I looked up, to see her part her brightly painted lips, bordering on whore-ish, part and reveal white teeth, tooth paste commercial white, only to see each of them turn one 180 degrees like a billboard that rotates in segments, from right to left. They revealed a message in tiny letters the same red as her lip stick, I could barely make it out, it said: “Sorry, you’re not a winner. Please try again.”
The anxiety swelled to a tsunami.
My vision blurred into a tunnel, and I was flying into her mouth and down her throat, there was no sense of movement but things elongated themselves and were stretched in the direction of my motion, like a 3D image pulled apart on silly putty. When every thing was black, it was silent; it had been silent since I heard my sweat hit the ground. It was black for only a moment, then slowly, I saw colors, weird colors, in weird shapes, always moving always changing, shapes that you couldn’t focus on no matter how hard you tried, like what you see on the inside of your eyelids when you press against them. It started with a half circle in the middle, black on black but with a white aura, like a solar eclipse then they split, moved away and morphed, they danced for a while and turned into other shapes and other colors, until I forgot what they were originally and it was just a kaleidoscopic green glowing honey comb. And then…
…I gasped. I drew in as much air as I could, gulping for it as if I had just surfaced from under water in a made for TV movie, and it felt like that. I was facing the ceiling, with the broken, lop sided ceiling fan that was missing a blade. Perspiration covered my skin like a glass of ice water that had sat too long untouched. A thin linen sheet stuck to my lower half with all the sweat. As my awareness and shaky sobriety grew I realized I was lying with my hands behind my head in what I would normally imagine to be a cliché and satisfactory post coital position. I could smell my armpits without tilting my head; apparently the deodorant that was supposed to last for twelve hours had died half a day before. I irrationally, instinctively, pull my arms down to my sides and brought them across my chest in something that would resemble a pose of coy modesty.
I wasn’t actually becoming more aware, I was just getting a chance to notice the sensations across my body. The area where my neck faded into my back burned, and I slapped a hand back there and touched what felt like a 2 by 2 inch piece of aluminum foil, I peeled it off like a ten year old does to one of his friend’s band-aids. Jerk. Fuck. It hurt like hell and I felt something wet as I fell back to the sheets from the barely inclined position. It wasn’t sweat, it was warmer than sweat or maybe my mind just knew, either way I didn’t have to think hard in my semi-comatose state to realize it was blood.
I brought the piece of foil back around to my face, to see, I had to hold it close because my eyes couldn’t focus. I thought maybe I have glasses somewhere, I didn’t know if I did or didn’t to tell the truth. I looked at the patch from three inches away, it was metallic, but by no means aluminum foil, and embossed with a maze like pattern that shined red with wet blood on dry flesh. I turned it over and it had an insignia that just said ‘DERM’ but in cursive graffiti, it was printed on though, the shading of the letters was uniform, no signs of a pen or human touch.
I was still pretty much in a ‘what-the-fuck’ state of mind. When I started piecing things together, about as fast as a seal working on a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle, but I was piecing it together.
I looked at my memory in reverse, able to track through it. After simple thought to simple thought went through my head, I figured that when I had woken up, I had must have fallen unconscious from not breathing, something caused by this DERM I guessed, I knew things like that could do that to you, somewhere. I would later look back and admire my half-assed intuition. After that bout of hard thought, I got up, the bed sheets sticking to me, some from blood some from sweat, at that point I couldn’t tell, not only did I not care, I was simply unaware of that.
I was running on autopilot. Found my way to the glow of the bathroom light, and not possessing the motor skills to splash water on my face in a dramatic fashion then look in the mirror and stare at my reflection, propped up by my arms, I stumbled to an unfamiliar bath tub. Only realizing I had been stumbling the whole way as my shins hit the rim and I flopped into the tub like a dieing fish. Kicked one of the faucets and felt, after a short delay, the cold water hit me from above at, not that I had the proper measuring tools with me or the capability to use them, a forty five degree angle. I lie there, lapping up the metallic tasting water with a half opened mouth, opening and closing my jaw trying to get more. It was only now, that I could really feel my body…