It's A Wonderfully Sexy Life by Hope Tarr Page A

the experience felt like. She’d certainly earned it, following up on the beers she’d downed with several plastic glasses of champagne Suz kept refilling and not leaving to stumble home until sometime around 2:00 a.m. Ringing in the New Year with a ringing head—great going, Mandy.
    Since she’d already faced the music, so to speak, she might as well get up and face what would likely prove to be a pretty scary reflection in the bathroom mirror. She cracked open an eye—and felt her cotton candy-colored bedroom spinning like a carousel.
    Oh, shit . She closed her eyes and held still, waiting for the sickening dizziness to wind down. Wait a minute, pink? Whatever happened to the sage green she’d painted just before Christmas? She’d heard of cases where alcohol poisoning had brought on blindness but color blindness?
    I must be hallucinating, or still dreaming . She opened her eyes again. Nope, still pink.
    Could someone have crept in after she slept—make that passed out—and repainted as some sort of joke? But no, there wasn’t a trace of odor. Just to be sure, she rolled out of bed and stumbled across the room to touch the wall. The old paint was dry as bone—and still pink. How could that be? She glanced over to the corner where the can of paint and new brushes she’d bought sat. One hand to the wall for balance, she squatted down to examine them. The seal on the paint canister was unbroken and the brushes not just clean but untouched. And yet she’d gotten up early on Christmas Day and put on the final coat. What the hell was going on?
    The alarm went off again, this time a contemporary tune by the group, Third Eye Blind. She must have hit the snooze button rather than off. One hand pressed to her pounding temple, she staggered over to the night table when the alarm’s electric date display caught her eye. The digital numbers read 12/24/06—only it was January 1, 2007. Piece of shit alarm must be broken, had to be. She’d pick up a new one on her way home from work that night.
    Work. Oh shit, she was on duty today. Fighting nausea, she grabbed her robe and hurried down the hallway to the bathroom, stripped off her sweats, and stumbled into the shower. Forty-five minutes, two Advil and a large Starbucks coffee to-go later, she was driving down Eastern Avenue to the tune of “Jingle Bells,” the roaring in her head muted to a manageable mewling.
    Christmas carols on January first. Some people just didn’t know when to put the season to bed. The music ended and the DJ broke to a commercial. “Attention, holiday shoppers, Smith and Company is keeping its stores open until midnight tonight. Yes, that’s right, midnight. Take advantage of this last chance to get those low, low, low sale prices before the holiday, and come on down to…”
    Holiday shoppers? Mandy slammed on her brakes, narrowly avoiding running the red light, coffee sloshing onto the floor mat.
    Okay, visual hallucinations are bad enough but auditory…that definitely signals trouble.
    Shaken, she pulled into the precinct, parked and entered the building with five minutes to spare before roll call. Ordinarily working the holiday would have sucked, but given the weirdness she was experiencing, she was glad to have a routine to fall into.
    Betty, the widowed receptionist with the dyed black beehive and penciled-on brows, smiled at her as she walked through the door. “Good morning, Mandy. Would you like a cookie? I took them out of the oven right before I came in to work.”
    Glancing down at the foil-covered plate on the desk, Mandy knew that a cookie was likely the last thing she needed. On the other hand, she had skipped dinner last night—unless Reese’s Pieces had been added to the Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid. Besides, Betty lived to bake.
    “Sure, I’d love one.”
    Beaming, Betty whisked off the foil wrap. Mandy reached down to make her selection and then froze. From red-nosed reindeer to red-capped Santa Clauses to