubbery, and walnut-sized thing plopped into the toilet. You made sure to close the toilet lid before you flushed.

It could have been saved, the sheet, if you’d soaked it in cold water right away, applied baking soda—as your grandmother taught you—but you couldn’t stand to be near it, so you slept on the couch for a week while the blood turned brown. 

#

“You murdered someone?” one man asks, and you just smile, uncross your legs. You shrug your shoulders, raise your eyebrows that you’d just plucked that morning. You feel powerful and mysterious, perched there on the edge of the bed. Femme fatale. You're thinking of a clever response—something involving a man who tried to get away—but then the man before you is taking off his pants, shoving you backwards, and he wouldn’t believe it, would he? The lies you could tell.

And at some point in all that sweating and thrusting and panting, the thumbtacks loosen along the edge of the wall and the stained sheet begins to fall down. You first notice the top right corner detach—flutter down—and you glimpse the ceiling fan spinning in the mirror. You wonder how the cloth will sound when it crumbles to the ground. Not a crash, but a much gentler sound, like the flapping of giant wings.

 From his position above you, the man cannot see that it's falling, and so he cannot know that you are able to watch it all: his shoulders, his ass, the curve of his upper body as he hunches over you—pounding into you faster now—as the sheet beneath you grows damp with sweat.

When it’s all over, the man will sigh (content) and wander into the bathroom, and while he’s gone, you will slink off the edge of the bed and onto the ground. You will begin to crawl around, carefully raking your hand across the carpet, picking up all the thumbtacks, cupping them in your right palm, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror on all fours.

You are on your knees, then on your feet, and finally, up onto your tiptoes—pinning the sheet back up before the man returns.

Julia Breitkreutz is a writer, artist, and a middle school English teacher based in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, and Five on the Fifth. When she is not writing or teaching, she can be found playing Gloria in the web series @mush__tv. Check out her Substack @apalelight to read more of her writing.