Rheana Rafferty   FALL ON YOUR KNEES (AN EXCERPT)      Paulette touches the windowpane and starts the heater. In a few minutes the warm stale air mixes with the pungent strawberry scent of the cardboard tree she purchased at the last fill up station. The smell makes her nauseous enough to roll her window three quarters of the way down for quick relief. Once the window is down it will not roll up again.      The car was a gift from her father. Most of the gifts she receives from him are like this; on the surface flawless and expensive looking, but intrinsically broken.      “You piece of shit. I hate you!” she inflicts a hard, jarring thump on the pane with the butt of her left palm. With her right hand she turns off the radio whose signal has disintegrated from a clear signal of alternative rock to highly static country.      Paulette has thin hands. Her skin appears translucent like the tentacles of a bluebottle man-of-war. They are nervous hands that fumble with themselves if unoccupied. Her nails are raw, exposing dark pink skin. A rough and bulbous spot on her right index knuckle is the only differentiation between an otherwise even pair. Her arms are an extension of these tentacles, the muscle behind their contractions. They fit into bony shoulders that are at the moment covered in a red and pink paisley afghan arranged like a shawl.      Her hair is twisted and pulled into a disarray of black and platinum streaks. Her face, very thin, one might even say gaunt. There are twin half moons the color of eggplant under her dark blank eyes and from their corners, fine lines spread the way dirt fans out after a heavy rain.      Her eyelids have been dusted with a violent shade of pink. Her nose is straight and short and her mouth sits curtly below like a weapon. She is biting her lower lip, which has the outward effect of making her look sultry when she is really just impatient.      She is cute in the way that newborn mice are both cute and threatening. One must be leery of keeping them too long and the house being overrun. Read the entire story in the Spring 2005 issue of Rock & Sling.   Copyright © 2005 by Rheana Rafferty. All rights reserved.