One Eye Opens, Another Door Closes

They say ya bleed harder from the head than anywhere else but, for a softy like me, I say it’s got to be the heart where you pump the red juice from the worst when ya get cut open. Because right now, I barely feel whatever’s pouring down my mug. I’m more concerned about the crocodile tears welling up in the corners of old Auntie Shelly’s eyes than about my own crap condition. She can’t let them spill over, of course. Wouldn’t want that mascara runnin’. Got to look good if the news crews show up. It isn’t often that a firetruck t-bones a guy out in the middle of Washington Ave; much less in broad daylight. The cameras are sure to be rollin’ soon. Or at least Shelly hopes so, I know she does.

My window’s down but I can’t hear much other than boi-yoi-yoi-yoi-yoing. I can tell Shelly’s screamin’. It’s not just that her big ass mouth is flappin’, it’s just that she’s always sayin’ whatever she’s sayin’ at the top of her lungs. She wants an omelette. She yells about it. Time to change the channel to one of her girly pop shows. More of the same. She needs to use my car. Well, you get the picture.

She even hollered at me when I told her we weren’t puttin’ that stupid steerin’ wheel cover, with the spikes on it, onto my ride; no siree. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t just get one of them damned things lodged in my forehead here, not just ten minutes ago. Because Shelly always gets her way by doin’ what?

Yeah.

You guessed it.

Shoutin’.

And I can tell that even though the second set of firefighters that just showed up and the cops, that came behind them, are bodyblockin’ the hell out of her, she’s gonna have her way with them too. She’d be doin’ it either way but she’s in a very ‘punk rock,’ anti-authoritarian, phase of her mid-life crisis — hence the spikes — so she’s goin’ to be goin’ extra ham on them.

Sucks for them.

Sucks for me because here she comes, now.

“That looks nasty, but don’t worry. I’ll contact Joey and he’ll get you enough to buy a nice house near the lake. You’ve always said you want to get out of section eight. We’ll finally be able to do that. You really lucked out this time, nephew!” Shelly’s voice rings out over the sirens. Her spiky, red, mohawk is louder than all of it.

I just look at her. I’d hardly call this luck and I don’t care about livin’ on any damned lake. My head feels like Dave Grohl’s doin’ a drum solo inside of it.

“Ma’am, you’ve got to get out of the way. It’s really dangerous. This car could explode at any moment,” one of the officers tells her.

“Give me a minute, give me a minute,” Shelly says, taking pictures of the wreckage, on her phone. The skull and crossbones case on it give me the heebie-jeebies.

“You’re not gonna just leave me trapped in here, are ya?” I ask the same cop.

“We’ve got to wait for clearance to get you out of there,” he says before walkin’ off.

“So yous all are really gonna just leave me here, in this death trap?” I groan.

No answer.

Genesis’ ‘No Reply at All’ starts playin’ on the radio. Irony. Didn’t even know the damned thing was still on. What in the actual kismet? I’d usually rock out to the song but it’s giving me an even worse headache than I already had. I’d turn it off but I feel like I’d want to know how to diffuse a bomb before I go messin’ around with anything in the car right now.

John Mayer, ‘Waitin’ on the World to Change,’ is next.

Feels like I’m stuck in this hell hole for hours. I hate this fuckin’ song.

A playlist of uppers and downers. I’m goin’ in and out of consciousness with all the flashin’ lights of the emergency vehicles circlin’ around me. Colorful concentric circles, I think they call it. Feels like I’m stuck in a Looney Tunes end card and I’m just waitin’ for Porky Pig to pop out and tell me, “That’s all Folks!”

Cop finally comes to my window.

Shelly’s with him. She talks before he gets a chance. “All the witnesses are sayin’ you had the right of way. Don’t say nothin’. Joey’s gonna’ handle everything. We just gotta —”

“Ma’am,” says the officer. “We just want to get your nephew to the ambulance.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hop to it!” Shelly screeches.

They pry the door off my car. My car! I don’t know if it’s tears or blood soakin’ my face. They get me on the gurney and then I see the real damage. It’s totaled. All a guy’s tryin’ to do is get to work and now he’s looking at a half a year, at least, to secure himself another ride.

I close my eyes as they wheel me into the ambulance. It feels more like I’m gettin’ stuffed into a hearse. I missed work. Boss’ll act like he cares but I’ll still miss the pay. No wheels. Shit. How am I gonna’ get home from the hospital?

“Hey Shell,” I yell.

She’s on the phone. She puts her hand over the receiver. “Yeah. What is it? I got Joey on the line. Make it snappy. Big bucks just to talk to him on the clock, ya know!”

“Can ya get Kev to give me a ride home when I get discharged?”

“Nah, kid, sorry. Broke up with that bum last week.”

“Least have a pack of ice and something warm to eat ready for me?”

“Can’t. Hot Tinder date at eight. You know how it is. Sorry, sweet cheeks. Let the thought of a couple grand sooth you. You’re gonna be a made man soon. And of course you’ll make sure your dear old Auntie Shelly is sittin’ pretty. Now let me talk. Business to handle.”

And with that, the paramedics hop on-board and they close the conversation for me. I wanted to do it myself and tell her to shut her goddamned mouth but I ain’t got the heart; even though, sometimes, I swear that woman is the devil herself. She gets my blood pressure up, I swear. One of the EMTs straps me up to one of them heart monitors and for a second I swear it flashes six sixty-six.

What the hell?

I blink and suddenly it’s cruisin’ down around one somethin’. I shake it off. All the stress has got me seein’ things.

The ride to the hospital on the back of the ambulance is eerily quiet aside from the machine beepin’ every few minutes.

As they roll me through the parking lot, I catch a glimpse of myself in a car’s side mirror. I look like I just fought in a UFC match and I lost. There’s a big old flappin’ gash, smack dab in the middle of my forehead.

They take me to an empty bed in one of the rooms, for lack of a better word. It's an open area with multiple beds and thin curtains, sectioning the patients off from one another.

This is gonna to be pricey. First the ambulance’ll cost me a couple grand and then the hospital’ll probably run every test under the sun before stitchin’ me up and sendin’ me on my way. They’ll probably ask for my soul in the fine print.

It’s all makin’ my head throb and spin. All the small-talk and questions. I barely hear any of it. There’s an especially sharp pain right between my eyebrows. The nurse keeps pokin’ at it and dabbin’ it with somethin’. Think she said my name. Think I gave her the right one. Might’ve flirted with her, I don’t know. Might’ve told her she was a fairy with a wand but I’m comin’ more and more into focus. It ain’t no damned wand, it’s a cotton swab.

“Just glued that together for you,” she says. “Don’t touch it for a while. Stay out of the sun, as much as you can, while it heals or you’ll have a long-term nasty scar on that pretty face of yours. Other than that, sit here a couple minutes and we’ll get your discharge papers and you’re free to go. Get your ride home set up.”

She walks out. I gotta rub my eyes because there’s this weird shine all around her. Some kind of glowin’ twinklin’ shit goin’ on. I try to shake my head but that makes things worse. Then she’s entirely out of my line of sight and it stops.

Man, I’m messed up. Figure I’m concussed. Last time I felt like this, I thought I wanted to be a boxer. Took a couple hits to the head and realized that ‘no, I do not want to be a boxer.’ Still drove my sorry ass home that night. Can’t even do that, now.

I figure, since I’ve gotta save up the cash, I’ll ask Shelly if she can shell out a few bucks and get me an Uber. I text her. By time I’ve signed the papers, done the walk of shame past all the people in ER who’ve got some real brutal bang ups on ‘em, and exited the parting front doors of the hospital — out into the blistering summer sun — guess who I haven’t heard back from yet.

Yep, you got it.

Shelly.

Maybe it’s because I’m pissed. Maybe because I’m concussed. Maybe I’m just a fucked up guy who’s got to deal with fucked up shit and there’s no two ways about it. But I decide to walk the two miles home.

Heatstroke. Here I come!

It's a long trek and I gotta find somethin’ to entertain myself or I might just lose what little sanity I’ve got left. I debate listenin’ to music but my ear phones are back, scattered amongst the metal and debris of what’s left of my car.

There’s not much else to do so I give in to my worst tendency; the world’s worst habit as far as I’m concerned. I open up Facebook on my phone.

One of my Facebook friends has posted himself on a yacht with the caption. ‘No shirt, no shoes, no problem.’ Can people on this app get any more corny? Photographs of an acquaintances’ salad from Olive Garden. I never understood why people upload shots of food. Fuckin’ garbage has over fifty likes.

What’s most confusing is, I don’t see no updates of Shelly on her date. She’d usually have dozens. ‘He bought me roses,’ while she’s standing there with a bag of weed or photos of her and her new squeeze leaning into one another with her hand, half covering up the camera, with a caption saying, ‘A lady never kisses and tells.’ But there’s none of that on her feed. I get worried. Give her a call. Nothin’. I send her a DM. Nothin’.

I walk a bit further down the street. The hot summer sun’s got me sweatin’ but not as bad as worryin’ about auntie does. I can feel the skin on my forehead tearin’ off because of it. I try to push it on tight. Feels like it’s slidin’ around worse. I keep scrollin’ with my other hand. My head throbs and I feel like I'm growing a horn and am about to turn into a damn unicorn or somethin’. I touch it and it’s bleedin’. Only, when I feel it, it’s thin. That ain’t blood. I look at my fingers and it’s rainbow colored.

What the fuck is actually goin’ on? What’s happenin’ to me? Am I really turnin’ into some kinda mythical creature or some shit? I decide I gotta take a picture of myself and show somebody what happenin’. Maybe Aunt Shelly, or somebody out there, will give a fuck. I hate it, because I’m not much one for selfies, but maybe if she sees my condition she’ll have a heart and actually say somethin’ to me. Or, at least, maybe she’ll get pissed and tell me to save all the evidence for Joey. I can hear her now, tryin’ to pin some weird mutations on the medical staff who stitched me up. She’ll call it a botch job.

So, I snap a quick flick and post it. Wait a few minutes. Check my phone again. Nada. Zilch. Maybe it’s all the blood that’s pourin’ out of it again that’s puttin’ people off. Maybe it’s not rainbow colored. Maybe I’m just seein’ things. But Shelly not sayin’ nothin’s the worst part. She never puts her phone down. What the hell’s goin’ on?

When I go to pull up her page, I get a message in my DMs. It’s not from her. It’s from my buddy, Jimmy Bones: “Stop bitchin’ about that little scratch. Rub some dirt in it and man up.”

Readin’ the message, I lose my footin’. Fall to the pavement. Gravel all in my face. In the gape on my forehead, which feels like it’s trying to suck it all up like it’s a tasty milk shake.

“Yeah, suck it up,” I tell myself and get up. I poke at the puncture but the gravel seems to have fallen out. And when I touch it, it feels weird. Like a little rubber ball’s grown in there. Bouncy. Swollen.

In my delirious state, I sing a little tune to myself. “Strollin’, even with my forehead swollen. Bored, so I’ll keep on scrollin. I hope my phone ain’t… broken.” It kind of rhymes, okay! Sigh of relief when I see I haven’t damaged anything.

Back on Facebook, I’m going through the same pictures I was lookin’ at before. Only this time, things look different. It’s weird. Dude on the yacht, he looks all yellow. Like he’s got jaundice or hepatitis or somethin’. That album of all the lettuce and onions and tomatoes or whatever the slop food photography was supposed to be: it’s browned. Looks wilted. And when I look at my own post, there’s a glowin’ light in the middle of my head.

“What. The. Fuck?” What is that? Am I losing my mind? Make it go away!

The page scrolls down. 

What is going on? 

I almost wish the phone would break so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

Crack

The screen shatters in two.

I hobble my ass on home as quick as I can. I need to get some sleep!

When I get to the house, I feel like my head’s gonna explode. From the headache, sure. But I’m pissed even more because Kev’s truck is in the driveway. I bust through the door. Shelly and Kev are cuddled up on the couch.

“Oh, hey hun,” Shelly says. She doesn’t bother to look up at me.

Kev gives me a, “What’s up, champ?” He’s not interested in meeting my eyes either.

I glare at them. “What the fuck is this? I thought you broke up? I thought —”

“It’s all good now,” Shelly says, leaning into Kev. “Too many boys out there, playin’ games. Only man for me is Kev.”

“Sure,” I say, and turn to walk up the steps. I whisper to myself, “Couldn’t even give me a fuckin’ ride home.”

“Hey sugar,” Shelly calls up the steps. “Mind orderin’ us a pizza or some Chinese?”

“Ain’t got the money. Gotta save up for a car, Shell.”

“Well. Do you mind whippin’ us up somethin’?”

I stop at the top of the stairs. “I do… I do mind. You couldn’t even bother to come pick me up. Why should I bother with you.” I storm into my room and start packin’.

“What was that?” She storms up after me. “What did you say to me? After all I’ve done for you. After what I’m gettin’ Joey to get for you! For us.”

Shelly’s in the hallway. I turn and get a good look at her. She’s got this weird, black, smoke comin’ off of her.

“What the fuck is that?” I ask.

She looks back and points at my forehead, “What the fuck is THAT?”

I turn my head and get a peak at myself in the mirror, over my dresser. Where the gash was, there’s an eye, blinkin’ back at me.

“I… I don’t know. Just… just leave me the hell alone. I’m done with you!” I yell.

Shelly starts walkin’ toward me. “Listen,” she says, “The money… whatever’s goin’ on with you… the money can fix it!”

I turn away and the door to my bedroom slams in her face.