Madeleine had never been so angry in her whole life. She dried the cutlery one by one, fuming, a knife, a fork, another knife, a spoon. After each one was dry she'd throw it into the drawer as hard as her thin arms could, making a loud banging noise every time. Soon Shannon came out from the restaurant to see what the cacophony in the kitchen was.
- Hey keep it down. - started Shannon, before seeing the look on Madeleine's face. She'd heard of people having blood in their eyes before, but she always assumed it was just a form of speech. - Wow, are you ok sweetie?
- That fucking cunt-munching, motherfucking piece of shit Pat made me sit down in her office for a whole half an hour just so she could scream that fat ugly head of hers at me, just cause I messed up one order. One fucking order and she feels the need to scream at my face for ages. Who the fuck does she think she is to go around talking to people like that? She's not my mum. She doesn't pay my bills. She doesn't wash my underwear. All she does is come in every now and then and sit her fat ass in front of the computer all fucking day and leave us to deal with every fucking last thing, and when I make one mistake, one bloody mistake, she comes and bites my fucking head off. I hate her. I hate her more than Hitler hated the Jews. I can't even look at that pathetic excuse for a face she has without wanting to strangle her. I'm gonna...
- Slow down, Chris Brown. I get it, she's a bitch. We all know that. Go have a cigarrette, you really need to calm down. Take as long as you need, I'll deal with Pat if she comes looking for you again.
- Thanks Shan. Oh, and if she does come looking for me tell her she best hope she doesn't find me or I'll fuck her up so bad her own mum won't recognize her.
- Yeeeah, I'm not gonna say that. Off with you, go.
Madeleine stormed off to the lockers to find her cigarrettes and ran outside as fast as she could. As she puffed on her cigarrette (long, drawn out, angry puffs) she chewed on what had happened. It was Friday night, the busiest night the restaurant ever got, and she had had to deal with at least five people giving her attitude. Madeleine considered herself to be very good at her job, thank you very much, so she had smiled, apologised and tried her best to fix whatever was wrong each and every time, all the while secretly hoping an asteroid would hit the establishment to put her out of her misery and give all those whiny assholes what they deserved. And then Pat came in. As usual, the bitch strolled through the packed restaurant, not even so much as thinking about helping one of the obviously over-worked, stressed wait staff around her, went to her office and sat there for two hours doing God knows what. When she came out they were having a blessed moment of peace, with only three tables still waiting on orders. Madeleine, glad to have only one thing to do at that specific moment, took two desserts to a table, all smiles and politeness, set them down and went back to the kitchen in the hopes of finding something to snack on. She had half a ruined chocolate gateau in her mouth when Pat appeared. "Madeleine, in my office, now." she said, before storming off there herself. Without much choice in the matter, Madeleine followed, only to be treated to at least half an hour of unnecessary abuse. Apparently one of the desserts wasn't what the table had ordered, and the other one was supposed to have a side of cream. And, logically, that meant Madeleine was not only useless, but also stupid, unreliable and lazy, and she should count herself lucky that Pat, like the saint that she was, let her keep her job. And now here she was, dangeriously close to seriously contemplating murder.
Madeleine wasn't an agry person. Quite the contrary, actually. She always had a smile to give or a joke to make. It was one of the reasons why she was so good at customer service. But something about Pat just made her blood boil. Her ugly, blemished face, her high pitched voice, the way she dragged her left foot a little bit when she walked. Everything about her was just so infuriating, Madeleine could hardly stand it. She could feel the anger like nothing she'd felt before, revolving in her stomach, making her eyes cloudy, clenching her fists. She decided to pack her things and go after that cigarrette. Better to deal with the consequences for leaving halfway through a shift than being arrested for aggravated assault.
A warm shower and a marathon of Community later, and Madeleine was still just as enraged as before. No matter how much she tried to distract herself, she kept going back to thinking about what Pat had said, how wrong she was, what she should've said instead of just sitting there and taking it. Finally, she decided to just go sleep the rage off. She turned off her computer, snuggled under the duvet and fell asleep almost instantly.
And she dreamed. She was in an empty room. All the walls were white, almost blindingly so, and she couldn't see where the light was coming from. And Pat was there, mocking her, laughing and pointing. Madeleine tried running towards her, but the more she ran, the further away Pat got.
She could feel the rage building up inside her, warm in her belly and cold on her fingers, filling her up more and more and more, like something was pumping boiling oil inside her, making her swell up more and more and more and more, and Pat there, her ugly face twisted in laughter, Madeleine's jaw clenched so tight she could feel her teeth cracking, and that hate overflowing more and more and more and more and more until she couldn't hold it anymore. She started throwing up, gallons of a black sticky liquid, like molten asphalt, pouring out of her mouth, the foul smell making her more sick, making her retch up harder and the liquid coming out and out and out and out until it was over.
She looked up. Pat was still there, laughing, but it didn't seem to matter anymore. Madeleine felt light, airy, like she could fly if only she could jump high enough. She looked at the pool of steamy black goo at her feet, vaguely wondering how she could fit what looked like three swimming pools worth of liquid inside her petite body when something happened. Something started rising out of the liquid. At first she couldn't make out what it was, but soon she saw it was a person, twisting and turning, covered in the foul smelling goo, trying to break free. Fascinated, Madeleine watched the figure break through the muck and stand up. Without ever turning to face her, the creature ran towards Pat and started savagely attacking her, punching and kicking and biting and slashing and Madeleine cried for it to stop, but if it heard her it didn't care, it just kept on bashing and beating and thrashing until there was nothing left of Pat but a bloody mess of broken bones and spilling guts in the ground. Madeleine was crying, screaming. She wanted to run away, get as far away from that monster as it was humanly possible, but her legs had turned to lead and she couldn't move. Slowly, the creature turned around. Like in slow motion, her face (for it was a woman) turned towards Madeleine, and slowly she realised who it was. Her. Madeleine. An exact copy of herself. Except for the eyes. The eyes were red. But Madeleine only caught one glimpse of them before the whole world seemed to melt around her, and all the blood seemed to leave her body until she was awake.
Sitting up in her bed covered in sweat, Madeleine noticed she was shaking. "A nightmare. Only a nightmare." she told herself. Still trembling, she got up and went to the bathroom. After washing her face with some cold water and waking up a bit more, she stared into the mirror. Her eyes were the same dark and dull brown they always had been. It had all felt so... real. "Stupid dream." she thought, turning off the bathroom light and heading back to her bedroom. Once there, she got back in bed, put the covers over her and turned the light off. She had been staring off into darkness thinking about the dream when something caught her attention. On the corner of her room, amidst a darkness so thick she couldn't see anything else, were two flickering red lights. Madeleine rubbed her eyes and looked again. They were still there, only now they seemed to be brighter. With her heart on her throat, Madeleine debated if she should turn on the light first or just run. Before she could make up her mind, the red lights moved lightning fast, and all of a sudden hands squeezed her throat, harder and harder and harder, more painful than anything she'd felt before, her own face staring back at her with mad anger in those glowing red eyes, and she punched and scratched but the harder she fought, the harder the hands squeezed, and soon her strenght was leaving her, her vision getting blurry, her life leaving her, until all she could see were that pair of red eyes burying into her. Her last thought was of Pat, what had been Pat, with blood and guts and bones coming out of her. And she was sad.
