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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!*
