Yazmin Bradley

The Ledger

You check your bank account. You blink. Shock doesn't come easily to you, but now it's like lightning, electrical and all-consuming. You know (somehow) that your DNA has just been altered. You've heard of people who've been struck by lightning. Actually, there was a friend of your mother's, her husband - he's depressed now. Maybe you will be too when this hallucination disappears, so you refresh your little orange app. Did the shoeless finance man ever have a chapter on mysterious lump sums of $20,000 being deposited in your daily account? You stupidly wonder whether you should move it to your splurge account. Or fire extinguisher, or smile. Speaking of which, you try to do just that because surely you must do something, and you stretch your mouth to swallow the dread that's clawing up your throat like tar. You catch yourself in the reflection; you're grimacing. You wonder if this is a normal reaction as a thought bursts into your head like when you're watching porn and one of those ads punch through your browser of two people violently fucking (they're also grimacing) and you're trying to close it, but your stupid AdBlock isn't working. There was no furious doggy this time, but the thought is invasive and won't leave, and it's like an itch you need to scratch.