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!*