This one is kind of like the one prior (some places are loosely fit) but if you read it for what it could be, it would be b@d@$$. Chapter 2 kind of sux a wee bit, but it holds true to the greater storyline.
This is a story based on fiction and belief.
Thought
Prologue:
It all started with a crash, literally. I was sitting in my friend’s car, patiently observing oncoming traffic. We were scheduled to arrive at a bar called Frenchie’s in about an hour to play the normal drinking game while staring at ladies we would never be good enough to obtain the numbers of. I was already a tad woozy from the shots I took at his house. Oddly, however, he was sober enough to run for Office.
Throughout the trip, I was consumed with thinking about the reality of the world. What was life, what gave us free reign of this desolate planet in the midst of this desolate solar-system? Lost in question to existentialism, basically it was the usual train of thought for a twenty-one year old.
After a few moments locked in thought of the deepest caliber, I questioned the purpose of our having been manifested in the first place. After all, mankind, not having the knowledge to answer said question, created walls around our human existence, walls that were built to segregate us from the rest of the planet. We work for the ability to purchase something someone else created, and name that our soul purpose in life, ignoring everything else in the process. Nothing in the entire world matters as much to us as what we achieve. Whatever god deemed us favorable enough to bequeath upon us this gift of life would naturally want something in return, would he not? What if it wasn’t a gift at all?
In the midst of these spiritual wanderings, I hardly noticed and took into account that my friend, whom on any other day I would trust with my life –if cars were not involved-, was changing lanes without signaling before hand. This was something I had witnessed for a while, and always commented upon in mind if not verbally. Of course, everyone is permitted to one screw up a day, but if that was the case, than this would be the only thing he had ever done wrong.
And yet I didn’t suspect that there was to be a drastic change in the way my world worked until the moment I heard another car’s horn blare and tires screech. By then it was too late.
Surrounded by the sound of grinding metal, crunching glass, and the force of a two ton rhino colliding with a brick wall, I witnessed perfect white, soon to fade to a more perfect black.
At one point I awoke to the sound of sirens in the cold, a policeman hovering over me with a penlight staring me in the eye. I must have spouted some sort of anti-governmental protest, and it must have hit home with a vengeance, because the cop cursed, then turned away and said that I would be just fine. I wondered who he was speaking to, and turned my head to look. That was when I heard something in my neck pop like a cap gun going off. Pain enveloped me and before I was given back to the darkness, I saw her surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. She visually seemed more real than any of them.
Chapter 1: Clear?
“Clear!”
A jolt of pure energy accompanied the spiked force of the voice as I slowly came back from the black with a gasp that should have torn my chest apart. Then returned to the black with equal fervor.
I’ll only say this once, so do your best to understand the feeling of resuscitation from the patient’s end. Once your heart stops for any period of time and is started abruptly, there is a feeling akin to something bursting from your chest. If there were sounds of bones breaking, I would have been convinced that I swallowed an alien. It hurt…that bad. Anyone who goes through a heart murmur or heart attack will know what I am talking about, and would probably be clutching their chest in not-so-fond memory of the occurrence. Sometimes, before the crash, I’d lie awake in bed awaiting the chariot of dreams to carry me to that place, and my heart would seem to sneeze. What I mean is that its beats grow softer, and then with a resounding thud, it sort of re-awakens. That feeling hurts a bit. Imagine that about a hundred fold. There were tears in my eyes as I finally opened them for the first time in a month. That’s right, a month. I learned this from the same doctor that I would have swung at when I was brought back, if I could have. Apparently, I was in a shock induced coma for a month after the wreck. I suffered lacerations; the biggest of which needed five-hundred stitches, located down my chest, caused by part of the door frame, which they had to surgically remove from my breast bone, internal swelling; which would have turned to bleeding had I not been so lucky, eight broken ribs; complements of the door frame, and a broken neck. Accompanying which, of course, was light amnesia, which dissipated in a week.
My friend was killed instantly, no airbag. His face was meshed so completely around the steering wheel that they had to cut part of it off to get him out of the car. To this day, I can’t remember what he looked like. Everything else came back but that. He was my best and closest friend of ten years, and suddenly, because of a stupid turn signal, even my memory of him was wrenched away. Horrible though it may seem; I was extremely thankful to find that, because of the coma, I wasn’t able to attend the funeral.
My neck broke in such a way that I needed physical therapy to relearn how to use the lower half of my body. Needless to say, the events which transpired since my meeting with that woman had pretty much negated the possibility of giving that instance much thought. My family visited me the second day of my stay in the hospital and we wept together. On the third day, I was surprised and shocked to see my father walk through those doors and sit at my bedside. We hadn’t seen each other for about eight months now and hadn’t lived under the same roof for about six years. The sight of each other opened up the wellspring once more and we shed more tears than the rest of my family’s put together. They say that to cry is to begin to heal an open wound. If that is indeed the case, then I must have had a clean bill of health three days in.
My legs felt stupid and detached. At first, I had to use the bars on the side of the bed just to lift my upper half. ‘Pins and needles’ doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling in my stupid legs. They say that an amputee feels a ‘ghost’ appendage where one was cut off. I felt that as well, the only differences being in that I wasn’t an amputee, and my stupid legs were still right there.
A week later, after they were convinced that my trying to rebuild my stamina and reconnect with my legs wouldn’t end up tearing me in half, I began physical therapy. My therapist was a balding man who must have been a gym teacher at one point, because he kept spouting nonsense like “pride might hurt but…” or “if you don’t give one-hundred percent…” Allow me to elucidate upon my rage at this point by saying that no matter what happened to a patient or what his defect is, talking about pride and one-hundred percent is about as useful as trying to teach a rat to say ‘hello’. Granted, he made me so mad that I pushed harder, but get realistic. When a person can’t walk but still has legs that could work, generally that person will be angry enough to keep trying to walk, regardless of the pep talk he receives from his ‘instructor’. Normally, when someone with legs as stupid as mine were at the time, is faced with such a problem, they won’t just give up if the ‘instructor’ isn’t around to push them… At least, I wouldn’t. But in contrast, I’d like to say that my physical therapist was trying to help, and he was trying to earn every penny of his paycheck.
Three days into that, I could stand again, albeit as wobbly as a duck on glass, and with the immense aid of rails. A week in, and I could walk with the walking rails in the therapy room. A month later –it was a big step- I could stumble about without much aid at all.
The next night, the rain pounded upon the window to my room, the only reassurance that there was indeed a world out there. One can only live with needles in the arms, bad food every meal, and a nurse who’s not much more than a live-in maid –one who likes poking people with needles- for so long before tedium sets in.
Chapter 2: A Rude Awakening
The final weeks in the hospital began to seep in and wreak havoc on my mind; I blame it on the IV drip. It started to seem as though I was becoming institutionalized. There were more visits from family and less visits from the nurse during that last stint, thank god. She seemed as though she had just come from shooting a horror scene for a movie in which she was the monster and was still absorbed in the roll.
The hospital was so uniform that I knew by heart what times were what, from the changing of the sheets, to the changing of the shifts.
I also learned the names of most of the staff. One in particular, Tom the janitor, I got along with rather well. He was the kind of person who you wouldn’t want giving important speeches but had such a kind face that he fit his position nicely. To put it bluntly, old Tom was psychotic. Not in the sense that he’d break down and scream at things that weren’t there, but in the sense that his mind would wander –even in mid speech, and just you try to follow that one- from what he should be thinking to the craziest stuff I’ve ever heard before. As a reference, one day we were chatting about his children and this is the sentence he threw from left field: “Oh, Donna’s ok. She just went to this one respectable comp’ny and got a raise- and joined the circus to make cotton candy for the whales.” …See what I mean? And he’s about sixty five, so it’s just that much stranger. Usually he’s quiet though, pretty much content with wherever the hell his mind’ll tend to wander in any given situation. The staff knows about his wanderings, but since he doesn’t cuss, and since when patients hear it and laugh, he laughs with him, they keep him around. Besides, his kids, both out of college, don’t seem to care that he’s all alone with his ramblings, not even giving him a dime to dance on. Needless to say, he needs all the money he can get just to survive in this cruel world.
Then there’s Gregg. I hate Gregg. Wait… not enough feeling there. I HATE Gregg. This man can be found repeatedly harassing and bullying old Tom every day. He’s one of those chumps that think that, just because someone isn’t like everyone else around, and because they may be a little light in the attic, god wouldn’t be doing justice unless he allowed someone like Gregg to make their life a live-in hell. To beat that, good ole Gregg is thirty-five, the wise age of knowing better than that. Well, old Gregg got what he deserved one day. It started like this, and remember, this was the second to last day I would be in that hospital:
Gregg was temporarily given the position of clean-up for when a patient either got well or transferred. At one point he and Tom had the bad luck, or at least Tom did, of running into each other during one of the transfers. Tom had said something to the effect of:
“Well, we gotta be in the same room, but if we stay on separate sides, we’ll hit Chattanooga in no time.”
Now, I understand how someone could take that offensively, I also understand how Tom was over in left field again… I think. But I guess that Gregg took it as honey to a bear and decided to beat Tom until he bled. So, later, Tom comes into my room to clean and I see this nasty looking knot on his forehead. I ask what happened. Tom answers, not a left field word in this sentence. Allow me to mention again, this man is about sixty-five years of age. I don’t know if you know this, but there is an age limit to getting beat to bloody shambles. I don’t know what that age limit is, but I am willing to bet that it’s shy of sixty-five. So I got angry. Now, Gregg is like a dog drowning in ice water, if you come close to him, even if it’s to save him, he’ll bite and bark and scratch and kick. It’s just in his nature. So direct confrontation, especially by me, would be next to useless. But such crime should not go unpunished, so I sat and schemed.
Then it hit me. There was a new patient in the wing that day, she was a burn victim. Horrible burns over three quarters of her body, including her arms, legs, and face. Her whole head was covered in gauze. She unfortunately wasn’t able to retain her ability to speak. She was single, and had no family to speak of. It was time to turn tragedy into vengeance.
Gregg started his shift the next day at around four in the morning, sleepy eyed with cigarette breath yawns. He worked his way from one side to the other; she was in one of the rooms his coworker would hit later that day. Mopping and Vacuuming and cleaning poop pots. Tom was standing around the lobby, in plain view of Gregg. We worked out that good ole Gregg would get one last possible redemption, and only if he didn’t start it with Tom again this morning. Gregg walked casually up to the lobby. Tom was whistling some odd, spacey tune when suddenly Gregg turned on him and balled up his fist and made to punch Tom in the face. Tom cringed, I cringed too in truth, and Gregg lowered his fist and laughed mockingly in Tom’s face. That was enough for me, plan still in play.
I waited about forty minutes and called the hospital staff from my room. They would know who was calling so this was where I had to pray for a miracle. If it was Ramon, Casper, or Stringer, I would be in the clear. If it was Regan, Miller, or the senior resident: Carter, I was screwed. The phone rang twice over a very nervous breath which was my own, and finally someone answered.
“Hey, kid, what’d ya need?”
Yes! It was Casper. He was called so because of his lack of skin pigmentation.
“Hey Casper, I wanna play a prank on Gregg, can you help?”
“Hey man, I dunno about that one! He’s in a pinchy mood today, ‘sides, you know what he’s like.”
“Aw, come on man! I’m only here for two more days,”
And then I added in my best Capone voice,
“He won’t touch me.”
“Ha, alright man. But if the blame falls on me, it falls on you more, capeech?”
“Got it.”
“Cool, wha’da’ya want me’ta say?” Casper asked, seeming to like this game more and more, you could tell because he was converting further into his Brooklyn accent. He was never a fan of Gregg and he had saved Tom more than once from Gregg’s wrath, almost getting broadsided in the process.
“That his house burned down and his wife is here in the hospital. Say that she got burned real bad trying to escape and that she’s in room…” I looked to Tom for the number. He held one hand up with fingers splayed.
“Five.”
“Man, I’m startin’ not to like this.”
“Dude, relax, seriously. I’ll take the fall.”
I could feel him shake his head from here in the room.
“Ok, but you gotta promise that I’m not getting fired over this…”
“Promise, Casper, thanks man.”
“Yeah, you owe me a steak dinner.”
“Will do, will do.”
“And I’m not just talking the cheap stuff neither, you better get me the granddaddy of all steaks, and A1 sauce too.”
I hung up.
Now this is the beautiful part of my scheme, Gregg’s house had no phone, so he couldn’t verify the info. Of course, he could have called the news or the police, but when your house just reputedly burned down and your wife is in the very hospital you’re working in, you tend to go to the room before you verify the information. In this case that’s just what he did. Good ole Gregg went at a dead run to room five when he got the message. The other beauty of my scheme was that she couldn’t talk, so there were no denials when he jumped into her room. She mumbled and moaned and the stupid fool thought that she was sad for the house and situation, when in fact; she was scared half to death of him and his rantings that she knew nothing about. The only miscalculation I made was to think that sooner or later that day, he would have left to see the house, or found out the lie and gotten mad. But he ended up staying over there all night. He finally found the truth of the matter the next day when his wife called, angrier then a bull-terrier, and explained that, no, the house was fine, and no, she was no where near the hospital. Surprisingly enough, however, instead of blowing up on either Tom, Casper, or I, as I figured he would, he went into a sort of depression, and said nothing to anyone for the rest of my stay.
I was probably a cold hearted fool for doing that, but I thought it was justified. Old Tom was sixty-five years of age, old enough to be my grandfather.
I still delivered Casper his steak, as promised.
Chapter 3: Fields of Roses
The last night of my hospital stay, I had a dream about the lady I saw before my neck snapped. She had short, raven black hair, and wore a beautiful, sparkling red dress. We were in a monstrously grand ballroom, dancing around people whose faces were not blurry but not quite distinguishable. She leaned toward me slowly as we revolved around and around in the center of the room. I felt her lips on my neck and my hair bristled. She held me intimately, and oddly enough, there was no shyness or fear on my part. It was as if we'd been lovers for a long time now. Her breath tingled and the warmth gave me goosebumps. She whispered as she kissed my skin.
“There is a line between us.”
I looked down and saw that she was correct. There was a line drawn red directly between us, stretching off into the walls, and perhaps from there, infinity. As we revolved, the line revolved as well, always keeping us separated. I looked about and saw that the other dancers also give a wide berth to the line. The more I looked, the deeper red the line grew.
“Don’t focus on it. Look at me.”
I tried, believe me, I tried. But it was impossible, the line had captured my entire attention, there was nothing else in my universe.
Then the line began to bleed.
The very moment the line began to bleed, an evil and amplified voice shouted from inside my head. It was hate-filled and malicious. The voice I’d suspect a Demon would own.
“This is the line you live by! See how it bleeds for you! Soon you’ll bleed too!”
I looked to the woman, my only salvation. She was in fear, looking about as if she heard the voice as well. I hugged her close to me, but the line started to burn my skin. I would have kept holding, but I feared that it would burn hers as well.
“Don’t leave me!” She screamed, eyes wide.
Awake.
My sheets were filled with sweat. I was cold. The memories of that dream to this day have never left me. Funny how it seems to work that way; can’t remember my best friend who died by my side, but I’ll never forget that dream… or that voice. I pressed the button and the bed propped up to a semi-sitting position. With shaky fingers, I found the remote and turned on the TV.
After about thirty minutes I felt calm enough, and certainly tired enough, to try to sleep again. When I was whisked off to sleep this time, the same dream played itself out again, me having been unable to retain any memory of the first during the second, with only the demon’s words changed.
“How many times have you danced to this tune? How many times more? You will bleed for me!”
My mother came to my bedside later the next day and helped me prepare to leave. I would wear a neck-brace yet for a time until my neck healed enough to eliminate the risk of a second fracture. My steps were unsure but confident as I walked out of the hospital. My bum having had so much free air it now felt trapped and alone, and I thanked god for that. We talked about life and things happening in our duel worlds at the time, she having had so much better gossip than I could have possibly attained. She enjoyed the story of Tom’s vengeance, but under the pretense of motherhood gave me a good slap to ensure that I learned my lesson. At last I was going home. On the way, we stopped by a burger joint, and I’ll tell you that it is the best feeling in the world after such an experience to be able to enjoy a good burger and box of fries. That was when the depth of what happened hit me.
“Hey, mom, can I see his grave before we go home?”
She just nodded and turned at the next light. It turns out that he was just a few blocks away from the burger joint after all. His grave was unmarred and simply devoid of pictures. That wasn’t the only reason I wanted to go there, but it was a big one. We ended up going to a florist and buying some flowers for his grave. I also wrote a poem later and set that up next to the flowers. It was laminated, and I stuck it into the grass under his headstone with golf tees, to the best of my knowledge, its still there. The rest of the day passed uneventfully.
That night, I went to bed and had a new dream, by far the most bizarre yet. In this dream, I was outside in the middle of the night in the middle of a field. The stars were blazing with white, colorful fury. There was a breeze, but no chill. I stood there, paralyzed, unable to move, as suddenly the mist at my feet and dew from the grass gathered into one ephemeral being. It was made of water and was in the shape of a diamond. It was three-dimensional and looked like two cones were placed together at their wide bases. The collected water washed from the top of the diamond to the bottom only to be sucked up through the bottom and go inside of the being again. This process was repeated throughout our discussion, talk about distracting.
“What is your cause?” It asked me in all seriousness. This question gave me pause.
“I don’t understand.”
“Every being was created with a cause, what is yours?”
“I need to find her.” I responded, knowing when I said it that it was right.
“She from our side?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know what that meant at first, but then I understood.
The being came up close and, if it were human, I would have guessed that it was trying to judge the validity of my statement.
“Fine.”
With that the being dissipated and I was honored with the spectacle of watching every drop return to its previous place, be it on a lone blade of grass, or in the mist. Then in the space of about fifteen seconds I sank under the earth and fell into a cavern, the cavern’s ceiling slowly started to sink, and I saw that there was a face in the ceiling. It was the demon.
“What is your cause?” It asked mockingly, “Your cause is your suffering!”
That voice was so evil and so painful to hear that I clasped my hands over my ears and prayed for the ability to endure the pain. Then the ceiling sank faster.
Just as it was crushing me, and I could feel the pain mind you, I awoke again.
These dreams continued to haunt me until about a year later. At this time I had a respectable job as a programmer for a multi-faceted corporation, a house, though no one to fill it yet, and a future. I still visited my best friend’s grave often and kept him up to speed on the happenings of our other friends. I realize that sounds a tad pathetic, but it kept me sane. I had seen much of the woman from my dream now, still wearing that red dress, still holding me so tightly. And through each and almost every dream I had, that red, bleeding line persisted. In fact, the only dream where that line was no where to be seen was the one directly after the dream about the water diamond…thing. This is how it went:
The ballroom was gone, instead, there was a field of roses, not a thorn among them, and she was standing radiantly in the center of the field. I ran to her.
Before I could get all the way there, she raised a hand in my direction, palm out saying “Stop.”
I obeyed.
She stood there for a moment longer, and then one by one all of the roses began to wither and turn black. It was such a sight, seeing each individual petal just give in and die. Moreover, the blackness seemed to start at the center point of the field, right where She stood. Then I noticed that she was withering as well. Black lines started at her legs and feet and traveled upward, every one of them growing larger as they went. Soon her legs were as black as the dying petals surrounding her.
“No!” I screamed, running to her side. I grabbed her and held her tight. She tried to push me away, but I wouldn’t let go. Soon her darkness was transferring to me, causing black lines to appear on my flesh. God, there was so much pain.
As my arms began to wither and die, and as tears welled up in my eyes, I shouted to her: “If you die, we both die. I will never let you die alone!”
She looked at me questioningly, but understood that this would not be negotiable. She still tried, however.
“This is my fate, not yours! You can’t save me!”
“I don’t care, I was unable to save my friend from his mistake; I’ll damn well still try to save you from yours, even if I can’t. Besides, it doesn’t have to end like this!”
She looked at me questioningly, all hope doused but yet not lost from her eyes. Her face was growing lines of black as we sank to the ground, our limbs no longer strong enough to hold us up. The lines reached her eyes and she cried a single tear composed entirely of blood.
“I love you!” I shouted, trying to make her see.
Suddenly, as the last word was finished echoing in my mind, and with more pain then the crash had inflicted, I woke up. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I was weeping still.
For the next few nights, the dreams toned down in magnitude. And again, horribly, I was thankful; I would have had a heart attack by the age of thirty five if this kept up.
This is a story based on fiction and belief.
Thought
Prologue:
It all started with a crash, literally. I was sitting in my friend’s car, patiently observing oncoming traffic. We were scheduled to arrive at a bar called Frenchie’s in about an hour to play the normal drinking game while staring at ladies we would never be good enough to obtain the numbers of. I was already a tad woozy from the shots I took at his house. Oddly, however, he was sober enough to run for Office.
Throughout the trip, I was consumed with thinking about the reality of the world. What was life, what gave us free reign of this desolate planet in the midst of this desolate solar-system? Lost in question to existentialism, basically it was the usual train of thought for a twenty-one year old.
After a few moments locked in thought of the deepest caliber, I questioned the purpose of our having been manifested in the first place. After all, mankind, not having the knowledge to answer said question, created walls around our human existence, walls that were built to segregate us from the rest of the planet. We work for the ability to purchase something someone else created, and name that our soul purpose in life, ignoring everything else in the process. Nothing in the entire world matters as much to us as what we achieve. Whatever god deemed us favorable enough to bequeath upon us this gift of life would naturally want something in return, would he not? What if it wasn’t a gift at all?
In the midst of these spiritual wanderings, I hardly noticed and took into account that my friend, whom on any other day I would trust with my life –if cars were not involved-, was changing lanes without signaling before hand. This was something I had witnessed for a while, and always commented upon in mind if not verbally. Of course, everyone is permitted to one screw up a day, but if that was the case, than this would be the only thing he had ever done wrong.
And yet I didn’t suspect that there was to be a drastic change in the way my world worked until the moment I heard another car’s horn blare and tires screech. By then it was too late.
Surrounded by the sound of grinding metal, crunching glass, and the force of a two ton rhino colliding with a brick wall, I witnessed perfect white, soon to fade to a more perfect black.
At one point I awoke to the sound of sirens in the cold, a policeman hovering over me with a penlight staring me in the eye. I must have spouted some sort of anti-governmental protest, and it must have hit home with a vengeance, because the cop cursed, then turned away and said that I would be just fine. I wondered who he was speaking to, and turned my head to look. That was when I heard something in my neck pop like a cap gun going off. Pain enveloped me and before I was given back to the darkness, I saw her surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. She visually seemed more real than any of them.
Chapter 1: Clear?
“Clear!”
A jolt of pure energy accompanied the spiked force of the voice as I slowly came back from the black with a gasp that should have torn my chest apart. Then returned to the black with equal fervor.
I’ll only say this once, so do your best to understand the feeling of resuscitation from the patient’s end. Once your heart stops for any period of time and is started abruptly, there is a feeling akin to something bursting from your chest. If there were sounds of bones breaking, I would have been convinced that I swallowed an alien. It hurt…that bad. Anyone who goes through a heart murmur or heart attack will know what I am talking about, and would probably be clutching their chest in not-so-fond memory of the occurrence. Sometimes, before the crash, I’d lie awake in bed awaiting the chariot of dreams to carry me to that place, and my heart would seem to sneeze. What I mean is that its beats grow softer, and then with a resounding thud, it sort of re-awakens. That feeling hurts a bit. Imagine that about a hundred fold. There were tears in my eyes as I finally opened them for the first time in a month. That’s right, a month. I learned this from the same doctor that I would have swung at when I was brought back, if I could have. Apparently, I was in a shock induced coma for a month after the wreck. I suffered lacerations; the biggest of which needed five-hundred stitches, located down my chest, caused by part of the door frame, which they had to surgically remove from my breast bone, internal swelling; which would have turned to bleeding had I not been so lucky, eight broken ribs; complements of the door frame, and a broken neck. Accompanying which, of course, was light amnesia, which dissipated in a week.
My friend was killed instantly, no airbag. His face was meshed so completely around the steering wheel that they had to cut part of it off to get him out of the car. To this day, I can’t remember what he looked like. Everything else came back but that. He was my best and closest friend of ten years, and suddenly, because of a stupid turn signal, even my memory of him was wrenched away. Horrible though it may seem; I was extremely thankful to find that, because of the coma, I wasn’t able to attend the funeral.
My neck broke in such a way that I needed physical therapy to relearn how to use the lower half of my body. Needless to say, the events which transpired since my meeting with that woman had pretty much negated the possibility of giving that instance much thought. My family visited me the second day of my stay in the hospital and we wept together. On the third day, I was surprised and shocked to see my father walk through those doors and sit at my bedside. We hadn’t seen each other for about eight months now and hadn’t lived under the same roof for about six years. The sight of each other opened up the wellspring once more and we shed more tears than the rest of my family’s put together. They say that to cry is to begin to heal an open wound. If that is indeed the case, then I must have had a clean bill of health three days in.
My legs felt stupid and detached. At first, I had to use the bars on the side of the bed just to lift my upper half. ‘Pins and needles’ doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling in my stupid legs. They say that an amputee feels a ‘ghost’ appendage where one was cut off. I felt that as well, the only differences being in that I wasn’t an amputee, and my stupid legs were still right there.
A week later, after they were convinced that my trying to rebuild my stamina and reconnect with my legs wouldn’t end up tearing me in half, I began physical therapy. My therapist was a balding man who must have been a gym teacher at one point, because he kept spouting nonsense like “pride might hurt but…” or “if you don’t give one-hundred percent…” Allow me to elucidate upon my rage at this point by saying that no matter what happened to a patient or what his defect is, talking about pride and one-hundred percent is about as useful as trying to teach a rat to say ‘hello’. Granted, he made me so mad that I pushed harder, but get realistic. When a person can’t walk but still has legs that could work, generally that person will be angry enough to keep trying to walk, regardless of the pep talk he receives from his ‘instructor’. Normally, when someone with legs as stupid as mine were at the time, is faced with such a problem, they won’t just give up if the ‘instructor’ isn’t around to push them… At least, I wouldn’t. But in contrast, I’d like to say that my physical therapist was trying to help, and he was trying to earn every penny of his paycheck.
Three days into that, I could stand again, albeit as wobbly as a duck on glass, and with the immense aid of rails. A week in, and I could walk with the walking rails in the therapy room. A month later –it was a big step- I could stumble about without much aid at all.
The next night, the rain pounded upon the window to my room, the only reassurance that there was indeed a world out there. One can only live with needles in the arms, bad food every meal, and a nurse who’s not much more than a live-in maid –one who likes poking people with needles- for so long before tedium sets in.
Chapter 2: A Rude Awakening
The final weeks in the hospital began to seep in and wreak havoc on my mind; I blame it on the IV drip. It started to seem as though I was becoming institutionalized. There were more visits from family and less visits from the nurse during that last stint, thank god. She seemed as though she had just come from shooting a horror scene for a movie in which she was the monster and was still absorbed in the roll.
The hospital was so uniform that I knew by heart what times were what, from the changing of the sheets, to the changing of the shifts.
I also learned the names of most of the staff. One in particular, Tom the janitor, I got along with rather well. He was the kind of person who you wouldn’t want giving important speeches but had such a kind face that he fit his position nicely. To put it bluntly, old Tom was psychotic. Not in the sense that he’d break down and scream at things that weren’t there, but in the sense that his mind would wander –even in mid speech, and just you try to follow that one- from what he should be thinking to the craziest stuff I’ve ever heard before. As a reference, one day we were chatting about his children and this is the sentence he threw from left field: “Oh, Donna’s ok. She just went to this one respectable comp’ny and got a raise- and joined the circus to make cotton candy for the whales.” …See what I mean? And he’s about sixty five, so it’s just that much stranger. Usually he’s quiet though, pretty much content with wherever the hell his mind’ll tend to wander in any given situation. The staff knows about his wanderings, but since he doesn’t cuss, and since when patients hear it and laugh, he laughs with him, they keep him around. Besides, his kids, both out of college, don’t seem to care that he’s all alone with his ramblings, not even giving him a dime to dance on. Needless to say, he needs all the money he can get just to survive in this cruel world.
Then there’s Gregg. I hate Gregg. Wait… not enough feeling there. I HATE Gregg. This man can be found repeatedly harassing and bullying old Tom every day. He’s one of those chumps that think that, just because someone isn’t like everyone else around, and because they may be a little light in the attic, god wouldn’t be doing justice unless he allowed someone like Gregg to make their life a live-in hell. To beat that, good ole Gregg is thirty-five, the wise age of knowing better than that. Well, old Gregg got what he deserved one day. It started like this, and remember, this was the second to last day I would be in that hospital:
Gregg was temporarily given the position of clean-up for when a patient either got well or transferred. At one point he and Tom had the bad luck, or at least Tom did, of running into each other during one of the transfers. Tom had said something to the effect of:
“Well, we gotta be in the same room, but if we stay on separate sides, we’ll hit Chattanooga in no time.”
Now, I understand how someone could take that offensively, I also understand how Tom was over in left field again… I think. But I guess that Gregg took it as honey to a bear and decided to beat Tom until he bled. So, later, Tom comes into my room to clean and I see this nasty looking knot on his forehead. I ask what happened. Tom answers, not a left field word in this sentence. Allow me to mention again, this man is about sixty-five years of age. I don’t know if you know this, but there is an age limit to getting beat to bloody shambles. I don’t know what that age limit is, but I am willing to bet that it’s shy of sixty-five. So I got angry. Now, Gregg is like a dog drowning in ice water, if you come close to him, even if it’s to save him, he’ll bite and bark and scratch and kick. It’s just in his nature. So direct confrontation, especially by me, would be next to useless. But such crime should not go unpunished, so I sat and schemed.
Then it hit me. There was a new patient in the wing that day, she was a burn victim. Horrible burns over three quarters of her body, including her arms, legs, and face. Her whole head was covered in gauze. She unfortunately wasn’t able to retain her ability to speak. She was single, and had no family to speak of. It was time to turn tragedy into vengeance.
Gregg started his shift the next day at around four in the morning, sleepy eyed with cigarette breath yawns. He worked his way from one side to the other; she was in one of the rooms his coworker would hit later that day. Mopping and Vacuuming and cleaning poop pots. Tom was standing around the lobby, in plain view of Gregg. We worked out that good ole Gregg would get one last possible redemption, and only if he didn’t start it with Tom again this morning. Gregg walked casually up to the lobby. Tom was whistling some odd, spacey tune when suddenly Gregg turned on him and balled up his fist and made to punch Tom in the face. Tom cringed, I cringed too in truth, and Gregg lowered his fist and laughed mockingly in Tom’s face. That was enough for me, plan still in play.
I waited about forty minutes and called the hospital staff from my room. They would know who was calling so this was where I had to pray for a miracle. If it was Ramon, Casper, or Stringer, I would be in the clear. If it was Regan, Miller, or the senior resident: Carter, I was screwed. The phone rang twice over a very nervous breath which was my own, and finally someone answered.
“Hey, kid, what’d ya need?”
Yes! It was Casper. He was called so because of his lack of skin pigmentation.
“Hey Casper, I wanna play a prank on Gregg, can you help?”
“Hey man, I dunno about that one! He’s in a pinchy mood today, ‘sides, you know what he’s like.”
“Aw, come on man! I’m only here for two more days,”
And then I added in my best Capone voice,
“He won’t touch me.”
“Ha, alright man. But if the blame falls on me, it falls on you more, capeech?”
“Got it.”
“Cool, wha’da’ya want me’ta say?” Casper asked, seeming to like this game more and more, you could tell because he was converting further into his Brooklyn accent. He was never a fan of Gregg and he had saved Tom more than once from Gregg’s wrath, almost getting broadsided in the process.
“That his house burned down and his wife is here in the hospital. Say that she got burned real bad trying to escape and that she’s in room…” I looked to Tom for the number. He held one hand up with fingers splayed.
“Five.”
“Man, I’m startin’ not to like this.”
“Dude, relax, seriously. I’ll take the fall.”
I could feel him shake his head from here in the room.
“Ok, but you gotta promise that I’m not getting fired over this…”
“Promise, Casper, thanks man.”
“Yeah, you owe me a steak dinner.”
“Will do, will do.”
“And I’m not just talking the cheap stuff neither, you better get me the granddaddy of all steaks, and A1 sauce too.”
I hung up.
Now this is the beautiful part of my scheme, Gregg’s house had no phone, so he couldn’t verify the info. Of course, he could have called the news or the police, but when your house just reputedly burned down and your wife is in the very hospital you’re working in, you tend to go to the room before you verify the information. In this case that’s just what he did. Good ole Gregg went at a dead run to room five when he got the message. The other beauty of my scheme was that she couldn’t talk, so there were no denials when he jumped into her room. She mumbled and moaned and the stupid fool thought that she was sad for the house and situation, when in fact; she was scared half to death of him and his rantings that she knew nothing about. The only miscalculation I made was to think that sooner or later that day, he would have left to see the house, or found out the lie and gotten mad. But he ended up staying over there all night. He finally found the truth of the matter the next day when his wife called, angrier then a bull-terrier, and explained that, no, the house was fine, and no, she was no where near the hospital. Surprisingly enough, however, instead of blowing up on either Tom, Casper, or I, as I figured he would, he went into a sort of depression, and said nothing to anyone for the rest of my stay.
I was probably a cold hearted fool for doing that, but I thought it was justified. Old Tom was sixty-five years of age, old enough to be my grandfather.
I still delivered Casper his steak, as promised.
Chapter 3: Fields of Roses
The last night of my hospital stay, I had a dream about the lady I saw before my neck snapped. She had short, raven black hair, and wore a beautiful, sparkling red dress. We were in a monstrously grand ballroom, dancing around people whose faces were not blurry but not quite distinguishable. She leaned toward me slowly as we revolved around and around in the center of the room. I felt her lips on my neck and my hair bristled. She held me intimately, and oddly enough, there was no shyness or fear on my part. It was as if we'd been lovers for a long time now. Her breath tingled and the warmth gave me goosebumps. She whispered as she kissed my skin.
“There is a line between us.”
I looked down and saw that she was correct. There was a line drawn red directly between us, stretching off into the walls, and perhaps from there, infinity. As we revolved, the line revolved as well, always keeping us separated. I looked about and saw that the other dancers also give a wide berth to the line. The more I looked, the deeper red the line grew.
“Don’t focus on it. Look at me.”
I tried, believe me, I tried. But it was impossible, the line had captured my entire attention, there was nothing else in my universe.
Then the line began to bleed.
The very moment the line began to bleed, an evil and amplified voice shouted from inside my head. It was hate-filled and malicious. The voice I’d suspect a Demon would own.
“This is the line you live by! See how it bleeds for you! Soon you’ll bleed too!”
I looked to the woman, my only salvation. She was in fear, looking about as if she heard the voice as well. I hugged her close to me, but the line started to burn my skin. I would have kept holding, but I feared that it would burn hers as well.
“Don’t leave me!” She screamed, eyes wide.
Awake.
My sheets were filled with sweat. I was cold. The memories of that dream to this day have never left me. Funny how it seems to work that way; can’t remember my best friend who died by my side, but I’ll never forget that dream… or that voice. I pressed the button and the bed propped up to a semi-sitting position. With shaky fingers, I found the remote and turned on the TV.
After about thirty minutes I felt calm enough, and certainly tired enough, to try to sleep again. When I was whisked off to sleep this time, the same dream played itself out again, me having been unable to retain any memory of the first during the second, with only the demon’s words changed.
“How many times have you danced to this tune? How many times more? You will bleed for me!”
My mother came to my bedside later the next day and helped me prepare to leave. I would wear a neck-brace yet for a time until my neck healed enough to eliminate the risk of a second fracture. My steps were unsure but confident as I walked out of the hospital. My bum having had so much free air it now felt trapped and alone, and I thanked god for that. We talked about life and things happening in our duel worlds at the time, she having had so much better gossip than I could have possibly attained. She enjoyed the story of Tom’s vengeance, but under the pretense of motherhood gave me a good slap to ensure that I learned my lesson. At last I was going home. On the way, we stopped by a burger joint, and I’ll tell you that it is the best feeling in the world after such an experience to be able to enjoy a good burger and box of fries. That was when the depth of what happened hit me.
“Hey, mom, can I see his grave before we go home?”
She just nodded and turned at the next light. It turns out that he was just a few blocks away from the burger joint after all. His grave was unmarred and simply devoid of pictures. That wasn’t the only reason I wanted to go there, but it was a big one. We ended up going to a florist and buying some flowers for his grave. I also wrote a poem later and set that up next to the flowers. It was laminated, and I stuck it into the grass under his headstone with golf tees, to the best of my knowledge, its still there. The rest of the day passed uneventfully.
That night, I went to bed and had a new dream, by far the most bizarre yet. In this dream, I was outside in the middle of the night in the middle of a field. The stars were blazing with white, colorful fury. There was a breeze, but no chill. I stood there, paralyzed, unable to move, as suddenly the mist at my feet and dew from the grass gathered into one ephemeral being. It was made of water and was in the shape of a diamond. It was three-dimensional and looked like two cones were placed together at their wide bases. The collected water washed from the top of the diamond to the bottom only to be sucked up through the bottom and go inside of the being again. This process was repeated throughout our discussion, talk about distracting.
“What is your cause?” It asked me in all seriousness. This question gave me pause.
“I don’t understand.”
“Every being was created with a cause, what is yours?”
“I need to find her.” I responded, knowing when I said it that it was right.
“She from our side?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know what that meant at first, but then I understood.
The being came up close and, if it were human, I would have guessed that it was trying to judge the validity of my statement.
“Fine.”
With that the being dissipated and I was honored with the spectacle of watching every drop return to its previous place, be it on a lone blade of grass, or in the mist. Then in the space of about fifteen seconds I sank under the earth and fell into a cavern, the cavern’s ceiling slowly started to sink, and I saw that there was a face in the ceiling. It was the demon.
“What is your cause?” It asked mockingly, “Your cause is your suffering!”
That voice was so evil and so painful to hear that I clasped my hands over my ears and prayed for the ability to endure the pain. Then the ceiling sank faster.
Just as it was crushing me, and I could feel the pain mind you, I awoke again.
These dreams continued to haunt me until about a year later. At this time I had a respectable job as a programmer for a multi-faceted corporation, a house, though no one to fill it yet, and a future. I still visited my best friend’s grave often and kept him up to speed on the happenings of our other friends. I realize that sounds a tad pathetic, but it kept me sane. I had seen much of the woman from my dream now, still wearing that red dress, still holding me so tightly. And through each and almost every dream I had, that red, bleeding line persisted. In fact, the only dream where that line was no where to be seen was the one directly after the dream about the water diamond…thing. This is how it went:
The ballroom was gone, instead, there was a field of roses, not a thorn among them, and she was standing radiantly in the center of the field. I ran to her.
Before I could get all the way there, she raised a hand in my direction, palm out saying “Stop.”
I obeyed.
She stood there for a moment longer, and then one by one all of the roses began to wither and turn black. It was such a sight, seeing each individual petal just give in and die. Moreover, the blackness seemed to start at the center point of the field, right where She stood. Then I noticed that she was withering as well. Black lines started at her legs and feet and traveled upward, every one of them growing larger as they went. Soon her legs were as black as the dying petals surrounding her.
“No!” I screamed, running to her side. I grabbed her and held her tight. She tried to push me away, but I wouldn’t let go. Soon her darkness was transferring to me, causing black lines to appear on my flesh. God, there was so much pain.
As my arms began to wither and die, and as tears welled up in my eyes, I shouted to her: “If you die, we both die. I will never let you die alone!”
She looked at me questioningly, but understood that this would not be negotiable. She still tried, however.
“This is my fate, not yours! You can’t save me!”
“I don’t care, I was unable to save my friend from his mistake; I’ll damn well still try to save you from yours, even if I can’t. Besides, it doesn’t have to end like this!”
She looked at me questioningly, all hope doused but yet not lost from her eyes. Her face was growing lines of black as we sank to the ground, our limbs no longer strong enough to hold us up. The lines reached her eyes and she cried a single tear composed entirely of blood.
“I love you!” I shouted, trying to make her see.
Suddenly, as the last word was finished echoing in my mind, and with more pain then the crash had inflicted, I woke up. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I was weeping still.
For the next few nights, the dreams toned down in magnitude. And again, horribly, I was thankful; I would have had a heart attack by the age of thirty five if this kept up.
