The Lady of the Couch

Something horrible happened to a lady in America: she was devoured by a ravenous couch. It said in the paper that she sat there without moving for such a long time that the fabric of the couch insinuated itself into her skin. She sat there through winters and summers, through Presidential terms; she sat there so long she needed dusting. She sat there for six years. At long last, paramedics tried to remove her, but the carnivorous couch wouldn't let go. She died in its arms. I hope she didn't know. The paper didn't say whether she knew or not. It wouldn't be so bad if she'd thought she was somewhere else the whole time, if she'd been in some kind of six-year dream.

My brain woke up this morning before my body did--you know, sleep paralysis, sort of thing. I couldn't even move my eyes. I stared at the bronze rats above my monitor, waiting for my limbs to join me in the waking world, and thought about that lady on her couch. She was found in a position without dignity, covered in the filth you'd expect on a person who hasn't moved in six years, and who hasn't been cared for properly. She couldn't have been aware through all that, I thought. You couldn't just sit there, watching your flesh become corrupt, and with insects stepping on you, and...no way. I used my brain to try and get my body to unfold itself from its curled position, but I still wasn't all the way awake. Ha, I thought--maybe this is what happened to her.

My trouser-legs had ridden up over my knees, and my calves were touching the couch. I could feel the fabric pressing its imprint into my skin. I tried to imagine staying still long enough for it to push all the way through, and couldn't. Layer after layer of skin would have to die and slough off, and the new skin, it would have to...to grow, somehow, into the fabric, entwining itself with the warp and weft.

As I imagined skin growing into fabric, I woke up properly, and unfolded myself from the couch. "You don't get to eat me today," I told it. It sat there stoically, ignoring me. Stella thought I was talking to her, and poked her nose out through the bars of her cage. I opened the gate for her, and she went in the kitchen.

For the rest of the day, I tried to put the couch lady out of my mind. She wouldn't go, though. I guess she likes getting stuck places, whether it's a filthy old couch or a filthy old mind. I tried to make up a dream-world for her to have been living in during her tenure on the sofa. She'd need food, so I thought her up a fruit tree, then a whole orchard. The trees needed water, so I conjured a placid river. I put the lady under a willow, where she could watch the patterns of shadows in the sand shifting as the willow-fronds stirred in the wind. Kingfishers dove and linnets sang. I wasn't sure linnets belonged by the river, but it was only a dream, so I let them stay.

Anyhow, that lady is dead. Everyone's going to think she was a disgusting old boot. I think that, too. I think she probably sat there and watched TV the whole time. I think she probably fell into such a state of apathy that she didn't care about her condition. She probably had about as much imagination as a rock, and the only dreams she had were about eating and couch-sitting, and what was going to happen next on The Young and the Restless. She gave up hope one day, and decided to let herself go. Nobody cared about her enough to make her stop, so....

No way. Nobody could be that--that--I can't even think of a word for that sort of behaviour. Lazy, maybe? Hopeless? Stupid? No--she must just've lost the program one day, gone a bit funny, sort of thing. She must've slipped off into her own little world, like I was saying. She must have.

Or maybe she was fully aware, right to the humiliating end. Maybe she screamed and screamed as they tried to pull her off the couch, and her skin started to tear along with it. Maybe all the ugliness in the world got sucked into her living room, and made her its monument, a freakish, belarded sign of the times: life without nobility; decay without death; death without dignity!

Oh, sod her, and the couch she rode in on! Who needs these unsettling thoughts? Better to shrug and sigh, and "Only in America!", and have done with it. Carnivorous couches--what will they think of next?