As I stumble my way to the bathroom my already deteriorating vision pulses in and out of focus. My body slumps uncontrollably into the wall, causing my one and only framed photograph of my one and only son to shift into an annoying slant. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a crooked photograph. ESPECIALLY when it’s THIS one. Despite the fact that I’m sweating like a pig and about to faint at any moment, I pause to adjust the photo into a neat and orderly position. His wonderful smile grabs me like always. Oh, how deeply I miss him. If there is a God he’s gonna fucking pay.
I flip the bathroom light on and the faint, familiar electric buzz I’ve become so acquainted with while taking my daily shit begins. Bandage, I need a bandage. While reaching to open the medicine cabinet my face comes faintly into focus and peers back at me like an empty spectre. Deodorant…shaving cream…tweezers…mouth wash…tooth brush…boy, do I need to get a new tooth brush. An unopened bottle of hydrogen peroxide grabs my attention and I realize that maybe I should clean this nasty wound of mine out before I wrap it up. I take the bottle out of the cabinet and start attempting to read the label, but the print is too small and that irritates the hell out of me. I begin to peel the protective plastic off of the cap. Every time I get a grasp on the plastic it snaps stubbornly back into place…
My body jolts violently and I find myself staring at the base of my gleaming white pristinely sanitized toilet. The buzz of the light fades softly into recognition. How long have I been out? I do everything in my power to stand up like a man. The bottle of peroxide is laying in the sink covered in my thin blood. Blood is all over the counter, the medicine cabinet, and a long streaming trail leading out the door. In my half-conscious haste I must not have realized what a disgusting fucking mess I was making. I reach down to grab the bottle. Next thing I know I’ve poured nearly half of it on my deeply cut finger, the popping of a million microscopic bubbles on my open flesh like music to my ears. I must say, it complements the buzz in the background quite nicely. I look at the bottle, then slowly down into the sink at the remains of the protective plastic. How did I get it open so easily this time? Regardless how, I’m glad I did.
I grab a box of bandages out of the medicine cabinet and peel one of the bandages open with my one good hand and teeth. Despite the awkwardness of having the tip of my right index finger nearly split in two, I wrap it up like a pro. For a moment I feel like a fucking champ, like the good guy in those old action movies must feel after being beaten to a bloody pulp, valiantly coming back at the last second to administer the final blow to the bad guy, spouting some brilliant one-liner and giving the damsel in distress a kiss so powerful it could give every woman in a ten-mile radius an immediate orgasm. The credits roll.
I close the medicine cabinet and look at my ghostly face. I lean forward to observe myself with more detail. I’m getting wrinkles on my smoke-hardened leathery skin. I need to shave.
Nauseous, I make my way out of the bathroom and flip the light, the buzz coming to an abrupt halt. Moving at a snail’s pace, I follow the trail of blood down the hallway. As I pass the one and only photograph of my one and only son I look at him and whisper, “It’s not nice to stare.” I crack a smile and continue following the crimson path that has taken a terrible toll on my recently shampooed carpet…
Suddenly I step into a cold, wet spot. My sock quickly absorbs cold water and sends uncomfortable chills up my spine. The sound of running water hits me like a double shot of espresso. I move as quickly as I can and take a hard left into the kitchen. There is an inch of water covering the tiled kitchen floor, the faucet running full-blast. The water on the floor has a slight red tint. God damn it, the water bill this month is going to be outrageous. Not to mention I left the kitchen light on! I splash my way across the kitchen and turn off the faucet. I look down into the sink at a dirty plate and bowl…but where’s the knife?
I fumble briefly through the dirty plate and bowl to make sure the knife didn’t get mixed between them somehow. Nothing. It must have floated out of the sink. God damn it, that’s the only knife I have! One pot, one pan, one skillet, one glass, one plate, one bowl, one fork, one spoon, and ONE KNIFE are all the dishes I have. The less dishes I have, the less I get dirty. The less dirty dishes I have, the less I have to clean. I look frantically around the kitchen floor. I drop to my hands and knees to glance underneath the cabinets, sending splashes of red tinted water all over my once-flawless egg shell walls. Still, nothing. My vision pulses in and out of focus in perfect sync with my rapidly increasing heart beat. Where in the hell did it go? Forget it, I have to get this damned place cleaned up before I have a nervous fucking breakdown. Calm down. It will turn up, after all it couldn’t have just disappeared…
I come to. I’m cold, wet and shivering and my finger hurts like a bitch. I sit up and take a look around at the grossly flooded kitchen. The water is even redder than before. I look at my now-soggy, bloody bandage. My finger must have kept bleeding while I was out. God damn does it hurt, I really cut it deep. I need to re-bandage it, this nasty, sopping shit just isn’t going to cut it. I sit still for a few minutes to make sure I’m calm and strong enough to walk. “Come on,” I tell myself, “I’m the fucking champ!” I get up, turn off the kitchen light and begin to make my way to the bathroom.
He smiles at me with that one and only smile. I’m drenched and shaking, but boy do I feel warm.
I make my way into the bathroom and flip on the light. I open the medicine cabinet and take out the box of bandages and half-empty bottle of peroxide. Better clean this wound out again, who knows what kind of nasty bacteria was in that water on the kitchen floor. I begin peeling the soft, spongy bandage off my finger. It throbs slowly, and for an instance I get the sensation that it’s breathing…Nonsense, it’s just the blood pumping, that’s all…
As I peel away the last remaining layer of gauze my heart and the ambient buzz come to a complete stop. I immediately close the bandage back up and my breathing intensifies. I feel light-headed. Something’s not right. What the FUCK kind of infection is that? And how could it have got that infected so fast? I realize that I’ve lost all concept of time…I’ve fainted twice and I have no idea how long I was out each time. Maybe it HAS been long enough for something like this to develop. Besides, I’m no doctor, I wanted to be one in the 3rd grade, but that’s the closest to being a doctor I’ve ever been. I suck it up and decide to take another look.
With my left index finger and thumb I meticulously peel back the last layer of gauze for a second time. Protruding out of the wound is a writhing, bloody batch of hair. I stare in complete perplexity as the hair twists in and out of my flesh. I can feel several strands slowly and persistently wrapping around the bone, tightening like a boa on its prey.
My heart begins beating faster and faster and I find it harder and harder to focus. I begin to panic. As I look away from my wound and around the room everything shifts out of alignment, as if the different colors on a printing press were not positioned correctly, or like looking at a red and blue 3-D image without the 3-D glasses. Millions of tiny technicolor strands of crawling hair appear on every object in the room for a split second as I hear what seems to be a snippet out of an old lo-fi opera recording. I have to get this….infection, or whatever it is out of my finger before it spreads elsewhere. I attempt to grab at the protruding hair with my left index finger and thumb but it’s even more difficult than pulling the protective plastic off the peroxide…That’s it, the peroxide! That’ll burn it right out of me! I reach quickly for the peroxide and begin pouring the remaining half onto the slimy, sinuous hair. As I do so, it tightens around the bone even tighter as if it were saying “Don’t you EVER try that again, mother fucker!”
It begins sliding up my finger, vining it’s way up and around my bone. FUCK it hurts worse than the time I broke my femur fighting with my brother! The knife, I have to find the fucking knife…
I scramble my way back out of the bathroom. I pass by the one and only photograph of my one and only son without even glancing at him. I realize it is the first time since he left that I didn’t give him some form of recognition as I passed by. He understands, SURELY he understands. Please, you HAVE to understand that I MUST get rid of this thing before it spreads throughout my whole hand, or my entire arm!
Without any hesitation I drop to the flooded floor looking fiercely for my one and only knife. Schools of tiny glow-in-the-dark fish jet out in every possible direction. The refrigerator! I didn’t look under the refrigerator before, after all I gave up too soon because I didn’t realize I would NEED the knife again so quickly! I remember something my dad always used to tell me: “It’s better to have and not to need than to need and not to have.” I reach up and flip the kitchen light on and kneel back down. Sure enough, it floated under the refrigerator. The gap between the floor and the bottom of the refrigerator is probably about three quarters of an inch, just enough for the knife to make its way through. How convenient.
It’s no use. The knife is too far underneath the fucking ice box and the ice box is too full and heavy for me to waste time emptying it and moving it while this infection spreads like wildfire. Did I just refer to the refrigerator as an “ice box?” I did, didn’t I! My god, I’m beginning to sound like my dad. Why the hell have I thought about my dad TWICE in the past thirty seconds when I obviously have much more important things to worry about? That’s all I ever do, worry worry worry. I need to stop fucking worrying all the time and just fucking RELAX!
Pain shoots through my finger to the point where I can’t even move my entire right arm. I stand up and begin pulling out drawers, frantically looking for any kind of sharp object. Egg beaters…spatula…those little rubber pads you use to open brand new safety-sealed jars you just can’t ever pry open with your bare hands…a grapefruit spoon…nothing, not a SINGLE thing that will do the job. Scissors!!! Yes, I have a pair of scissors in my living room that I use to cut coupons out of the Sunday paper! I tread out of the kitchen, turn off the light, and head into the living room. Simultaneously, I plunk myself into my big, comfy recliner and open the drawer of my little side stand that supports the green elephant lamp my son gave me for Father’s Day. That was such an amazing day. All of the problems in the world took an all-expenses paid vacation on that one perfect day.
It’s too dark to see in the drawer clearly, especially with my vision acting the way its been, so I pull the little metal chain on the green elephant. The metallic scissors shimmer in the green elephant’s heavenly light. I swipe them up with my one good hand and snip them in mid-air a few times, contemplating my decision…Maybe if I were to just RELAX and quit WORRYING I could go to a doctor and cure this thing rather than…
The pain hits me so hard I can’t even scream. My eyes water up and I bite deeply into my lower lip. The sound of a hundred nails on a chalkboard amplified to rock concert level decibels penetrates my skull and my whole living room transforms into a gigantic fucking mess of wire hangers. I look at my finger and see the hair working its way up…it’s almost to the uppermost knuckle. If I’m going to stop this before it makes its way up my entire hand I’ve gotta do it right fucking NOW! I position the scissors just below my knuckle. As the tips of the advancing hair touch the metal blades they pull back slightly as if they are afraid. That’s right, you better be afraid! I brazenly push the opposing handles of the scissors together until I hear the familiar high ringing sound of metal scraping metal. As soon as my finger, or what was left of it, hits the ground it scurries away like a rat, going between my feet, underneath my big comfy recliner, down to the very end of the hallway and underneath my bedroom door. It makes a sloppy thud sound and rattles the door as it passes underneath. The gap between the floor and the bottom of my bedroom door is probably about three quarters of an inch, just enough for whatever my finger has turned into to make its way through. How fucking convenient.
I look down at my disfigured hand. The mysterious hairy infection is nowhere to be seen and the pain has stopped completely. The red circle where my finger used to be attached isn’t bleeding either, probably due to shock, but I’m no doctor. I sigh with relief. “I’m the champ,” I tell myself, “I’m the fucking champ.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Whatever that thing was, I got rid of it before it killed me. I slowly turn around in my recliner and look down the hallway. As long as it can’t leave that room it will die. There is absolutely nothing in that room for it to eat or thrive on, so naturally it will have to die. I got you mother fucker, oh yeah I got you.
I jump out of the recliner, and sprint down the soggy, blood splattered hallway. I pass by the one and only photograph of my one and only son for a second time without giving him any sort of recognition. He will understand, I HAVE to make sure that vile piece of shit does NOT leave my room….He will understand…
I take a hard right into my bloody bathroom and snatch my one and only towel off the shower’s drying rack. Boy this bathroom is absolutely disgusting. It’s going to take me all night to clean this fucking mess. The electric buzz hits me and I realize I left the light on last time I was in here! My water and electric bills are going to be fucking outrageous! Son of a BITCH! And the KITCHEN….Maybe I can take a few days off from work to clean it up? I think I have a few sick days I haven’t used so SURELY they will let me take a few days off.
I make my way out of the bathroom, flip off the light, and begin stuffing the towel underneath my bedroom door in a wild frenzy, laughing maniacally while screaming “YOU’RE GONNA FUCKING DIE IN THERE!!! YOU’RE…GONNA…FUCKING………DIE!!!” I bunch the towel up and push it through as hard as I can. Once it’s as tight and snug as humanly possible I turn around, sprawl out my legs and rest the back of my head against the bedroom door. I sigh and smile with relief. I look down at my hand. Considering it’s missing an entire finger it feels pretty damn good. I look down the hallway into my softly lit living room. Mother fucker. I may not be able to see that far, but I can tell for certain that I left my precious green elephant lamp on in my rush to the bathroom! That’s THREE TIMES already I’ve left a light on. This combined with the running water, repairs for water damage, ANOTHER carpet shampoo to get rid of all the god damned blood stains and a fresh coat of egg shell paint in the kitchen means I’m going to have to COMPLETELY redo my budget for the month!!! Relax. I need to stop worrying all the time and just fucking RELAX. I take a deep breath, close my eyes and let all my worries take an all-expenses paid vacation…
My body jolts violently back into consciousness as a voice comes from behind: “Why are you ignoring me?”
