Nociception

Picture this: You just got evicted from your apartment and your last ounce of coke is right there behind the door, right on the coffee table next to your Maxims and Esquires. Right by the crumpled bad of Doritos and baby food. This is just a fragment of your problems. Now think of this: your baby is being kidnapped by your crazy coked out b***h of a wife who just stabbed you in the head with a butter knife and took off with the Camaro and the kid.  Remember that there was a butter knife in your head not twenty minutes ago.

 It happened in a Denny’s, across the table sits your beautiful little girl, not even two yet, but almost. Next to her is your wife, drugged and aged and sick. A lot changed in two years, you tell her while you pour syrup on your French toast. You remember her face, the expression she drew; it was as if every goddam muscle on her face was pissed. There are gray sores hanging under the thin pale skin of her eyes, her cheeks strained and wrinkled with coke abuse.

A lot has changed in two years.

She lights a cigarette and the waitress walks by and says that she can’t smoke in here. She turns and says to f**k off you little twat, and the waitress walks away red faced. The smoke is wafting right into your daughters face and you tell her to put it out.

She says go f**k yourself, Tommy, and puffs on the cigarette.

You sigh and say, A lot has changed in two years.

Your wife starts to scream, Sally, no, let’s call her Sandra. The blood pressure in Sandra’s neck increases and contracts the veins, that one big one that you used to love to kiss, the Interior Jugular vein. That vein bulged out of her neck with intense internal pressure as her face turns red and she screams and screams. Your little girl, let’s call her Alison. She starts to cry, her little high pitch screams almost as loud as Sandra’s.

People are staring, gawking, laughing at you.

You stood up and grabbed her by the arm. You were going to lead her outside. You were whispering harshly to her, Shut up you stupid b***h. Her arm is thin and boney and you think her Humerus bone will snap if you squeeze any harder. She is screaming and slapping at you, and a family walks in through the entrance, a first class family, combed hair and clean blood. You walk away from the door; you’ll take her to the bathroom. You’ll deal with her there.

You pull her past table after table, passing an old couple enjoying their eggs and laughing at this coked out couple battling it out in a f*****g Denny’s. You feel her resist, she’s holding onto something, and you see the bathroom door, it’s right there, only five more paces you have to pull this dumb b***h, and then you feel the thin, blunt  metal of the butter knife break through your scalp and stick into the membrane of your skull. There is a pop in your ear of all places, and you fall to the ground and try not to scream but out comes one anyway. There is a little pool of blood on the dirty tile, and you scream again.

The old couple wasn’t laughing anymore. The old lady had a cell phone against her head and a worried expression plastered to her face. You stand up and your vision starts to fade and you see Sandra pacing to the exit with Alison cradled in her thin arms. You get a glimpse of her eyes, pale blue, before you faint, they start to water, you’re on the floor, Alison is crying and she’s gone out the door, and you black out in a warm puddle on the Denny’s floor.  She’s gone.

Gone.

When you hear the old lady’s voice on the phone, you open your eyes and stand up slowly. You make eye contact with her and she’s grinning behind curtains of wrinkled skin. You tell the old hag to go f**k a cow and you stagger into the bathroom. Somebody is taking a s**t and you try not to breathe as you finger the knife sticking out of your head. You realize it’s not that deep in, but even the slightest movement sends sensory neurons to your brain, and nociceptors swarm your conscious with pain.

F**k nociception.

You hear the guy drop a load and a splash echoes in the smelly bathroom. You grab the knife and try a mere tug, and instead of the knife a scream comes out of your head. The bathroom door opens and a guy with a red blazer and short haircut walks in and stops in the entrance. He eyes the top of your head and his smile fades. He says he just wants to wash his hands. You back away from the sink, little splotches of blood on the granite counter and some in the basin. He sees the blood and leaves in haste.

The guy taking a s**t, he shifts around in the stall, you can hear him. He’s probably a fat guy, you think, by the sound of the splashes and the smell of the room. He says after a couple more plops, What are you doing?

Nothing.

I can see you, you're just standing there.

            You whisper back, I have a problem.

            Plop, What kind of problem?

            I have a knife in my head.

            There’s a flush and you hear, Oh, that kind of problem.

            The stall door opens and a fat guy, you guessed it, squeezes through the door of the stall. He’s got a beard and a baseball cap on his fat head, the Red Sox you think. His face doesn’t change in horror when he sees the knife in your head. He smiles.

            Oh, s**t, you weren’t kidding!

            Yeah, I wish I was though.

            How the hell did that happen? Wait, let me guess. Your wife?

            Yep, how’d you know?

            That’s the only answer. I’m sorry, but I gotta get a picture of this.

            He takes out his cell phone, some shiny little piece of the future, swipes a fat finger around and holds the phone up to my face and a flash is blinked in the dim bathroom.

            That’s just perty, right there. Here lemme get rid of that for you.

            No! No way, f**k off dude, hey --

            But out it came. Another pop sounded in your ear, and warm lava gushes out from the top of the volcano that is your head. He sets the knife in the sink and turns the faucet on. The blood looks like water color, from grade school. Alison would like water colors. An ejaculation of crimson syrup shoots out of your scalp and paints the mirror.

            Woah, we got a squirter, boys. Here I got you.

            The fat guy revealed some paper towels and put them on your head with his fat dirty hands that he didn’t even wash. There’s a sharp pain on your scalp, a tangible head ache, and you feel like your passing out again. You tell this guy to get you out of the f*****g smelly bathroom so you can breathe, and he carries you out through the Denny's and then you’re outside in the cold. You’re on the ground and then you’re pushed into a truck. You hear the fat guy squeeze himself into the seat, shifting around and sucking in his gut to make it fit behind the steering wheel.

            You open your eyes. You’re in a big rig and you hear the fat guy say something, but all you can smell is cigarette smoke and you want to throw up. His sausage fingers are on your shoulder, he’s asking where you live, he’ll take you home.

            I Live in the Sky.

            The fat guy takes out a pack of cigarettes and says, So you’re one of those people. The fire is sparked and the cigarette is ignited and the smoke wafts around the two of you. For a second you think of Sandra and her cigarette and little Alison coughing in the cloud, and then you throw up in the cab of the big rig.

           

 

 

Author's Note

Wrote this in between classes

Reviews

[Ania L]

Woah, I was grabbed by the first paragraph. Intense! Definitely made me want to read on.

I love the way you play with sentence lengths, and the internal dialogue is captivating.

Good work x

[Naraly Godinez]

Less disturbing then the confession booth story.... The fact that you keep repeating " a lot has changed in two years make me want to picture flashbacks but somehow the absence of them makes it more mysterious..

[ZackOfBridge]

By the end of this, I wanted more, intense stora