Pt 9

It felt to Beth as if almost no time at all had passed while she lay reading her horror novel, having taken care of the other urge that had demanded so insistently to be dealt with but a chance glance at the clock beside her bed showed her that the afternoon was gone and her dad would be getting home from work soon. It was time to start getting ready.

Although she had showered after her treatments at the salon, that had been several hours ago and Beth decided that, if she was going to make the effort of getting dressed up and putting on makeup for her meal out, she should freshen up first. Hopping up off the bed, she quickly pulled off her day clothes and threw them onto the pile in the corner then put on the fluffy pink and purple bath-robe which had definitely seen better days but which she had owned since she was twelve and had never seen the point of replacing.

Seeing her clothes on the floor and thinking of the others she had rummaged through in her wardrobe, she vaguely wondered if she ought to be sorting out her possessions, bagging up clothes and boxing up her books and ornaments to give to charity but she really couldn’t be bothered. She was down to just half a week left of her life and she felt no inclination to spend it spring cleaning – that was something her parents could do once she was gone. She wondered what they would do with her room once she didn’t need it any more? She knew her mum had always been quite keen on the idea of fostering troubled children until they could find a permanent home and had planned to start this once Beth had moved out so she guessed they might just bring that plan forward. In which case, a lot of her stuff might as well stay in the room so some of the foster kids could make use of it. That was actually quite a nice, comforting thought and Beth had a happy smile on her lips as she crossed the hallway to the bathroom.

After her shower, Beth sat on the edge of her bed with a hair-dryer and found herself wondering what would happen to her hair when she was cooked? The booklet had mentioned various options such as shaving it off or at least cropping it very short beforehand but she did not relish that idea. True, her body and therefore, by extension, her hair technically belonged to the Thomas’s now so, in theory, they could do whatever they liked with it but they had been so accommodating toward her so far and so mindful of her feelings that she was pretty sure they would not force her into anything she was uncomfortable with. Other options seemed to be putting it in a tight bun, something that would be easier said than done in her case, or wrapping in tin-foil which seemed to be the preferred option if the plan was to preserve the head of the meat girl, something which had never been mentioned in her case. She would, she remembered, be seeing them the next day anyway when she went over to babysit so she could ask about it then.

It was a little silly, she knew, to be worrying about her hair when she was going to be cooked and eaten but it was the one thing over which she had no control that she had always been quite proud of – the one thing that made her feel in any way exceptional. When she was little, her Grandma had called it her Crowning Glory and that is how she had come to think of it. As pointless and shallow as she knew it ultimately was, Beth did not want to go to her grave, metaphorically speaking of course, without it!