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.