Chapter 15 - Emma
Emma Holt cleaned up her breakfast dishes, as was her habit as soon as she finished breakfast. She was a neat freak according to her daughter. Because of her arthritis, this was not easy. Her daughter came in twice a week to help with the heavy lifting — the vacuuming and such - and to bring supplies. Otherwise, Emma interfaced with no one — her choice. She was unaware of the global panic caused by thousands of mysterious deaths around the world. Such was her isolation. Her daughter never told her. Such was her daughter’s love.
Emma took her half empty coffee cup and shuffled through the doorway to her neat and clean living room only to her horror to find it wasn't neat and wasn't clean. There was a heavy gray dust covering everything in the room. Her eyes took in the devastation of her ordered life as panic rose from her center to play itself on her pudgy face like thespians on a stage. She backed through the doorway and returned a moment later with a spray can and a dust cloth. Then looking place to place for hint as to where to begin the counter attack she breathed through her mouth to gain oxygen and courage for the battle to come. The side table would do as a first engagement.
With knitted eyebrows, she pointed the can at the gray surface and with narrowing eyes used both arthritic hands to press down on the top. As the spay shot toward the table something Emma did not expect happened. The gray dust swirled up away from the path of the spray. It drifted there in mid air. This would not have been so totally unexpected and unexplainable if it wasn't for the sight of all the dust in the room rising up with its companions from where it rested on every surface.
Before the shock of what had just happened could even register on Emma's pudgy face the dust, all of the dust, headed for Emma as if she were electrostatically charged. It turned her yellow dress with the red rose print to a uniform gray. It turned her pudgy cheeks with only the hint of their long ago youthful blush to a uniform gray. It turned her already gray hair into a uniform shade of gray to match the rest of her.
Emma drew in a startled breath through her mouth and with it drew in a mouth and lung full of gray dust. She meant to cough. But before her brain could get the command to her diaphragm, she fell down to the floor unconscious. The spay can, obeying the universal law of dropped things, rolled to the most inaccessible place in the room under the sofa.
As Emma lay unceremoniously on her living room floor the dust on her clothes seeped through to her skin returning her dress to its yellow and red color. The dust on her skin seeped though returning the skin to its pallid not quite pink color. She lay peacefully breathing twenty times a minute. Each time she breathed gray dust was exhaled and gathered in the air above her. It condensed there making a slowly solidifying form which took the shape of Emma Holt! Eventually its color changed to match the comatose Emma on the floor. The new Emma stood over the old Emma both dressed in not so fashion conscious yellow and red.
The new Emma moved to the sofa, stooped down and reaching under the sofa retrieved the spray can then placed the can down beside the prone Emma and stood, turned, and walked to the front door. She opened the door, and left the house, closing the door again leaving a still and clean house — a house cleaner than it had ever been, a house that was industrial clean-room clean.
The sun streamed in the window to show the dust free room with a plump woman lying on the floor. As time passed the patch of light moved across the floor until it shone on the woman's face. She scrunched her eyes and raised a hand to block the sun. She pushed up on one elbow, rolled, and sat up. She bumped the spray can and picked it up. Standing, she looked side to side cautiously for signs of her remembered assailant.
She checked the top of the side table with a finger. The test showed no sign of dust. She went to the kitchen and found her half cup of coffee, now cold.. She sniffed it seeking the source of the hallucinogenic that had disturbed and stolen her morning. She dumped it in the sink. She covered one eye and inspected the kitchen wallpaper, then covered the other eye to test both orbs of vision. She was OK. She held her wrist with two fingers. Her pulse was only a little above normal.
She yanked open the refrigerator door and pulled out the leftover sausage from breakfast. She eyed it with suspicion, then pulled back the cling wrap and smelled it inconclusively. With a wobble of her head and a firm set of jaw she rewrapped the pork product then opened the door to the back porch. Stepping outside she purged her life of the unwanted complexity by throwing the allegedly toxic meat into the back yard.
The meat took a long arcing path and came to rest at the foot of the back fence. Emma's eyes came a little more open. Her heart beat a little faster. Her brain worked a little better. Emma had expected the meat to fall no further than the bottom of the steps off the porch, what with her arthritis and all. But she felt no pain or stiffness. She felt twenty or thirty years younger.
She tested her shoulders by raising her arms like a football referee signaling a score. No pain. No problem. She grasped her hands and put her arms straight over her head. Fantastic! Emma smiled.
She had received healing. A tear ran down her not-as-plump-as-this-morning cheek. Her body bloated by steroids, and zero exercise, and morning sausages didn't feel quite so constraining.
Emma grasped her hands again, this time in prayer as she dropped to her knees on the back porch and looking up to thank the only power who could have given her back full use of her body. She thanked God for sending the heavenly healing dust.