Chapter 3 cont.

It didn't take much conversation before I decided to make a right turn into the parking lot of Starbucks to check if his story had any element of truth to it. Quinn had as detached a history with the truth as he did with his left arm. We exited the vehicle and walked to the green house. The wind picked up a stray newspaper smacking my brother in the face. To the untrained eye, this looked like nothing more than a small tornado flinging trash around. To me, it was vengeance for now being out of a hair appointment on Friday. 

I thought about Carlton for a moment. He wouldn't see a sunset again. He wouldn't be able to sing the auto-tuned dubstep pop-crap playing on his radio or tell people that they didn't take enough care of their scalp or that cutting their hair that length would make them look like they were trying to avoid any type of decent human connection for the next two months. I knew that I'd never live a fruitful life like his. A life which meant something to many individuals at least once a month. However, I was sure back then that I wouldn't become like Tiffani Bevel. She was vile beyond any reasonable known human comparison, alive or dead.

We opened the back door of her establishment walking into her living room. Thankfully, a lamp cast enough light to see where we were stepping. The smell of embalming fluid and dried fruit drifted to us. Black flies buzzed around a small crab shell, rotten meat still inside of it, hanging from a pull string connected to her ceiling fan. There was a round table made from a tree stump sanded about the roots with a sheet of stained glass on top. It was from a church in Mexico, though I never figured out which one. The intricate pattern depicted St. Sebastienne, a white robed skeleton holding a crystal ball in its right hand and a crooked scythe in the other. The chairs were also odd being covered with a strange leather the color of human skin. Pig skin, I had always hoped. One of the seats I found already occupied by a pouch and the tiniest bobble head of Elvis I've ever seen. It turned to look at me as I moved closer.

“Don't touch that chair Stew. That's the gris-gris.”

I didn't need to be told that. If I could've floated through the room without touching anything at all, I would have. I heard humming down the hallway.

“I'll go and see what she's up to. I'll be back. Don't mess with anything.”

He propped his arm against the hallway wall and, with a crunch, fit it back into place. Quinn cleared his throat, slicked his hair with the remains of his own blood, and straightened his posture.

He spoke softly, “Tiff? Tiff, I'm here. Is now a good time?”

The humming stopped. A floorboard creaked. Then there was the forlorn cry of some animal, possibly a mouse. Quinn looked me in the eyes over his shoulder. His voice sounded slow and low, “You may want to wait outside Ste-”

The lamp clicked and the warm lighting changed to harsh blue. The wallpaper disintegrated and pealed back to reveal rotten wood being feasted on by an unknowable writhing blackness. The bobble head fizzed, dark red bubbles forming around its neck. The hissing grew louder. Quinn retreated back to me and attempted to grab my shoulder, his arm leaving its socket again. His teeth landed on the welcome mat behind us. If he cursed, I didn't understand him. I took a backward step towards the exit.

It was much too late to leave. Besides, no one left before he did anyway. In the chair, pulling the gris-gris out from underneath the flared pants of a white sequined jumpsuit, sat The King of Rock & Roll, peering at us with nearly closed eyes the same color as the room but for some reason brighter than anything I'd remembered seeing. His clothes were in perfect condition, as was he. He looked thirty years younger than when he had died in his house. Elvis Presley lifted his arm, and even though he was fifteen feet away from me, he seemed to be pointing through me at Quinn, whom immediately let go of me and fumbled at the doorknob.

The doorknob didn't move but Quinn's mouth did. The piercing howl of backmasking escaped from his throat. The King let loose a snarling smile. The howling ceased.

“You weren't supposed to come around here anymore, Quinn.” he said with a southern drawl that sounded like it was developed from a combination of pulled pork barbecue and the sweat from a church goers button-up collared shirt. “She is very, disappointed. How about you let go of that door and come on over here and sit down. You too.”

I complied. However, Quinn was still stuck to the doorknob with his jaw dislocated and a dark fluid oozing from his shoulder. The King didn't focus on him though. Instead his eyes were more open then and he glanced me over for a minute. After he finished, he straightened up his chair throwing one leg over the other.

Full of nonchalance like we were talking over coffee next door, he spoke to me, “Tiff told me that the spec would be back. You weren't accounted for.”

Without thinking I spit out darkly, “Well I'm not anyone special, I assure you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The image is one thing and the human being another.”

Unimpressed, I coughed. Incense was starting to fill up the room.

He finished, “It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.”

The blue light dimmed and the sound of footsteps could be heard in another room. The humming renewed. This lasted for quite a bit of time, long enough for Quinn to finally calm down enough to reassemble his body and let go of the handle. The King squinted his eyes and nodded his chin at the chair adjacent to me. The hours wasted by and eventually the seating arrangement started to feel comfortable.

A cranky voice, like broken wind-chimes carrying on a conversation with an parrot, boiled up from a room down the hall, “Uninvited guests, if you're not going to ask me any questions, then you need to get up and leave. I have too much work to be done to spend my precious time entertaining a spectre, who can't keep himself from poking around in bodies he doesn't belong in, and someone who doesn't want to believe a thing that he sees.”

Beginning of Chapter 3

I explained away my statements about Quinn's death as the officer and examiner walked me out to the front lobby. There were a lot of concerned looks and apologies. At the end I walked out of the glass doors still uneasy, wallet still in my pocket, and a decaying brother still in tow. An acrid smell drifted about the place. It was familiar but I disregarded it.

Quinn readjusted his neck with a quick pip, the sound of an acorn exploding when being squashed on a sidewalk. As it reset into place, his arm detached and began to bleed. I unlocked the driver side door. He ported into the passenger seat, blood draining out of his left arm's socket and onto the floor where it coalesced, dried up, and sparked from existence. I started the engine and drove out of the parking lot onto Poplar.

“I'd like to go to Union if that's alright? I have some explaining to do.” he mumbled while fidgeting with his cartilage.

“I don't really care to know. You've been retaining so well, until these past few days." I cleared my throat, "You're losing grip. Tiffani said that would happen some day. You're just not focusing anymore.”

Tiffani Bevel. Psychic, mystic, charlatan, witch, druid, prophet, and seer. She also moonlighted as a graverobber on certain Saturdays. Tiffani owned the only psychic establishment on Union Avenue. It was very difficult to miss sitting within dragging distance of a Starbucks. It also had a huge, neon, red, revolving sign in the shape of a hand with the most awkward positioning of the word, “PSYCHIC,” in green lettering about the middle. The front door to her green shop was bright red. Posted just below the brass mail slot on the door read a sign which said, “MAIL.” Tiffani had an affinity for the dead, mostly the variety that didn't stay that way. I speculated that Ms. Bevel took her interest of the deceased a little further than academics, false séances, and cheap parlor tricks at bars.

Quinn defended himself, “That's not true. I'm steady. I just got hit while crossing the street to go see Tiff. That's all. Ripped the poor guy in half. I feel horrible about it. I do.”

I glared at him but I still felt unattached from all of this new information.

“Wait. So, after you got robbed, you were hit by another car? That's unbelievable. There's absolutely no fucking way. Lightning doesn't hit a retard.” This fact wasn't especially true. In 2001, a mentally disabled woman residing in Ohio had her house catch on fire, killing her, when it was struck by lightning. She lived alone.

“It's the truth. That hair dresser, you know the one you go to on Cooper, Carl? I still think that makes you 'a gay' by the way. I needed to grab my wallet out of the can. It was only for a minute. As I was walking down from the tracks, I was jumped by the hipster. I gave him everything I had.”

He always said, a gay. It was his conservative way of asserting his own heterosexuality for everyone listening. I found it annoying and bigoted. He thought it masculine.

Despite his need to represent his manhood in any way possible, everything that Quinn actually owned could fit into a coffee can with enough space left over to fit a human head inside. This is precisely why he used one for his cache. He hid it in the middle of Cooper Street on the railroad. A small pseudo altar hung from the location, two compact discs and a silver trumpet tied together by what appeared to be fishing line. It was placed there before the cache existed. Because of a fight which took place between us three months prior, he stored his personal belongings there.

For me, it had been strange to hold onto my brother's personal items postmortem. When I brought this up to him, he left the apartment for a week. The process that took place as he collected his things was my first encounter with possession. A stranger, whom would soon become my hairdresser, knocked on my door at three thirty in the morning asking me to retrieve everything that was Quinn's and put it into something. All that I had was an empty coffee can. I deposited his wallet, a toothbrush, an mp3 player, and an old cellphone inside, and handed it to Carl. Then he was gone.

I don't remember much of what took place during his self induced exile, but when he came back – actually, I can't recall that either. I think it just happened.

“I don't know why I bring things up to you, Stuart. You're not listening most of the time. That blank face seriously pisses me and everyone else off.”

I turned down Union Avenue regardless of what my face looked like. He made an effort to reattach his arm. The wind pushed against the small pickup truck. The remaining sunlight faded and the stars, which would soon be outshone by the lights of Memphis proper, peeked at us.

“It happened there. I was still inside Carl's body, running away after I had gotten robbed. The truck didn't see Carl and just took me out. I didn't mean for any of it to happen. At first I was fine. I stayed inside Carl for about five minutes. It was so difficult trying to convince everyone that he was alive and doing fine. The body was completely smashed. People were attempting to give me medical attention and all I can remember is laughing hysterically. They continued trying to stop the bleeding, but I knew there wasn't any way that he'd stay inside that pigeon's body forever.”

 I'd break a shot glass too. Hell, I might even kill someone's brother after realizing I had to eat trash and scraps for the rest of my life.
 
I knew possession was a tricky process. I didn't understand all of what was necessary for it to take place but I did know that once a person's soul was removed it had to go somewhere else. Otherwise, that person would just rip the spectre from the corpse. After a soul was placed inside of another organism, a spectre only had a small amount of time to interact with the world.

There were other ways to possess though. And, we had discussed this when I discovered that Carl was missing work and about to lose his job. For instance, individuals who drink alcohol are more susceptible to possession. Anyone who has ever experienced a blackout while imbibing in the sauce has been unluckily “repossessed” by a spectre. Lost a memory? Done something crazy, been filmed while doing it, but cannot for the death of you remember why you flashed that bouncer? Woken up without a tooth? Supposedly, the soul sleeps so sweetly through possession that after the consumption of a few copious shots, it doesn't need a surrogate. It just sleeps like a coma patient covered in sheep.

“So, I jumped out. I just left him. His body stopped moving and everyone kept trying to keep it alive but he wasn't coming back. I ran the rest of the way to Tiff's place, told her everything, and pleaded for a ride to the apartment. Carl found me and he's been following me ever since.”

End of Chapter 2.

Ditching out of the critical moment in which all human interaction up until that point hinged on the ability to provide proper feedback, analysis, or commentary for the topic at hand was sort of my specialty. Take my current situation for example. Instead of wondering why a man had just taken a wallet from a surgical table and placed it inside the pocket of his hoodie, a medical examiner and a police officer were now asking me if I needed any medical attention.

Misdirection is the single greatest tool in the arsenal of a medium. Without adhering to a life of underhanded secrecy, the world would still be committing great atrocities and hunting down people that were seen as odd. I rolled to one side and moaned.

“You gave us quite a scare. Are you diabetic? I've never seen anyone take a tumble like that without any warning at all. Here sit up.”

I hunched over my knees closing off the pocket of my hoodie with my arm.

“Jim, go and get him something to eat out of the vending machine.”

I faked a helpless grunt of compliance.

“So, you were saying something about your brother.”

Quinn sat down on the gurney beside the dead body so that he could make faces at the blond corpse. The first day after his accident had been hell. The hospital tried to refuse his treatment at first. When they did agree to admit him, he had a bad reaction to some form of medication and slipped out of consciousness. 

That was the first time that I met him out of body. He didn't talk. His face slowly healed and then smashed back in just like the accident. He bled everywhere but didn't leave a trail. His eye was a constant problem. Even though he wasn't in pain,he screamed mostly. The trauma of existing in some other state confused him. It left him terrified. Worst of all, no one saw him. Except me.

He had other brothers that would have suited him better. Neal was an accountant. He lived in Chicago though. He never wrote anyone or sent a message acknowledging that anyone in the family was real. Nonetheless, he and Quinn bonded well during childhood.

Also, there's Ajax. He worked construction jobs with Quinn during college. The two were inseparable as soon as football season began. They spent hours just talking about their dream teams while they were younger.

Then, there's me. Stuart. Who can't keep a job or a girlfriend. A college dropout without any goals or aspirations looking to skirt by with a low end gig at anything that pays him well enough to keep a roof over his worthless head. The kid with an irrational fear of holding a six minute conversation with anyone. I reside low on the list of people whom should be contacted in case of after death phenomena. But, in a hospital full of nurses gossiping to fight off the tiredness of their shift, family members pouring another serving of burnt coffee into a small styrofoam cup, cold waiting rooms with one black fly which always bothered the person most awake and aware of the future, and a man with his metal walker battling back the progression of his own cancerous death in a sterile, white, coffin surrounded by electronic instruments measuring just how much life he has left inside him instead of notifying him of the warm, colorful faces visiting to tell him just how much of his life he gave to them, Quinn walked up to me. That was two years ago and since then I've learned much about how he came back and never why.

Spectres are individuals who die in horrible ways. Quinn was not an exception to this rule. When the car hit him, it was racing at 70 mph. The driver was ejected from his seat because he failed to wear a seatbelt. In truth, not wearing the belt was probably what saved the driver's life. As Quinn was struck by the oncoming vehicle, his body folded in upon itself as if a giant hand squeezed his left side like an empty beer can at a frat party. He contorted as the car continued to move, finally landing at his final resting place as he flew through the windshield and into the back seat. Hitting the brakes at the exact moment of impact flung the driver from his position. He lost momentum whenever his body collided momentarily with Quinn's, as both pedestrian and driver switched places. This provided the driver's body with enough friction to slow down his ascent and surprisingly he landed on his feet, perfectly unscathed. Eight hours later Philip, the driver, committed suicide.

When I began seeing Quinn as a spectre, I chose to ignore him. I just walked around the hospital with my dead brother following me like an injured dog. It's not something that I thought I needed to bring up to anyone during a family crisis. It surely wouldn't have gone over well. There was a moment when I turned around and he wasn't there anymore, immense relief.

However, I soon received a text from Ajax. He's up. I went to see him. He couldn't talk. There were so many tubes. One down his throat, the standard I.V., units of blood, a breathing apparatus. His eyes opened the size of half dollars beholding some frightful presence which no one could pinpoint. He'd look at us, his face swollen and veins bulging, through the glass. Medical personnel, running grabbing needles, medicine, more blood, they tried everything that they knew to do. It's not humanly possible to reconstruct the entire left side of the skeletal frame and replace each vital organ in such a short amount of time. His heart rate lowered, spiked, and after a few more moments the doctor finally looked at his wristwatch.

“He's been glassy eyed for the past ten minutes. It's probably just his blood sugar.”

The officer bent down and waved four chubby fingers in my face. “I GOT YOU A SNACK. I NEED YOU TO EAT. CAN YOU EAT?”

I nodded. Quinn laughed, an unknown liquid bubbling out of his ear.

Chapter 2 continued

*disclaimer*  Please keep in mind that this is a rough draft. The story will be tweaked in my spare time to account for errors, grammatical or otherwise. *end disclaimer*

“Isn't that just cliché enough for you? I have ten words to say to you and you walk out of the door anyway. Wesley could have had a heart attack if it weren't for Carlton keeping him preoccupied. Had to leave my eye in the commode. Probably won't be seeing that again.”

I pulled out my wallet to show the lady at the help desk my identification. He continued talking.

“Let me first begin by saying, yes, I know how bad this looks. I'm dead. Just falling apart sometimes. But, you're my brother. Who else am I going to be able to turn to? Furthermore, why are you even here? They're only going to tell you that I'm deceased, maybe allow you to look at my broken body, ask you if you can identify me, and send you on your way.”

I took a number and sat down in a large collection of people, mostly black. Two kids ran in between the rows of seating while their mother whispered, “Don't. Not here. Stop that right now.” Quinn stopped speaking long enough to move out of the smallest child's way, who looked up and said, “Excuse me sir...”

“That's okay kid.”

“Like I was saying. We're family. I don't know why...”

Fall weather brought out all of the scarves and hats considering the temperature outside was only 70 degrees. Quinn took turns between watching the kids play and attempting to hold my attention by maintaining contact with his one good eye. He hadn't changed much since the previous day at all. His brown hair was still cut short. His goatee was barely assembled from a patch of scruff that he managed to grow before dying. His good eye was brown and always full of a light hearted laughter which couldn't be caught. Quinn aged taller and he was also stronger. I was shorter, skinnier, inferior. He wasn't wearing shoes or sandals. The feet didn't cast a shadow. The toes were wide and pale. One, the biggest toe on the right foot, had been broken while playing on a merry-go-round by a kid with a wooden baseball bat. It had a horrible lean, curving inward like it was trying to protect the rest.

He kept talking for the entire thirty minute wait. I did everything that I could to ignore the noises but there was only so much National Geographic that I could stand to read, especially since there were fewer breasts in the articles. I took in the room for the remainder of the time.

I sighed. My number was called. I walked behind a police officer and a medical examiner. The examiner, Henry, pointed at several boxes stacked in one of the hallways and made a comment about them being in the way, “Every time.” We walked into a cold room, the four of us.

“I think that you can do without this part, Stuart. It's not going to be pleasant. I'm sexy as hell. There's no way you could live up to seeing yourself in the mirror everyday.”

The typical large white sheet covered everything but two feet. The examiner asked me to step forward and he removed the barrier.

I don't know if you've ever had to look at a dead relative before. I'll assume that you will in the future or have in the past. If you're reading this while observing the deceased, please leave them your copy of the book as I'm sure they'll find it entertaining, informative, and may even thank you for it someday. Just tuck it in their blazer, say some nice words, and get busy hugging those that have survived farther down the line. If you've never had to look at a dead relative, the following is for you. These bitter experiences felt throughout life that find you without adequate means of escape phase in and out of existence like a knot of fire amidst conditions of complete simplicity.

The face wasn't correct. That's what I noticed first. Quinn, whether real or not, stood in the room making identification and analysis of a dead individual easy. Nothing was correct. Pale skin was a check, but he shoulders were small, the torso bulged in the middle, and he had blond hair. Most of all, he had perfect toes..

“This is not my brother.”

The examiner raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me? His iden-”

Hearing the rest of what the man had to say would have been nice except that I now had to give the most annoying voice in the room my undivided attention.

“I tried to bring this up earlier. I did. I was robbed yesterday by a jerk wearing skinny jeans. How many times does someone get robbed at gunpoint by a hipster? I'd like to know the odds. It's not like the crime rate in this city points to any sort other possible scenario. Nope. White-blond-hipster-douchebag needs to make a point about fashion AND start up a a life of crime too. I suppose I had it coming to me. I'm basically made of money. I think I had a gift card worth $25 dollars in that wallet on the table. I even had a few business cards from hair salons. I was starting a collection of those.”

The medical examiner pointed to the wallet. I walked to autopsy table and looked at it.

“This was his. Here is his i.d..”

“Was his. This is the only body that we pulled out of the alley. You're saying your brother is dead too.”

“Yes. I haven't heard from him in a while.”

“He could still be alive. Have you tried filing a missing person's report?”

“No, that won't be necessary. I shouldn't have come here. I have to go.” My breathing began to tighten. Quinn covered his face with his palm.

“Are you alright son? I can have the lady at the front desk help you with the paperwork for the report. It'll only take a few minutes. Jim, can you show him to the front desk?”

“No, that's fine. It won't be a problem.”

“What? Why won't it be a problem? I don't understand”

“My brother died two years ago.”

I wanted to just turn and walk out of the door, get in my truck, drive home to my run down apartment, but I couldn't. The policeman cleared his throat. Henry squinted his eyes. I buckled my knees, swayed backwards, and then tumbled, head first, into a rolling table filled with medical instruments.

Chapter Two.

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Chapter 2

I placed the phone back on the table and sank into the couch. Feathers, some too small to see, drifted around the room. A pigeon, that I can only describe as mangled, swooped down from the window air conditioning unit. Reality. I didn't want for any of it to be. The drywall, Quinn – dead or otherwise – continuing to make strange noises in my hermetically sealed D-Day bathroom, Carlton pecking my rotting brother's sneakers, the bread, and broken glass, and more noises, and knocking at the door, and the mold under the window unit, and more records playing backwards amidst more knocking, and then silence, and knocking again.

“Maintenance. Entering the apartment.” Jingling keys entered a cold brass handle,

“Walking in,” after that latch turned, the door cricked outward, boots stepped onto an empty tiled kitchen floor littered with bread and a broken shot glass, “What the hell,” and the sound of pigeons fleeing the coop brought my mind back.

“Oh, hey. Wesley. I'm sorry. I didn't hear you knocking.”

His name was Mack Webb. The entire complex called him Wesley. He was a grey haired black man whose face appeared as though it were made out of melted wax and seven years of fighting type two diabetes, crunched his way past the scurrying sky-rats into the living room.

“Stuart? What happened here? Why are there birds in the house? Brenda called me. Said I needed to look at your bathroom window.” He eyed the drywall suspiciously. “Stew. Everything okay in here?”

No, Mr. Wesley. According to my voicemail, I now have to drive to the city medical examiner. But, that can't possibly be the case. You see, my dead brother just happens to be in the bathroom attempting to set an all time record for the longest wrestling match with a roll of tissue paper. There has been a sudden boom in the population of indoor pigeons. Calling pest control was part of my list of things to accomplish today, however, my phone became completely useless as anything other than a five hundred dollar paperweight because its battery power drains faster than a plastic cup filled with molten lead. I will have to fill you in on the very interesting backstory of Carlton, of whom I've grown quite fond, another time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe I have either a suicide to attempt or an exorcism. I don't own a bible so this should be an easy decision to make, unless the bird is Catholic...

“Yes, Mr. Wesley. I'm fine. I just recently found out that my brother was in a car accident. I guess. I guess, I'm just a little shocked. Tell Brenda I'll pay for the window please. Also, please don't mention the birds.”

Wesley frowned. “I'm sorry to hear that Stuart. When did it happen?”

I told him everything that I knew about the accident from the messages left for me by the Memphis city coroner's office. I felt it wise to leave out the part about a shredded Quinn surprising me yesterday afternoon into a near coma. I explained away my cut cheek and the lapse in time since the accident on falling while taking a shower.

“You've had a rough time of it the past 24 hours, Stew. Sorry, for barging in. I'm going to head downstairs so I can grab my tool bag and some plywood. I'll cover that hole up so you ain't gotta worry 'bout these filthy birds anymore.”

I stood up from the couch. He turned and walked towards the door and was gone.

“He really needs to cut back on the barbecue these days. I always told him it'd be the death of him.”

I glanced at Quinn. His mouth wasn't missing teeth. He was glaring at Carlton. The bird shifted a single eye toward his direction.

Quinn spoke with a snide tone. “I believe we had a deal, Feathers. You owe me an egg.”

Nonchalant Carlton pecked at the crack in the floor, circa 1970, a very good year for dust and termite damage. I grabbed my keys, phone, and wallet.

“Where are you going Stew? Don't leave. I was just about to tell you somet-”

I brushed past Wesley on the way down the stairs. The screen door slammed shut behind me. I spun around looking up at my missing window. If he's really there, I thought, that black man will be out of the apartment in less than thirty seconds. I counted under my breath. 1... 2... 16... 24... 32... 40... 64...

“He's not real.” I walked to the truck, got in, started the engine, and drove to Poplar Avenue.

Driving in Memphis, like participating in a roller derby, can be an unforgiving experience. I decided to turn left on Central, then right crossing the bridge and Union while on Southern, and made another left onto Poplar. I was at the office within ten minutes time. It was four P.M.. With very little traffic to dodge along the way. The city's regional forensic center sits across the road from a house with a strange wrought iron fence that was set into brown brickwork. To the west, behind me, were collection of taller buildings. The city sprawls out for a fairly larger distance than others in Tennessee. Tall buildings seem to need space from each other here. Almost as if they're claiming a specific portion of the city as their own territory.

I parked the truck at a feasible spot which looked like visitor's parking and limped to the door. A man with a business suit held the door open for me and I proceeded into the air conditioned lobby. It had the government building smell sprayed in every nook of the facility. The smell is approximately two parts federal/state funding, one part antibacterial hand lotion, and eight parts filing cabinets from the 80's. I used to think they smelled like rock salt and pineapples but then I realized that this was just a special case in which the lady working the front desk at the DMV decided to risk wearing perfume that her husband had purchased for her online.

Tentative end to Chapter 1

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Impossible situations greet the mind with the slimy tendrils of possibility. As blood, dry and crackling flaked away, I roused myself enough to check the back of my head. This blood was different – still wet, a warm trickle at the base of the neck, but it flowed from my cheek which suddenly became real again stinging my brain with plenty of real pain. The ceramic tile had broken into tiny shards which fell through my fingers. I put my hand down to push myself forward towards the rim allowing these shards to cut into my palm. I continued leaning forward, the rest of the broken bits landing in the tub. The chuckling sound erupted again.

This coughing caused my nose to burn as I spit more of the red out. It didn't taste fresh, metallic. The right side of my cheek burned. Shaking, I hobbled to my feet shifting the curtain clanging the shower rod off of the tub's porcelain rim confronting reality although at that moment I felt the further from it. My eyes observed the person straddling the wooden seat of my toilet.

He'd gotten better since I was startled. There was no way to comprehend any of his current state with logic. His full jawline? Healed. All that remained of the chest depression? A small dent. His t-shirt? Clean. The same as yesterday's. Even his arm had regenerated except for a small trail of bruising which at that moment faded from a deep purple to a light blue. I rubbed dried blood from my eyelashes and then his injuries, completely gone.

It felt like midday. The sunlight burning my back confirmed this. My foot touched the small remainder of the window, broken during the scare of it all. Bits of magenta and pink dotted its surface.

“I bet the pigeons that you'd be on your feet before they had the opportunity to peck at you. You always were the fighter. Looks like I win. They got what they came for though. They're eating the bread left open in the kitchen. I told you to close the bag.”

“I told you... to... call someone. ” I managed to sputter out in the midst of expelling thick, scarlet mucous from what felt like a third lung. “Why are you doing this?”

“The bag. I'm doing it because you left the bread bag open. Doesn't look like it's helping. I'd take it back but-” his jaw line gaped. His goatee sizzled and popped smoking like a new fire brought to life. Then a noise flooded the ceramic walls.

Backmasking makes a similar noise. All of the sound that issued from his mouth was like listening to a horse whinny in reverse. Hearing this too, he immediately grabbed for the roll of tissue. It didn't move with his arm. Instead he appeared to be lifting a weight the size of a tractor tire. His body started to convulse, the right half of it still making that horrifying squark. The lifting portion of his left arm pulsated, animating the rest of his body into one motion.

This battle ascended his neck until it reached his mouth. He grunted while trying to lift the toilet paper. For that moment of silence neither of us knew what to do, nor did we understand the nature of what was to happen next. His eyes creased as if to laugh but the left one began to creep out of its socket. My arm shot forward to stop it from falling out again. Then my foot shifted shattering the glass pane and slicing my heel. I screamed.

There we were. Two grown men in a bathroom. One with a thumb stuck in the other's eye socket while cloaked in a shower curtain and blood. The other, attempting to lift a toilet paper roll as heavy as a pregnant elephant on a sinking ship. Neither of us smile.

“You can take your thumb out of my eye if you like. I don't think it's helping our situation. Thumb on the brain and all.” Leaving the elephant in the room to its own fate, he plucked his left eye, detaching it with an unpleasant thock “Why do I like doing that? Been passing the time with it. It'll grow back in a few minutes.”

“You're using some type of puppetry.”

“Yep. I'm a puppet. Still, I don't know who has the strings.”

“Someone would have called if you're really dead. They've got to do an inquest or physicians, an autopsy, at the very least someone would have identified your body, grabbed a cell phone, called the last known number, people don't just die and not die when they die. They die. You're dead.”

My cellphone beeped in the living room. Pigeons fluttered in the kitchen banging into pots and pans. A drinking glass sent out a sharp report that it would no longer be of any use. More broken glass.

“That was my, 'I Love New York,' shot glass. Damn. You owe me Carlton.” He grinned at me. A few teeth sprinkled from his mouth along with spit and gristle. “I named them and gave them back stories during your last black out. Carlton is the rough and tumble pigeon from Europe that everyone likes but can't understand because he speaks more French than English.”

I pulled away my thumb wiping it with the curtain although there wasn't a trace of tissue or fluid. Limping out of the tub I made it to a pile of clothes next to the door. A painful experience and a few seconds later, I was out of the bathroom.

It's not that I didn't want to figure out what the hell was happening in my life until that point. I suppose a person can only take so much trauma before the mind switches off outside stimuli. Instead, I focused on not leaving a blood trail through the living room by wrapping the towel around my right foot. It'd been as he said. Bird droppings on the couch and the living room table confirmed this. My phone's battery was almost completely drained. Thirty-two missed calls. 

*This ends chapter 1. Thanks if you're reading along. I should probably update my word count on NaNoWriMo. I'll get around to it. If you like it, maybe leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on the story so far? Have a great day and don't forget to gain an hour!* 

Second post. Enjoy!

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Of course there isn't a hot date. There's never a date.

I didn't hear a door slam but I check to see if he is walking down the sidewalk. His shoes are still at the front door. Nothing unusual. He wears sandals mostly. The earplugs flop onto the couch. I disrobe quickly, walk back to the bathroom, pull open the curtain, and enter.

Government showers. That's what they had installed during WWII for these barracks. Seals off from everything, even oxygen sometimes. Turn on the faucet and soon there's so much steam in the room that buying a clothes iron seems pointless.

Any shower can easily be the worst place to get an idea. There's no way to separate hygiene from a mental break through. In my case, it results in dropping the shampoo, slipping, grabbing the curtain, and bruising a rib. Not this time. This idea arrives quite conveniently between measuring out the correct amount of conditioner and pushing the drain plug away with my toe.

He doesn't have to know anything about looking for that job. I can keep this up for as long as I need.

I finish up, toss a yellow towel on my face, and step out, cold tiles sticking to my feet like wet leaves on a car windshield. A faint gurgling noise, must be the pipes. Really need to call about fixing this place up. I lower the towel.

“There's not a hot date? Well, that's tragic. I was going to give you plenty of personal time. I'm sorry but I don't think that I can now. You see, I'm dead on Union Avenue.”

I spin to the right grabbing the only thing I can to defend myself. As the shower curtain rips severely to the left, the rod supporting it flings itself from the wall and into the only portal, besides the door, in the entire bathroom, a small single paned window cracking it, knocking all of the soap, shampoo, and other shower supplies asunder. Backing away, my knees buckle at the tub's rim causing my head to crash into the seventy year old tile wall. Everything looks like ink. When a person is knocked out there is a faint feeling, like someone is tugging on the nose to get them to awaken. In real life, when one's neck revolves over a certain point by punching the jaw, the brain sloshes vehemently in the cranial cavity and slips into unconsciousness. Fight choreographers avidly avoid this type of injury and thus most fight scenes fail to deliver an accurate portrayal of the “knockout punch.” Let's consider my current plight in the context of a classical Western.

A decent sized revolver travelling in quick downward stroke below the occipital lobe is usually sufficient to cause a a desperado to take a dust nap. Why is this used so much during Westerns? It's very easy to cover the move without giving away the illusion.

However, unlike a Western, my body -- two hundred pounds of flesh and bone, hurtles into a ceramic wall causing real blood to soak into the shower curtain and me to dream. Beneath the waves now, I can't tell if I'm alive. I see a huge sand dune. People are waving at me. Someone is screaming. A friend looks at me. His face is full of change. I am alive. I can feel my skin ballooning like sausages filled with human meat. Now I'm bored. Sitting at a table full of second place trophies. I look in a mirror. I don't feel sorry for myself. A small plaque reads, “For those who have returned and progressed.” A fire starts from the middle of them and I marvel for a minute at the smoke.

The very moment after you've been unconscious feels worse than the accident that put you into the position your awakening from. If you don't believe me, you can watch any American film in which someone gets knocked out and then wakes back up. Not to mention that creating a realistic enough scene in which said event occurs is unusually difficult. I digress. This particular time didn't feel very nice. The street light makes the tiles look orange. The blood, which is now dry and sticking to every surface within arm's reach, burns my eyes. My brother stands there an odd look on his face.

His face. There's barely a face. He's standing in front of me but seems so small. The right side of his body leans at an awkward angle and he's staring at me with just one eye in the light.

“I'm glad to see one of us is awake.”

“STOP.”

“Yeah, that's what I said but the damn thing just kept coming. By the way, you may want to answer your phone. They've been trying to reach you for the past fifteen minutes. I'd help you up but I only have one good arm. I'm sure you've figured that out. ”

“What are you doing?! This is sick. I'm bleeding all over the place. How long are you going to keep this joke going? I'm pretty sure I need medical attention. Call 911.”

I tried to breathe deep. My lungs chuckled blood up my throat. I puked it onto the curtain and tried to brush it off with my hand. All this while his body still stood there, left arm swaying by a single piece of sinew or cartilage; he sneezed and as his body convulsed. His left eye broke away from the nerves and surrounding tissue dropping into the toilet. He cursed at it. He'd come back broken, burned, and with bones scattered upon the street. My eyes faded out again.

Like in most movies, this is also a classic scene. The secondary stage of unconsciousness, and frankly, I've always hated seeing it happen. Too predictable and only serves to take up a marginal bit of time for the audience. Also, for some reason they often avoid advancing the storyline during these moments. For me, it was just a passage of time from midnight until a few pigeons crept into the window and waking me.