quarantine life – KZ Rochelle

The Days of Our Pandemic: episode &2

apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)

See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of The Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…

When we left K & Z in the first part of episode &, K was telling Z about the importance of her shoulder in her plan to bust them out.

“I’ll ram through it Rochelle again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.”

Rochelle shrieked. She had not recovered from the attempt at escaping the encasement of these four walls in the recent past, the attempt that created a construction zone of her.

“And again,” said K.

“Don’t worry, Rochelle. I’ll manage this,” said Z.

But as Z attempted to assuage Rochelle, K swung both arms across her torso like Speedy Gonzalez getting ready to race, and off she went, sprinting toward the end of the bathroom. She ran past the door on her right, past Z on her left (who only saw a streak of color cross her line of sight), and left her feet like a catapulted stone from the Great Horse Catapult at Chateau Gaillard.

Thud. Z recognized the sound of contact.

“K! K! Where are you?!” Z, bewildered, searched the room but was at a severe disadvantage, residing within a mirror.

K took several big steps backwards, passing in front of Z in reverse.

“K! K! Look at me. Stop what you are doing. Look at me.”

Z tuned her out.

“I. Am. Breaking. Out. Of. Here,” said K to no one but herself.

She swung all but one appendage to her left, then threw them all to her right. Her body followed. She ran, ran, ran, and jumped. Into the wall. Thud.

“I. Am. Breaking. Out. Of. Here,” said K to no one but herself.

“K! Calm down.”

She swung all but one appendage to her left, then threw them all to her right. She ran, ran, ran, and jumped. Into the wall. Thud.

K rubbed her shoulder where a bruise formed faster than she could eat an eggplant, if she’d had an eggplant, but there were no eggplants at the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane (largely because the concept would have confused K — a plant of eggs?).

“I. Am. Breaking. Out. Of. Here,” said K to no one but herself.

“K! Listen to me!”

She swung all but one appendage to her left, then threw them all to her right. She ran, ran, ran, and jumped. Into the wall. Thud.

K held her shoulder lightly. Any pressure applied drew an “eeek!” from her lips.

“Z,” K crumbled. “I’m hurted.”

“Oh, K. It was inevitable.”

“I know, I know. This place is unexitable. But I want to exit, Z. I want to exit so bad.”

“Yes, K. We all do.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I have a plan, K. It’s a big plan. A plan that’s not quite finished yet, but it’s nearly there.”

“A plan for what Z?”

“I can’t give you the details yet. But suffice it to say, my plan will allow us to escape the confines of these four walls.”

Rochelle giggled at Z’s confidence.

“Silence, Rochelle,” said Z.

At that, silence fell inside the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane and K, Z, and Rochelle could all hear the faint cries of two rabbit clans outside.

“Z?” asked K when the silence no longer frightened her.

“Yes, K?”

“When will your plan be ready?”

“Soon, K.”

“Then what are we going to do today?”

“Read, K. Just read.”

K squinched her face to its left. She perused the room she sat in and found no books, just a couple magazines and a few bathroom jokes.

“I need to go get a book then,” said K. “Oh!” K lit up. “Are you sending us to the library?! Are we getting out of the walls by going to the library!?”

“The library is not in operation, K.”

K guffawed. “Of course not, Z. Libraries don’t have operations. They don’t even have doctors appointments.”

The mention of doctors appointments saddened K, even though she was the one to mention them, and she wiped her fingers across her eyebrow.

“You cannot go to the library!” said an irked Z.

“Why not?” asked a dumbfounded K, who was not as dumbfounded as Z thought, but might have been as dumb as Z thought. Or perhaps, more so.

“No one can!” Z exclaimed.

“Oh.” K thought. “Well, that’s very sad, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” said Z.

“But we can still read?”

“We can.”

“And that’s how we’ll escape the walls!”

“I suppose.”

“Yes! We can go to Oklahoma or Texas or Oregon or Florida or Massachusetts or India or the Big Rock Candy Mountains!”

“Anywhere the story takes you.”

“London or Paris or Tokyo or San Francisco or Oz or Narnia?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“See ya, Z!”

“One thing ere you go, K.”

“Yes, Z.”

“Before you go, just remember, when you close the book, you’re still here. You never left the confines of these four walls in a literal sense.”

“Yes, I am too leaving in a literary sense.”

“A literal sense! A literal sense, you dimwit!”

“Isn’t that what I said?” asked K.

Z sighed a mournful, longing sigh. As the sigh left her lungs, it took with it the energy that held her upright, and her head descended onto her shoulder despite the fact the angle added a literal pain in her neck to the figurative one.

K cricked her neck like a bird. She studied Z, but when Z didn’t say anything more, K shrugged her shoulders and exited the bathroom.

“Just you wait,” said Z. “My plan will work. And we will break free of the confines of these four walls. We will have our freedom to live again. Just you wait. Oh, oh, oh, just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait.”

Z didn’t catch herself, Reader, but I know you did. The call to a fictional character, the quoting of a fictional character, and the ignorance that she had done it is yet another sign to you and me that things inside the lavender home with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane were growing dire. They haven’t much time left, Reader.

But. At least they aren’t asking for their slippers or droning on about the rain in Spain. Not yet, anyway. Soon, though, you just might find them singing on the street where you live.

Just what does Z have in store for us? We will just have to wait, like K, and find out in the next episode of The Days of Our Pandemic.

Days of Our Pandemic: episode y3

apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)

See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…

When last we saw K and Z in episode y, part 2, they had a plan to leave the enclosure of these four walls in order to get K medical assistance. I know, you’re thinking about the multitude of medical assistances K requires, but, in this case, she suffered a laceration to the head. At Z’s insistence, the two were getting ready to leave the bathroom, leave the house, leave these four walls. But Z claimed K was forgetting something….

K held up the toilet paper. “Got the TP, Z.” She looked around the bathroom. She tried to remember if she was supposed to take the plumbing. Or was it the wet/dry vac? There was a towel on the floor. That didn’t seem like the place it should be. Maybe she was supposed to wrap herself in a towel. Was she supposed to stay fully clothed under the towel? That didn’t sound right. She was going to the doctor after all, the place she first attended in her birthday suit…

Z cooed, “What about,” then cawed, “ME YOU PEABRAIN?!”

“I didn’t pee in my brain. Did I, Z? Maybe I did hurt myself badder than I thought and my thoughts are not working. Oh no, a leak in my brain?”

“Nuthead.”

“Nuts, too!? I’m doomed.” K’s hands shot to her neck. She toddled and nearly fell, again. “I’m dying. I’m dying.”

“Then stop choking yourself,” Z told K.

“Oh.” K let her hands drop to her sides. “That fixed it.”

“And the doctor will fix the rest of what she can, but bring me with you.”

“Right-o, Z. Let’s go.”

K took Z to the garage, along with the toilet paper. She set Z on the passenger seat and buckled her in.

“Safety first, Z,” K said.

K started the car. She released the emergency break. She put the car in reverse.

“Don’t forget to open the garage, K,” said Z.

“Right-o, Z.”

The garage door opened. K and Z began to back out of the garage.

“We’re doing it. We’re doing it,” Z said. “We’re leaving this blasted house behind!”

“Yes! A blast from your behind!”

Z was too thrilled to deal with K, so she pretended not to hear her.

Just before K and Z reached the edge of the four walls of the lavender house with blue violet trimming on Wonky Way Lane, K hit the breaks.

“What are you doing, K? We’re almost out! We are leaving, escaping! Self-liberation! Emancipation! Let’s go!”

“Uhhh? Z? There’s something fishy behind us.”

“What?” Z turned to see, but she was in a mirror so she could not see behind her. “What is it?”

“Well, maybe fishy is the wrong word. There are no fish. It is kind of goldfish colored though.”

“What is it, K?”

“It’s a big, fiery wall of fire.”

“No!”

“Yes, Z. It is. I swear. I promise. It’s for real.”

“It’s a wall of fire?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure, K?”

“Quite, Z.”

Z’s gaze met the ground. “It’s a firewall,” she said.

“But it’s for real. I thought firewalls were virtual.”

“They are, K, but we live in a world where the lines between reality and virtuality are disappearing.”

“And reappearing as a real live fire wall?”

“Sure,” said Z.

“Then what will we do about my head, Z? Please don’t say cut it off. I like my head, Z. I wouldn’t like to live without my head.”

“You won’t, K,” said Z.

“Oh, thank you, Z,” said K.

“That’s not what I meant, K,” said Z.

“Oh, thank you, Z.”

They sat a moment, each worrying over the circumstance they found themselves in but for entirely different reasons.

“Z? It’s getting hot in here. Can we close the garage door, please?” asked K.

Z felt the loss of the near escape and recognized that closing the garage door meant closing the door to a successful escape from the enclosed by these four walls. Again.

Z exhaled a breath large enough to extinguish a fire — on a candle wick. “Yes, K,” she said. “Let’s go inside and call the doctor.”

“Oooh! Can I do a virtual visit, Z?”

“That’s the only thing you can do thanks to the real firewall, K.”

“Oh, that’s much better, Z. That means no shots!” said K.

“Just the one right through the heart of our escape plan.”

K snickered. “That one’s not real, Z.”

“I know,” said a downtrodden Z.

“You’re so silly.”

“Come on now. Back to the bathroom. You can give me a good look at you there and we will get you a bit cleaned up before we call the doctor.”

“That sounds like a plan, Z.”

“Oh, K. I’d slap you if I could.”

“Okay, Z.”

The two made a virtual appointment, called the doctor, and cleaned K’s head — which turned out not to be bleeding at all. No. K stored several sriracha packets in her hairline and the fall caused one to burst and squirt onto her right eyebrow. All remained as well as could be in the lavender house with violet blue trim on Wonky Way Lane. Which is, of course, to say things were not well at all.

Is Z out of ideas for good? Or will her ideas go bad? Or worse, might K take the reins to lead K and Z out of the enclosure of these four walls? Poor K and Z. What will they do next? Find out in the next episode of Days of Our Pandemic.

Days of Our Pandemic: episode y2

apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)

See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of The Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…

When last we saw K and Z in episode y, Z lamented her lack of creative energy and therefore her lack of a plan to escape the confinement of these four walls and K danced with her overflow of energy in the face of Draft Day.

“You want me to stop dancing, Z?”

“Yes, K.”

“Why, Z?”

“Because I need a plan and I cannot think of a plan with all dastardly distraction drowning my creative drive.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” said K, who stood statue still.

Z contemplated her recent efforts. The plumbing debacle, the foiled delivery, the perished paperclip predicament. Her ideas were unique. They were soluble. They should have been successful. But K always managed to get in the way of things going right or well.

K’s statuesque pose began to crumble. “Hey, Z, it’s hard being a statue.” K barely finished speaking before she burst into laughter. “Ba hahaha! It’s hard. Being a statue! Hahaha. Get it, Z? Ha! Because statues are stone. Haha. So they’re hard. Ha. Ha.”

“Hardy har har.” Z did not laugh. She deigned to be annoyed.

“HARDy HARD HARD! Hahaha!” K could not control herself.

“It’s a solemn, solitary tune on a day I cannot cogitate to create a plan. No laughter, please.”

K’s laughter ceased.

“What will you do, Z?” asked K.

“I don’t know. I’m afraid I have no plan to escape.”

“No plan to escape!?”

“No, not really. And a doleful mood haunts my horizon. I have to have something joyful to look forward to in the paucity of escape. We must organize a virtual happy hour.”

K considered this. “Why must we be virtually happy when we can be reality happy? And why for only one hour? I think there are 28 hours in a day. Or is it 11?”

“No, K. You misunderstand, as usual. A virtual happy hour exists in a virtual shared space like Zoom or Remo or Google or Duo or Facetime.”

“Ohhhhhhh. Okay, Z. Is that how we plan to escape the confoundments of these four walls.”

“There’s no escaping these confounding misunderstandings, K. I throw in the towel.”

“That towel?” K pointed to the damp towel left on the floor from her pre-dawn shower.

“What’s the use, anymore? We will call a virtual happy hour and drink ourselves out of this blasted mindset.”

“So that’s how we’ll escape the confounds of these four walls,” said K, believing she was understanding. K continued toward the towel. “I don’t know what you need this towel for.” She reached for it. “But you seem sad so I’ll get it for you.”

As K’s arm extended from her torso, her foot tried to move forward. It tried only because it was caught on a taut hose, accessory to the wet/dry vac required to help tend to the water damage in the bathroom. The hose held across the floor like a finish line that did not give way with the first finisher. It caught K’s foot and sent K flying forward. She knocked her knee on the towel and her forehead on the floor.

Rochelle cackled in earnest.

“Not! Funny! Ro! Chelle!” said K, slowly pushing herself up to a seated position.

“I must agree, Rochelle. This is not funny. Are you okay, K?”

K turned toward the mirror to find Z. She smiled broadly and giggled because she was a broadly smiling braud. Even though she didn’t really like that word.

“Yeah. I’m okay. Thank you, Z.” She giggled some more.

“Come here, K.”

K’s fingers grabbed the counter and pulled her upright. She stood a moment then hunched her shoulders over the countertop, resting her face in her hands and her elbows on the counter. She smiled an idiot’s smile. Which was none too different than usual. But what was different than usual was the red flow falling from K’s right eyebrow.

“A laceration!” said Z.

“Incarceration?” asked K.

“Not anymore,” said Z. “I think you’ve stumbled into a solution and a plan in one fell swoop.”

“I fell and I stumbled and I swooped,” said K. “And I hit my head.” K was puzzled. “Didn’t you see it, Z? I thought you were here. Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought? Or my thoughts are harder than my head? I think?”

“Unlikely,” said Z. “But we will have to take you to the doctor! A brilliant loophole!”

“Oh, geez, Z. Do I have to? I don’t like to go to the doctors. They give you shots there.”

“No shots today, K!” Z’s pep returned to her voice. “We are breaking out of the world enclosed by these four walls! Grab the toilet paper roll and head to the garage, K.”

“Are we going to get more toilet paper, Z? Is it back in the stores? No more hoarding?”

“K, we just went over this. We are going to the doctor.”

“But, Z. I don’t want to,” K said.

“Do you want to get out of these four walls?”

“Well. Yes. But.”

“No buts! We’re getting out! Grab the toilet paper. Take some and dab your eyebrow. You’ll drip on the floor.”

“Right-o,” K said. She slogged along, grabbing and dabbing and leaving the bathroom.

“K!!!!!” Z yelled.

K popped her bleeding head through the doorframe to the bathroom.

“Yes, Z?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Z asked.

What will happen at the doctor’s office? Will K be kicked out for public exposure and indecency? Or will Z be able to set K straight before they arrive? Find out in the next installment of Days of Our Pandemic….

The Days of Our Pandemic: episode y

apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)

See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of The Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…

No one would know it from the looks of things outside the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane (largely because no one stood outside the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane, not with the Venice-canal type COVID cleansing diminishing the human traffic and debris on the road), but things inside the house became drafty after the busted pipe and water park bathroom episode.

“I’m going to draft the best players!” K told Z as she combed her hair and capped her head to hide the graying roots near her scalp.

“Mmhmmm,” replied Z who was not at all listening to K. She was too busy contemplating the plan she planned to enact, the plan she kept planning for success, the plan she kept having to redesign, the plan that kept getting thwarted.

“I have to get the best players if I’m going to win the tournament, Z,” said K.

“Mmhmmm,” said Z.

“And then I can run through the house with arms up in a Rockyesque victory.”

“Ahhh,” said K.

“Z! Are you listening to me?! You hate Rocky but you love sports.”

“Hmmm?”

“I said it’s Draft Day for the football card tournament. I’m going to draft Peyton Manning and Randy Moss and Emmett Smith.”

“I thought you said today was Draft Day.”

“I did.”

“Then why aren’t you drafting today’s players? Or at least, just-before-Covid players?”

“I am! I’m going to go for Harry Kane and Lionel Messi and, of course, Virgil van Dyke! The best footballers around.”

Z breathed deeply. “K, those men do not all play the same sport.”

“They do, too. It’s a football draft so you have to draft footballers.”

“And what is a footballer, K?”

“A baller who foots,” said K. “Which can be confused with a ball with feet, but it’s not the same.”

“I don’t even want to know.” Z rolled her eyes. “Whatever sport you end up in, find the women. They’re able to see in ways the men cannot. If you forget the women, you forget half the game.”

“Oh, Z,” said K. “How can I forget the women? I am the women!”

Z thought about it. She knew it was not what K intended to say, but, in a way, she was right. K and Z, Z and K. They were the women. Z a mirror’s reflection of K’s visage — though how her intelligence multiplied in on itself and never refracted to K was a bit of a mystery.

“Do you want to play, too, Z? You can have only women. If you want.”

“No, K,” said Z. “I do not want to play. And you won’t either. We will be far too busy to play any kind of football.”

“Why, Z? What will we be doing?”

“The same thing we do every day, K. Trying to escape the world enclosed by these four walls!”

A beleaguered Rochelle attempted a cackle that sounded like a whimper. And who could blame her? K battered Rochelle in the previous attempt to escape the world enclosed by these four walls. She nearly knocked a hole into one of the four walls of the bathroom where K and Z got ready each morning, where they discussed the day’s plans, where they stood now. Plastic and duct tape covered the wall which K claimed was a remodel and an improvement. She added a new window. Z told her that if that’s what all windows looked like, the world would be a cold and lightless place where the boogeyman could always get you. Hearing this, K, being K, decided to boogie, man.

And K boogied now, thinking about her footballing team.

“Can you please cease that needless gesticulation?”

“You want me to stop dancing, Z?”

“Yes, K.”

“Why, Z?”

“Because I need a plan and I cannot think of a plan with all dastardly distraction drowning my creative drive.”

Has Z’s creativity run dryer than her social life? Will she be able to plot her way out of this one or will she succumb to the entrapment of her mind as well as the four walls which surround her? Find out next time in The Days of Our Pandemic….

Days of our Pandemic: episode p3

apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)

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See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of The Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…

When last we saw K and Z in episode p, part 2, they were peering into the back yard, ogling a mound of dirt created by a gopher. However, K was more interested in the gopher’s attire and finances than in Z’s plan to escape the enclosure of these four walls. Need you be reminded, we pick up with K’s idiocy….

“Kept in the gopher or his cents? And does he keep his cents in his pockets? And where does he get gopher clothes? He should wear overalls. Don’t you think gophers should wear overalls? Do gophers wear overalls, Z? I could make them some overalls. I just have to go to the store to get some denim fabrics. They’d like denim overalls, Z. Only I can’t get to the store because, well…” It dawned on K in that instant that she would need to escape the confinements of these four walls in order to clothe the gophers in little gopher overalls. And that, she could not do without the help of Z’s plans.

Z waited for K’s inane thoughts to prattle themselves into pause. Then she spoke as though K never had.

“Gophers travel underground. And when you left me in the foyer yesterday, staring at a foil-covered box, I saw into the backyard to identify these gopher mounds and hatch my brilliant idea!”

“Ooooh! It’s a magic, shiny box that hatches ideas for the future. Like an 8-ball or Doc’s Packard convertible.” said K.

“K, I’m displaying my brilliance here, like the sun.”

“Oooooooh,” said K. “Warrrrrrrrmmmmm.”

“Here is the brilliant plan to escape the confines of these four walls,” said Z.

“…so I can make the gophers some clothes,” said K. “And it’s confounds.”

“It’s confines,” said Z.

“I heard confounds,” said K.

“That’s because you confound words all the time!” said Z.

“Yes. I can found them. I found a bunch of them. Like avant-garde is when a German asks for an English guard. I found that out. And honcho is when you’re too hot in a poncho. I found that out, too! And a williwaw…well, that one’s too dirty to tell. But I found all those words all by myself, Z — found in my own brain!”

“Clearly. Congratulations,” said Z without a bit of congratulatory affect. “The plan is to follow the pipes, digging our way as the gophers do, beneath the ground all the way to the water main and the city line and then we will be free! Escaped from the confines of these four walls!”

K began to sing. “The pipe line’s connected to the water line. The water line’s connected to the city line.” K began to dance about like a disjointed skeleton. “The city line’s connected to the green line! The green line’s connected to the red line! The red line’s connected to the blue line! Oh hear the words of this song! This song this song’s gotta — be sung! This song this song’s gotta — be sung! Oh hear the words of this song!”

“Are you quite done?” asked a smoldering Z.

“Not quite, Z,” said K who waved her arms above her head and moved her legs in the Charleston dance. “This song this song’s gotta — be sung! This song this song’s gotta — be sung!”

“THE END OF THIS SONG! THE END OF THIS SONG! THE END OF THIS HORRIBLE SONG!” Z’s lid popped. Her hair flew about like flames. Her words were on fire.

K stared at Z. She’d never seen Z lose her temper quite like that before.

“Okay, Z. I’m done,” said K.

“Quite?” asked Z, gaining composure.

“Yes, I quit,” said K.

“One can only hope,” said Z.

“I hope in one hand,” said K. “And in the other I –”

“Quit! Quit! Abort!”

“The plan, Z? Abort the plan? But we haven’t begun it,” said K.

“No, not the plan, K,” said Z.

“Okay,” said K. “On with the plan then?”

“Yes, K. On with the plan,” said Z. “To the bathroom to carry it out.”

K carried Z into the bathroom where the day began.

“This is it, K. This is the origin, where the nascent bulb of the life of my intelligence blooms out from its hardened edifice and astounds the world with its beauty and splendor. Are you ready?”

Are you ready, Reader? For in the next installment of Days of Our Pandemic, K and Z must put the plan into effect. What could go wrong? Find out in the end of episode p in the next Days of Our Pandemic post…

Days of Our Pandemic: episode p

apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)

See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of The Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…

Wonky Way Lane was home to innumerable creatures. Some were constantly fighting over territory and food, like the pair of peregrine falcons who flew ominously into frame. Or the family of rabbits on the east side of the street that engaged in a bitter, broiling battle for rule of the road, until the night one east-sider fell in love at first sight with one west-sider so that the two eloped the next morning and might have never lived happily ever after if it weren’t for Tybalt. But, I digress. For we concern ourselves not with the falcons or the rabbits, the foxes or the fairies. No, our scene takes place inside one home in particular. One house on Wonky Way Lane that housed some wonky ways. That house was the lavender house with blue violet trim, the one that waved a purple COVID flag, where inside, lived K and Z, with whom we are concerned. Or, at least, for whom we are concerned. Observe, Reader, from your safe distance on the far side of the screen lest you spiral into what you discover…

The sun was sunning through the slight window high above K’s head as she brushed her teeth with her eyes closed because the sun was sunning right into her eyes and she didn’t realize it would not if she only stepped one step over to the right or the left.

“Whmf wef ui boehee, Pee?” asked K over the buzz of the electronic toothbrush inside her mouth.

“What did you call me!?” said Z, enraged by K’s name-calling so early in the morning.

K spoke again. “I faed whmf wef ui suigg boehee?”

“Would you take that blasted thing out of your mouth ere you emit another word in my presence?” demanded Z.

K pulled the toothbrush from her mouth and cleared her throat to speak. Before she said a word, Z was yelling at her.

“Turn off the toothbrush! Turn off the toothbrush!” Z’s forearm covered her face as toothpaste splattered against the vanity mirror out from which Z looked.

K pressed the button that turned off the toothbrush.

“Oopsies.” K grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, Z.”

Z removed her forearm as protection and looked at the spotted glass.

“Well,” said Z with barely veiled disgust, “you’re going to have to clean this up before we get to the plan for the day.”

“The plan?” said K. “Oh boy! Oh boy! I love the plan!” K clapped her hands together and jumped up and down, forgetting the bath towel hanging across a clothesline in the bathroom. She jumped up into it, panicked, flailed, got caught up in it, and pulled the entire thing down on herself.

“Help! Help, Z! Help! Something’s got me! And it’s stolen the sun! Help!”

Z looked straight out her mirror at Rochelle. “Can you believe this nonsense?”

A low rumble came from the walls themselves.

K’s foot kicked itself out from under the bath sheet.

“Light! I see light!”

Z rolled her eyes.

K continued her fight with the towel. Rolling, cursing, and finally, emerging, she pinned the towel beneath her knee. She shot her hands into the air. “Victory!”

“Yes, hardly won,” said Z.

“Yes! Hard won victory!” said K. K stood and grabbed the towel from the floor. She rubbed the defeated towel against Z’s face until all the spots were gone.

“I’ve healed you, Z,” said K.

“Thank you, K,” said Z, choosing which battles of language to fight with K.

“Now,” said K, dropping the towel back on the floor, “what are we going to do today, Z?”

“The same thing we do every day, K. Escape the enclosure of these four walls.”

“Mwuah ha ha ha ha ha,” rumbled from the walls and ricocheted through the room.

“Stop! Stop! Stop, Rochelle!” K stomped. She covered her ears. She stepped on the towel with one foot. And got caught under the towel with her other foot before finding her face on the floor not far from where her feet should have been.

A high-pitched squeal akin to giggling fell over and through the room.

K bounced to her feet. “I will not be mocked, Rochelle!” K shouted.

“Enough!” Z’s martinet tone draped over K and Rochelle and even the east and west side rabbits heard. “We shan’t waste the day with such shenanigans. We have plans to enact.”

“What will we be acting in today?” asked K.

“I’ll show you. Take me to the dining room!” ordered Z.

You, Reader, may want to avert your eyes to what you are about to see. But Z had no such warning. Discover what Z sees in the dining room, if you can stomach it, which you can, because you stomach K regularly already (and no this does not mean you eat or digest her….please do not do that because that would be an undesirable end to this series…but I think I was trying to tell you something relatively important to this story….Oh yes! You’ll stand strong in the dining room with K and Z) in the next installment of Days of Our Pandemic!