Chapter 2

The 2nd Chapter

Chapter 1.11

Jen looks at me on the floor and doesn’t say a word. She just shakes her head and drops her purse on the couch.

I look up at her. The glare on her sunglasses hide her eyes but I know the look she’s giving me.

She sighs and goes into the kitchen to boil a pot of water. Ramen- it’s all I have.

“You stayed home?” she says from the other room. “I told you to go see a doctor.”

“I know, I know. I’ll call the doc tomorrow.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“I know, I just…”

She walks in with heavy steps, carrying a pill bottle and a glass of water.

“Take this.”

“What is it?”

“Just take it.”

My younger sister keeps a collection of medication inherited from our late mother. Most of the bottles are unmarked so it’s a bit of a gamble.

I swallow two.

“Good,” she says, and walks out of the room.

I don’t see her again until morning.

In the night, I hear a strange hum coming from the corner of the living room, just to the right of the front door. I check outside, but I can’t hear it out there. Just inside.

What is that? It’s so loud I can’t sleep. I spend the night pacing in front of the door.

After several hours, I think just before five, it vanishes.

But it leaves something behind. Not something you can see or touch, but something felt, sensed, if that makes sense. It’s like a wave getting pulled back into the ocean, sucked away- recoiling. Like air rushing in to fill a vacuum but it’s taking you with it.

Suddenly I’m knocked down. I fall to my knees. My skin is vibrating, muscles twitching, I can’t move but I’m always moving. My flesh is tearing. The bones are coming through.

I’m in pain but I’m enjoying it. There’s something about a dull ache from a swollen lip garnished with a bruised face that’s made ever sweeter, ever more vibrant and alive with the sweetness of blood from a fresh gash. I love it. I hunger for it. It revitalizes me, gives me nourishment. Without it, I’m not sure I’m not already dead.

I cut further.

I tear.

I rip.

I am made bloody and bloodied I am made.

“Hey!”

“Huh?”

Jen’s standing over me with wide-eyes. At least I think so. My vision’s obscured, my eyes are watering and there’s mucus collecting on the lashes along the edges of my periphery. I try to roll over but the ground is hard and resists me. I’m on the floor. What am I doing on the floor? “You were yelling in your sleep.”

“I was? What was I saying?”

“I don’t know. Gibberish. Like a bunch of grunting and growling.”

“Growling?”

“Come on, get up.” She lends me a hand-- so warm-- and helps me to my feet. “Alright, get your shoes. I’m taking you to see the doctor.”

“But-”

“Shut up. You’re going.”

We get in her car, which, to make an understatement, is much nicer than mine. The seats aren’t torn (the previous owner said it was the dogs) and spotted with chemical stains (I used to work at the lab over on Parkway before they closed down). There aren’t wrappers (of the nutritious snack variety, I don’t binge on candy… Although these are probably just as bad) and empty water bottles laying around (when was the last time I actually bought water bottles?), and best of all, it doesn’t smell like sulfur and burnt solder (another odd job I worked: Research and Development for a government-funded project that fell through a year ago).

Sure, the seat can’t recline because of the ceramic sculpture she’s got in the back seat (she’s an artist with a gallery exhibition coming up this weekend) and the buckle for the seatbelt is missing (possibly consumed by the seat itself, although it might’ve been torn off during one of her many vehicular accidents), but that’s nothing compared the broken doors (oncoming traffic and narrow streets combine to create calamity) and missing side mirrors (see previous parentheses) of mine. Technically, for various reasons, I’m not sure it’s even legal to be driving my car.

But I’m not sure it’s legal for her, either. She starts the engine and pulls out of the driveway with the tires screeching and burning into the street. Immediately I regret this.

My stomach is swinging on the noose of my throat with each turn we careen across as she nearly clips the side of the car against the trees reaching out into the road with their crooked ends.

“You don’t need to drive so fast, you know. I’m not dying or anything.”

“I’m going way under the speed limit.”

“Yeah, but the turns…”

“Oh, sorry, I’ll take it easy,” she says as she loops around the on-ramp for the highway without slowing a single bit.

How we made it to the hospital without me literally spilling my guts will remain a mystery. But the sight of the facility expanded over the horizon, soaking into the muted sky, grey on grey.

When we walk in, we drown in dry air.

“This brings back memories, doesn’t it?” she says.

“Yeah, not much has changed has it? Jesus, even the magazines are the same.”

We both silently move to the far corner, to the same faded floral seats that used to be ours whenever we came in. Looking back, most of our childhood was spent in waiting rooms.

“You can go. I’ll call you when I’m ready to be picked up.”

“No, you’ll just walk right out of here. I know you. I’m staying.”

There’s no changing her mind. She’s as adamant as our mother. I don’t even try.

So we sit and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Time doesn’t pass when you’re waiting, time just dies. You never quite get used to it. At any point something might happen so you have to be ready, always on guard against an occurrence, searching for signs of its arrival, a coming which can be of two types, but never both: pronounced, or subtle.

Category A: Pronounced Type

The pronounced follows you, the prey, and lays in wait before leaping at your throat with jaws ready to tear into your flesh and catch onto your arteries to pull them out until they snap apart. You have no choice but to fight it or let it beat you, because it’s faster and smarter than you. There is no getting away.

Category B: The Subtle Kind

The subtle kind crawls up your leg. It slithers, unnoticed until it’s too late. Then it tightens its grip, coils its tail, slowly squeezes and chokes every last drop out of you. There’s no way to prepare against it, the suffocating, subtle kind, because you don’t realize it’s coming for you until it’s already left you.

But most of the time is spent in anxious anticipation when the culminating event doesn’t actually actualize until much later, leading to unnecessarily rising levels of stress (blood pressure values between 120 and 139 over 80 to 89, and that would be the very beginning), anxiety (leg-shaking, nail-biting, teeth-grinding, hair-pulling) and tension (distraction, agitation, listlessness, problems socializing). In other words: Hell is waiting.

Thankfully we don’t have to wait long.

A nurse wearing a watery, pale blue smock and felt pants the color of which is in that spectrum between green and yellow that is universally regarded as disgusting (whether it came to be that way from repeated washing or if it was designed that way is left to speculation) suddenly appears (spectral visions being a popular classification of hallucination) before us. Her hair stands ready to jump from her scalp. Poised in her defense, she says, “Mr. ... Um... Oh, I’m going to have trouble pronouncing this...”

“Yes?” I say, getting out of the chair.

“Are you Kaspar?”

“Yes.”

The nurse sets the clipboard against her hip. “We’ll have to reschedule you.”

“Why?” asks Jen.

“Doctor Kleman was just called in for an emergency.”

“Well, we could see a different doctor,” Jen says.

“Afraid not. The others were also called in.”

“Did something happen?” I ask.

They both turn to me with narrowed eyes.

“What do you mean?” the nurse asks.

“I’m just wondering if something might’ve happened. I mean, all the doctors on staff? Busy simultaneously? That’s strange, right?”

“No, it happens from time to time.” She goes through a door and reappears behind the counter. “So when would you like to reschedule it for?”  She taps on the keyboard to wake the computer- the screen casts a green glow under her chin. “The soonest we have available is Thursday.”

“Thursday would be fine.”

She types something, supposedly, and then, without looking at us, asks, “Would you like a reminder card?”

“Sure.”

She reaches behind the monitor, her arthritic fingers catch on the cables, she spends about half a minute disentangling herself before snapping up a small cardboard box perfectly square in nature with a red line dividing it down the center. She lifts the lid and slowly raises her gaze to match ours.

Inside are three connected paperclips and a dead spider.

“Sorry. All out of cards.” Carefully, she replaces the lid and then crushes the entire container. “Have a good day.”

Back in the car Jen turns to me before starting it up. “What was that?”

“What?”

“Asking about all the doctors being busy. You’re so paranoid!”

I have to laugh. “Haven’t I always been? I mean, you can’t blame me for having trust issues, can you?”

“You gotta let that go. I have.”

“I’ll let it go when it lets go of me.”

“...You really like making other people speechless, don’t you,” she half-smiles and turns the key.

“I can’t help it.”

She throws it in reverse.

On autopilot, I sit down on the couch and reach for my laptop. Might as well check for emails.

3 New Messages:

1. From: Expedia.com

Summary: An offering for a discounted trip to a foreign country I always wanted to visit, but realistically never will.

Reasons For Not Unsubscribing: Fantasy fuel and hope harboring

2. From: Myself

Summary: Links to news articles about my past work

Reasons For Not Deleting: Haven’t gotten around to reading them yet

3. From: _____ [Blank. I didn’t know you could send a message without having something in the “From” field]

Summary: A string of letters and numbers arranged to form a portrait of

Someone. Looks like a little girl smiling. Haven’t seen ASCII art in ages. What is this?

The screen goes black for a few seconds and then a weird animation plays where a white dot flies in circular paths around vectors falling and combining together into fractals that collapse as the camera zooms further and further out.

It’s kinda trippy, actually, and soothing, too. Huh. Weird. My sore throat and migraine are completely gone. Like they dissolved in the solution of shapes and colors on the display.

After what couldn’t be more than a minute or so, I try the mouse and the keyboard but neither respond to any input. Reluctantly, I manually restart it.

Power: Off (hold for 10 seconds)

Power: On

The screen flickers a bit but other than that I haven’t noticed any changes. Running an Antivirus proves fruitless. The flickering isn’t too frequent to be a hindrance but it is definitely a major concern. Going to have to look further into it at some point. Maybe take it to a repair shop, but I hope it doesn’t come down to that.

That night I dreamed about someone from my past.

I got up the following morning feeling tired. I tried to go back to sleep but the noise outside my window kept me awake.

Check the phone. 12 missed calls, 6 voicemails and 23 text messages. That’s unusual.

“Where the hell are you?! Call me.”

“Are you okay? Did something happen? I tried coming by. I saw your car outside but when I knocked you didn’t answer the door. Is everything alright? Call me back.”

“Hey, did you see the doctor today? What did he say? Call me when you get this.”

“Answer your phone.”

“How’re you feeling? Still sick? I came by with soup, but I guess you’re taking a nap. Anyway, talk to you later.”

“Kaspar, you’re fired.”

What the hell’s going on? What time is it? 9:23am, Sunday the 17th. Wait. What?  Yesterday was Tuesday, wasn’t it? This is crazy. Check the inbox.

68 New Messages.

What.

They go all the way back from Tuesday afternoon. Did I really sleep for nearly a week? Screw this, I’m going to the hospital.

I grab my coat and keys and head for the door, but the second I open it, a pain shoots up my spine and explodes in my head. I fall to my knees right there. My ears start ringing and I can feel my heart being squeezed like a lemon. I roll on my side, back into the room and the pain slowly subsides, each jabbing surge of agony duller than the last while the ringing rises in pitch until it becomes imperceptible.

I must be suffering from some kind of neurological damage, a brain injury from falling at some point or maybe I had a seizure. I don’t know. I need to get this checked out.

Back on my feet, I try to leave again, but immediately after passing the threshold my knees buckle. The pain ripples through my spinal column and incinerates my brain with a spray of napalm. I grimace and bite down. My saliva leaks out and drops to the floor in thick gobs. I crawl back inside on my hands and knees. Blood. I’m dripping blood.

Gotta stand up. Gotta get to a mirror. Come on. Get up.

There’s a numbing sensation all along the center of my back and my shirt aggravates the area surrounding it with each shuffling step I force myself to take as I move from the living room to the bathroom where I pull up my shirt and notice a red streak, a rash with a small scattering of pronounced dimples, all evenly spaced, going from the tip of my tailbone to the base of my head.

Cautiously, I raise a hand to it and gently graze it with my fingertips-

Ah! Bad idea.

Turning back around, I notice a dark purplish discoloration under the sides of my jaw, just beneath the ears. And a lump, almost black, bulging out from the valley of my collarbone.

I lean forward to get a better look and shudder involuntarily. The lump moves. I can feel it moving underneath the skin, going up and over the fat and muscle inside my neck. It submerges there just before reaching my jawline, and in that very instant my throat seizes in agony.

Coughing, gagging and choking, I bend over the sink but all that comes out is blood and spit.

The phone, maybe I can call someone... Get some help….

Jen. I’ll call Jen. She’ll- huh?

The dialtone is interrupted by a humming sound. A low drone that oscillates slowly up and down in pitch. But there’s interference, too. The sound keeps cutting in and out. It’s actually somewhat difficult to make out as noise, like radio static, starts filling in the background silence until nothing can be discerned except the noise itself.

I hang up and try again. Same thing.

My insides constrict in me. I feel hollow. My head starts spinning. I need to lie down. Need to sleep. Need to…

So… tired...

In my head I hear something like a heartbeat falling out of rhythm.