Persona

	Lori Loud stood in front of the school bathroom’s mirror and brushed her hair once, twice, thrice as becomes a lady.  She took great pride in her appearance, and as the oldest sibling of the Loud family, Lori had to maintain her beauty as well as her dignity.  Still, it was lonely at the top and especially when one thought about such responsibility in an empty bathroom.  This primping was much more fun with Leni and her incessant stroke-counting, but since she was convinced that there was an evil Leni in the mirror, the second-eldest only used her own hand mirror if she hadn’t sat on it earlier in the day.
	And then the door opened, and that other girl came in and stood right next to her.  Plenty of mirrors and sinks and toilets for her shit-tits, and she had to stand right smack next to Lori.  Carol Pingrey: homecoming queen, wealthy gadabout, president of the Michigan Wolverines Boosters Club (Go Blue!).  She exuded undeserved smugness from the hem of her plaid skirt to the bob of her blonde hair, a rather ruddy blonde compared to the pure gold of Lori and Leni’s locks.
	Carol took a hairbrush from her purse, one that was clearly not from the dollar store.  She removed her hairband, the soft sound of her hair settling from its bondage giving new furor to Lori’s displeasure.  Her visage in the mirror looked like an alternate-universe Lori where the Loud house didn’t have so many kids and a lot more money.
“Lori,” she said without turning to her peer.
	“Carol.”
	“Is all well?”
	“Well as all hell, so go there.”  Lori literally could not stand blue-blooded banter.
	Carol finished brushing her hair and turned to Lori.  “I hope to see you again soon.”
	“Whatever, rank skank…”  Lori muttered as she watched Carol’s reflection in the mirrors retreat, multiplied and divided as she left Lori to stare at herself hard.  The grinding of her teeth was the only sound that echoed across the off-white walls, the chrome of the toilets vibrating with the rage that radiated from the wake of the wrathful woman.

	And so that rage continued at home the next day.  Somehow, Lynn caught a cold from Lincoln, and from there spread it to Lucy who got into the vents and ended up spreading it throughout the house.  Lori was lucky enough to be out with Bobby at the time, so she didn’t get sick; in exchange for that brief respite of happiness, she had to take time off of school to take care of her siblings while her parents worked to keep all of them in electricity and heat.  Lori knew what a sacrifice taking care of such a large family was, and she was beginning to think that sacrificing her siblings on a burning pyre might be the solution.
	The twins Lana and Lola sat on the couch fighting over a blanket, because not even illness could deter their disdain.  Next to them sat Lisa who was measuring the viscosity of the mucus she was coughing up.  And Lily was naked and sucking her toes as was her wont.
	Lori took a deep breath and began her shouting spree.  “LISA!  Sit still and stop recording data!”
	“But my ailment providesh ample material with which to isholate and examine the disease’sh shource and find a cure!”  Lisa put her pencil in her mouth as she muttered, “Or a means to weaponize it…”
	Lori ignored Lisa’s explanation and replied with a glare that put a cork in Lisa’s beaker.  She sat back and sulked as Lily laughed and let out a tiny cough.  Lori picked up the baby and gingerly placed a thermometer in those tiny cheeks as she continued to yell.
	“LOLA!  Get that facial cream off your face, and isn’t that from my room?!”
	“Um, excuse me?”  Lola send with malice seething from her toothed gap.  “I canNOT let my looks be ravaged by some stupid cold or fever or whatever that some dumb jerk gave me!  It’s life or death: my life or their death!”
	Lori responded with equal if not physically larger malice.  “I don’t give a rat’s patootie if it’s the plague or cooties, sit still and EAT YOUR SOUP!  And yeah, I’m aware that I rhymed, shut up.”  Lola shut up what insult she was going to sling back and accepted her defeat.
	Lana dug into her nose as if in triumph.  “Yeah, it’s not like your face could get any worse-looking!”
	Lori pointed at Lola as if to warn her from opening her trap again; she now directed her anger at the older twin as Lily began to push the thermometer out.  “LANA!  Don’t pick your nose, or your brains are going to run out of your head, and I will make you clean them out of the carpet!  COMPRENDE, AMIGO?!”
	Lana hesitated just a moment and slowly pulled out a rather large, red booger which looked rather like a tiny human.  “My body, my choice,” she said with quiet defiance.  Lana proceeded to eat the booger and savor the flavor of nostril nosh sweetened by snot salt.
	“Your face, my fist,” replied Lori as she pulled the thermometer out of Lily; the baby giggled and said “poo-poo” in a knowing manner.  Ignoring the poop on the tip, she ascertained that this shit was pissing her off.  Where was Bobby to help her out?  She had texted him five minutes ago, and he should have been there four minutes ago like a good boyfriend would.  He must have had to change a lightbulb and needed to figure out how many Mexicans it took to accomplish that task.
	The doorbell rang just as Lori was scolding the twins yet again to stop fighting over the blanket which amply covered both of them.  Finally, Lori thought, now I can go beat the idiots upstairs into my ideal family: healthy, quiet, and obedient to my whims.  That one cushion of relief she had wanted to see in her beloved and beautiful Bobby-boo ended up with a pin in it when Lori opened the door to her: Carol Pingrey.
	“What the hell?  Did you get lost on the way to the skank store?”  Lori congratulated herself on such a great zinger, but Carol seemed unfazed.
	“No, I already went there.  I came to give you the homework for today,” Carol said as she handed over the papers.  “Mr. Leibowitz-Cohen gave out a pop quiz which I’m sure he will try to spring on you when you return.”
	Lori grabbed the papers from Carol’s hand and gave a short grunt of gratitude.  “Yeah, so is that all?”
	A nasally voice came up from behind Lori.  She looked down to see a peeved Lisa.  “Lori, pleash inform my fellow shiblingsh that their inceshshant rowdineshsh could upshet the delicate meashurementsh I am calculating.  Nitroglycherin ish very dangeroush, you shee, and…”
	“Lisa, what have I told you about explosives?!”  Lori picked up her little sister and looked her square in the glasses.  “Only in the backyard, got it?  Throw it outside, and then get back to the couch and RELAX, damn it!”  As she set Lisa down, she added, “It’s your fault that you all are down here; you and the twins’ room still stinks like rotten eggs.”
	Lisa walked back to the couch, saying to herself, “That’sh jusht how shulfur ish, and Lana didn’t mind it…”
	“Lori, could you use my help?”
	Lori turned back to Carol who was still standing there taking up space.  She liked the word “use” as it connoted that Carol could be manipulated for the Loud sister’s best interests.  “Suuure, why not?  Kitchen’s back that way, there’s a big pot of soup on the stove.  Pour out six bowls and take them upstairs to my other siblings.  You think you can handle that?”
	“Right away, Ms. Loud,” Carol said in her inimitable cadence that sounded holier-than-thou even when she was acting humbler-than-Him.  She stepped into the house and took just a moment to look at Lori from behind as the young woman berated her siblings for pouring their soup into the couch and smearing it on the dog.  Her hair bounced as she screamed; Carol had never seen it do that before.
	After distributing the soup into six bowls and putting them on one platter, Carol made her way up the stairs and saw Lori sitting on the couch with her little sisters as they watched Lola’s favorite comedy Shoah.  Lori kept looking at her phone, probably wondering where Bobby was, as she let her towering presence keep her sisters from squirming away.  Carol’s face cast the faintest wisp of a smile as she went up to the second floor.
	Lincoln’s door should be on the right, Carol thought.  Her good memory was rewarded as her knock was greeted with a faint “Come in”.  Lincoln lay in his bed, a big thermometer with a bulging red tip protruding from his mouth.  “Hey, aren’t you Carol?”  He was fairly sharp even when he was looking dull.
	“That’s right, I just came over to help your big sister.  Here’s your soup.”
	Lincoln looked at it with hesitation but took it anyway.  “Thanks, hopefully Lori didn’t make it.”  He looked up at Carol whose striking similarity to his sister made him feel a bit guilty for saying that in front of her.  “Heh, you and her seem to share everything but a sense of style and a modicum of mercy.”
	“Oh, aren’t you sweet.  Lori loves all of you, I can tell, but she’s just stretched too tight.”  Carol fluffed Lincoln’s pillow.  “Now you take care not to stress her out too much, okie-dokie?”
	Lincoln’s ears blushed as he nodded.  Carol smiled, picked up the tray of soup, and closed the door behind her.  He was definitely a very clever boy, but even he couldn’t see the truth.  Why would he, though?  No one can see what they do not know to seek.
	Next stop was Lynn and Lisa’s room.  When she entered, Lynn was throwing balled-up snot tissues into the wastebasket (replete with mini basketball hoop).
	“Yes, half-court, nothing but net!” Lynn said.  She looked up to see Carol and said, “Lori, what’s with the preppy outfit?”
	Lisa was lying on her bed over the sheets; she lay as if in a coffin, a handful of black roses upon her chest.  Without looking up, she intoned, “That’s Carol, Lori’s nefarious doppelganger.”
	Carol laughed with such a sudden and halting gasp that Lynn stopped throwing her tissues and Lisa sat up slightly.  “Say, Lynn, how did you catch Lincoln’s cold and/or fever?  You seem like a healthy lass.”
	Lynn’s eyes widened and darted over to Lisa before darting back to Carol and then down at the soup.  “Uh, is that beef stroganoff?”
	Bullseye, nigga.  “You know, it might just be.”  She handed Lynn the soup who grabbed it and began slurping loudly.
“And for you,” she said as she gave a bowl to Lisa.
	“Thank you, but the undead have no need to drown themselves in boiling waters.”  She let out a tiny cough.  “Dang it, still mortal,” she said and began to sip with a deliberate restraint.
	Carol closed the door, convinced that she had seen the fire rise and not let herself be consumed in its wake.
	Luan and Luna seemed much worse for the wear, or at least the latter one did.  Luan was still her bubbly self as was ever the case at school; even now, she had a banana in her mouth and was scratching her armpits while looking over at Luna who was in no mood for it.
	“Dude, I can’t take it, even my British accent is trashed ‘cause of this cold.  Crikey!”  Luna said as she sneezed.  “Sinus infection will be my epitaph.”
	Luan grabbed a tissue from her nightstand.  “Let’s not…” She let out a mighty snort into the tissue.  “BLOW things out of proportion!”
	Carol laughed heartily, and Luan’s eyes lit up at a receptive audience.  “Oh, hey, you’re that girl in Lori’s class!  I knew someone in her grade appreciated fine humor.”
	“What’s up, foxy lady?” Luna said as she seemed to check out Carol’s bare legs.  “You got something hot and wet for me?”
	“Yes, this soup,” Carol said as she winked at Luna.
	“Nice, I like a chick who’s open to both rock and roll.”  Luna took a sip.  “Oh, shit, my fave!  Cheers, mate!”  Luna brightened up at the return of her English eccentricity; she celebrated with some impromptu air guitar.
	When Carol gave Luan her soup, the buck-toothed girl looked her right in the eye.  After she had taken a sip, she spat it back out and fanned her tongue.  “Wow, you really are the SPITTING image of Lori!  Get it?” Luan added with a waggle of her eyebrows.
	Whether or not Luan had done that just for the gag, Carol gave her most convincing grimace.  “Ha ha, thank you, very funny.”  She hurried her way out of there, for the prize was almost in sight.
	“Oooooh, Leni, time to eat…” Carol walked into the room in which Lori slept and farted and texted and applied makeup; it had the strongest aroma of her essence.  Leni’s presence didn’t matter to Carol, though it certainly added an illicit thrill to what was sure to come.
	“Huh, Lori?”  Leni stirred from her sleep and stared with bleary eyes at Carol.  “Did you ever find my banana?  The lady-doctor told me I have to eat more, like, pokassicum for my…” Leni yawned.  “For my brain to get taller.”
	“Oh, I couldn’t locate it, dear, but here’s some nice hot soup for you.”  Carol put the spoon to Leni’s lips, and she sucked at it with a little tongue in the hole.
	“Mmmm, I love it when Mom cooks.  She always puts the right amount of lean meat in my taco.”  Hard to tell if this was normal Leni behavior, but Carol never could figure this girl out.  She set the bowl down and picked up a pair of pink chino shorts.  Removing Leni’s sunglasses from her head, she handed the girl the shorts.
	“Here, why don’t you cuddle up with these and go back to sleep?  You’ve got a big day next month.”
	“Yeah, gotta get to that Halloween sale and buy that toucan costume before it, like, flies away…”  Leni cuddled up under the covers, grasping the shorts like a little kid between her heaving bosoms and tucking her legs up into her taut stomach.  Carol tucked in the darling sister and gave her a peck on the forehead.  Little did the Loud sister know, and now that Leni was out again, Carol was free to wallow in Lori’s crapulence.
	However, before Carol could get to the underwear drawer, Lori walked right in.  Carol smiled: so it’s already time for that, and thus God smiles upon me this day.
	Of course, Lori only had a scowl.  “Uh, what are you doing in my room?  And did you give everyone their soup?”
	Carol leaned back on the dresser, the curve of her hair nearly touching the mirror.  “I gave everyone their food, and I was just tucking Leni in for her ten hours of sleep.  That little dickens.”
	“Huh, yeah, so you can go now,” Lori stood in front of Carol, inches away from her face.  “Um, step aside, I’ve got to reapply my makeup.”
	Carol kept up her smug yet gentle façade as she awkwardly side-stepped away from the dresser.  Lori opened up the drawers and began putting various items of makeuppery into a specific pattern designed for maximum prettiosity.  The eldest Loud sister, preoccupied with her routine, didn’t notice Carol centimetering ever closer to her unprotected back.  When she looked up into the mirror, she saw Carol behind her, admiring her collection.
	“Can I help you leave, Pingrey?”  Lori said as she activated her Absolute Bitch Field.
	“That foundation, I’ve been looking for it since, like, forever.  Where did you find it?”  Carol knew what she was doing.
	Lori didn’t, however.  “Psh, this?  I ordered it online from an anonymous guy on a Vietnamese tusk-carving forum.  I don’t want to get into what I had to do for it, but a good girl like you just wouldn’t understand…”
	Carol leaned over Lori and fondled her lipstick.  “Oh, I don’t know about that.  We’re both young girls, and there’s always some pervert out there who wants to see our most private…”  Carol kneeled down beside Lori.  “You know, Lori, the grass isn’t greener on my lawn.”
	“Uh…is this a pubic hair thing or what?”
	Carol chuckled as she locked eyes with Lori.  “With whatever wealth I have, I have had to walk that hard road.  There’s videos of me out there that, well, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy the things that I had to do.”
	“I’m so sorry, Carol,” said Lori.  “I appreciate that you told me about this, but…”
	“But you’re not my worst enemy, are you?”
	“Well, no, of course not.  I mean, we have our differences, so I just figured…”
	Carol stood behind Lori, draping her arms around the latter’s neck and shoulders.  Their images seemed to almost overlap in the grainy scratches within the mirror’s imperfection.
	“Lori,” Carol whispered in the young woman’s ear.  “I never wanted us to have those differences.  What we share can’t be seen here, nor can it be covered up by those trinkets.”  She gestured to the makeup.  “We shouldn’t be separate when we are so much better together.”
	Tight.  Lori’s chest felt so tight, as if her ribs were going to crush her heart into pieces for its last resort.  She bowed her head, and Carol leaned into her.  That crest of blonde hair grabbed Lori’s throat and made it hard for her to speak.  What came next was but a whisper in the room that grew dark as the rain clouds began to form.
	“I’m not proud of it.  I would never ever ever tell Bobby, god can you imagine how much…” Lori choked on her thick and bitter words.  “He would hate me so much…”  The tears came as the rain did, warm and without fragrance or texture.
	Carol smelled good and felt good, and the two girls knew it.  She held Lori even tighter as her wet lips raised just so from the rim of her mouth met the tip of Lori’s ear.  “I could never ever ever hate you, Lori.  I would never let you feel so dirty and shameful, unless…you wanted me to.”
	Lori spun around to meet Carol’s gaze.  It bled lust and sympathy out of both eyes, two boiling spigots that made Lori feel as if she was going to drown looking up into them.
	“I want…”
	“Yes.”
	“I want to disappear.”
	Carol slid her fingers behind Lori’s head and crashed those lips into the others and let the hazy-gray room be swallowed into a rolling wheat field.  Lori bucked her head while her tongue held tight onto the reins of Carol’s mouth which heaved and sighed under its new lover.  How could one who had taken the initiative tangle the tepid with the torrid, the submissive with the seductive?
	In this field, Carol laid Lori down and felt her stomach and legs, her hand searching and unbinding the shorts.  Lori lay underneath and moaned under Carol’s tongue lashing against her gums and those lips sucking on the cheeks and neck, but it wasn’t cruel or forceful.  It felt like a thirst, a thirst that would be far crueler to deny than to sate.  And Lori was a spring that flowed forth with a tide that could not be dammed, damn it.
	Carol lifted Lori’s bra and sucked at her nipples, bit at her nipples.  Carol dug into Lori’s panties and passed a single finger over her clit, pressed a precious digit against her opening.  The sudden bucking brought Lori’s eyes open, and yet this field was still there.  The sun was still shining, and the sky was as blue as Carol’s headband.  Like a piper at the gates of madness, Lori lifted both hands and removed the headband.  This crown she placed in her mouth, and those damnable eyes dared Carol to continue this impetuous romp towards sexual oblivion.
	One finger slipped inside so easily, because resistance had wasted away and burnt to ash in the heat of the two girls.  Their bodies were nude and rich with the sheen of sweat, and Carol couldn’t help it.  She licked at Lori’s breasts as she dug inside Lori with two fingers this time, rubbing against the clitoris engorged and pink.  Lori’s teeth gnashed into the headband, and her eyes bulged to meet the giggling sun, its rosy cheeks a grotesque chicanery resembling Lily.  Lori could see her siblings at the periphery of this field, their tongues clucking and their teeth bared in identically contemptuous sneers.  Carol’s body got on top of Lori’s with a friction that made such fears of indignity and shame a fiction.  Lori screamed, and from her mouth drifted errant hairs of Carol’s prodigious mane.
	And like a lioness above her prey, Carol crashed down into Lori in a row of kisses once more with a hunger that at once frightened Lori and made their rivalry all the wilder and more brutal.  Their sweaty stomachs throbbed against each other with pockets of air spare and brief in the few seconds when the girls shrunk back before colliding together again.  It was an ocean of flesh, and the shore could be seen no more.
	Carol separated their mouths, a thin trail of saliva hanging in a dewy strand that caught a stray ray of invisible sunshine.  Panting, panting, such a beast of sex and wrath and pathos.  Lori began to weep, and as if to dry her tears, Carol swallowed up Lori into the curve of her vagina.  The heat was unbearable, and it stung Lori’s eyes so that the tears she now wept stung like mad bees in a smooth, fetid cave.  The only way out was to eat and chew and lick and dive deeper than any man could go, farther into this young girl’s secret and further into her private agony.  These hips could not lie, for as every jolt they made echoed against Lori’s ears, so did the moans make doubly known Carol’s joy.
	It was all she had ever wanted.  In that cavernous dungeon of riches and routine where every day was a rigid turn, a practiced nod, and a hollow curtsy for the sake of the blue-bloods with ice and vodka in their veins.  To live like this, without bounds and on every side a world that blinded with its infinity, Carol could imagine nothing greater.  A billion words on every cheek of every person on the wretched earth could never make the quivering mouth curve a genuine smile as much as the one gesture between two tumbling damsels de-stressed from the rest of the mess.  Carol cried out and whimpered, her knees tucking into her chest as Lori pushed her tongue into the tip of Carol’s brain and snagged it with her teeth and tugged to pull out the tide inside.
	Carol shook and moaned as she crawled off Lori’s face, and for a thousandth year of several seconds, the two women kissed and shredded their fingers through the others’ hair.  There was no crest of Carol, no bushel of Lori, only a heft that bound their brains and lips and eyes and tongues around the other.  It was a knot that could not unbind no matter what, and it would not slough off like that skirt or those shorts kicked off and never to be worn again.  This knot would never come out until the deed was done and won for both as one.
	Who mounted who, who is to say?  Carol cradled Lori, and Lori leveled Carol.  In each other’s crook, they rocked and rubbed.  Teeth sank into neck, and nostril blew staccato notes into ear.  Lori lifted into the air, and Carol flew with her.
They crashed together, their shuddering rattling the bed.  Carol’s mouth hung open as her eyes rolled back.  Lori fell back and tightened around Carol as her womb quaked within her slender frame.  Sweat fell like the raindrops outside, and on the first lightning crack, the two sweet young women collapsed into arms that hugged and hid them from sight.
And so Lori wept now for real and for true.
And Carol watched her, a blistering pain shooting anew from the newly healed heart.
And a scratched mirror observing them both, within the glass a visage of misery agony sorrow from now until the never-tomorrow.  It had no mouth and yet must scream, and if it was a dream, there was no wake.  For the image of Bobby it seemed to make.