fizickse
07-15-2011, 07:11 PM
The sleek contours of the hospital and its adjacent buildings reassured me with a very startling impression. The subtle accents in the contemporary architecture suggested an internalized emphasis on order and cleanliness. Square sapphire-tinted pieces of glass fearlessly blazed across the front and the sides of the building; the window panes of every building ran flush against the next with uniform precision. On the panes facing eastward, the sky was reflected in a flawless mirror image, letting the creeping glitter of the sun tread left to right from one column to the next in a hueless cadence. Because the clouds simultaneously depart as the sun reaches the glass, the brilliance of the reflection sharpens exaggeratingly as if to inspire hope and optimism, or laughably, a better future. The increasing shine that could be seen on the many corners and edges of curves and straight edges like the outlines of the parked cars whose coats of paint now look like wet oil pastel, and the usage of uncommon adjectives that I cleverly found last night in an internet thesaurus to describe the said objects were sensations that I knew all too well; perhaps everything I saw was not very significant after all. Maybe the windows were like normal windows, dull, boring, or dirty. Maybe the design of the buildings as a whole were unspectacular, and was about as exciting and stimulating as receiving a copy of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights as a graduation present for high school.
Worrying that even my nostrils were beginning to dry up just as much as my mouth, I am relieved to see a water fountain in the quiet lobby that I finally arrive into and drink from it. I realized I had completely underestimated whatever it was that I had just smoked, and now that I gave it a second thought, regretted not to thoroughly examine it under a good light first. The high is still increasing, and I was pretty sure where this was going. The weed was exceptionally strong and was obviously going to reach too great of a physically unpleasant level, though I am responsible for this. Then again, I glanced into the bag in my pocket to decide whether or not driving back home and compromising a missed opportunity for a number on a sheet of paper because this weed was way too potent, was a good idea.
How else could one forget the robustness within each of the precisely cultivated flowers I had seen the night before; or the hairs, immersed in a mountainous trickling of dusty brown crystals, that were so large and constricted that it caused them to vividly pulsate like mutated veins, endowing itself with a mesmerizing attribute while the enthralling rhythm of this breath-like motion floored me with eagerness? I remember now that when I had first seen it, I had been unable to focus my attention towards anything except the silvery pink hairs lacquered onto or shelved between the fresh calyxes that had been meretriciously stained in a wine-red, amaranthine color, until the merchant grabbed a large bud and snapped the crisp matter in half. Doing so revealed the middle of the bud, which both disappointed and satisfied me at the same time because without any warning, he relieved me of the mounting suspense stirred by this exotically foreign bud, inconsiderately spoiling a proper savoring before the disembodying ritual of the product. Still, I was dumbstruck and was not in a position to complain, as the walls of each of these jagged and broken sides of the bud also exposed a two-dimensional, lateral vantage of the thriving multitude of hairs inlaid. The air of its preservation had a thaumaturgical property that had numbed my ability to smell; on the inside, the hairs were not pink, as the calyxes, folded like stacks of purple laundry, kept the hairs unscathed for several months as they aged and cured. Like the inside of a geode, flamingly gay chunks of crystals lavished the inner surface, overjoyed that the delicate chest trapping them for ages had finally been opened, but to their dismay, they would be divided and allotted from hand to hand, only to be locked into some other kind of box; but this, I was told, and could see, had “some seriously silver hairs ‘n ****”. I recalled the moment when he said that to me right before I bought it, then was glad that at least the deal turned out to be in my favor.
“Yo, they be some seriously silver hairs ‘n **** in ‘dis. See?” he joyfully growled. I hardly listened to him and stuck my hand out with the cash held plainly in sight.
“Really? No time though, I should be in bed already.” I replied.
“*****, reck’nize who I ‘eeyizz, ‘n what I saye’yizz, ‘n what I be saysin’ is ‘dat ‘dis ghetty green be sold out by ‘da enn’uh tuh’ night, ‘n I ain’ gon’ play ‘roun’ ‘dis time cuz ‘dis be unbuhmutha****in’lievable green, y’aygn know yuh heard?, ” and hearing this, I thought I had readily understood what he had told me, then left with the cabbage.
I was wrong. I would have continued to expound, on this dense fragment of probably the most incredible weed ever, the equivalent of four pages of a marathon of syllables written in a size 12 Times New Roman font, but having no longer been able to grasp or process any more visual stimuli, my legs wanted to stand there in front of the fountain. Thoughts drifted independently, objects in my peripheral vision congruently expanded in size while the ones in the center of my attention had been erased of any cosmetic imperfections, and laughter settled, waiting nearby for an inappropriate moment. In an attempt to control myself, I simplified my priorities, and will have been stopping the usage of obscure combinations of adverbs and adjectives in order to construct a picturesque exegesis of everything I sensed, one at a time. Luckily, I had carefully noted what I am instructed to do. Down the left hallway in the lobby, and the third door on the right wall is what I believe to have heard. I then step over the threshold of the door to come face to face with my supervisor.
Introducing herself, she happened to guess who I was correctly, told me to go to floor 15, and then handed me a special card, with the instructions written on the back, used to access certain areas, pointing a finger at the door. I was already exiting before opening my mouth, which was a good thing since answering questions was not something I could do very quickly at the moment. I was back into the lobby and heading straight for the elevator, admiring the card that the elderly woman sitting in that modest room had just given me by flipping it through my fingers. I thought of that same modest room, a modesty that was absent in the minimalistic furnishing of the waiting room, where the chairs bore such a non-utilitarian swagger that judging by the obese man that was sitting in one of them, could have supported a far heavier weight than their wiry, exiguous frames would have inferred, despite the precariousness of their lopsided proportions made possible by modeling and fooling around with its protean seat cushions, armrests, cup holders, built-in neck and back massagers, and an auto-fellatio assist button which would instantaneously snap the back and seat of the chair violently together if pressed. In addition, on the left armrest of each one was stamped a catechismal montage of comical illustrations, intended to advise those with neck, spinal, or back complications to abstain from
pushing that button, or consequently suffer from a stiffening remorse. The rest of the interior was different in that it was lackluster in comparison. Tidily hung portraits of important-looking persons coupled with monotonous discolorations caused by accidental bleach spills on the Persian rugs that covered the waiting room, did a poor job of entertaining me while I stood waiting for the elevator to arrive. When it finally did, I stepped inside and the numbers on the buttons transformed into undecipherable foreign symbols, following on cue with the eerie seclusion conjured by the feelings of being permanently encased in a metal box like a volunteer from an audience being in a magician’s act. I was really high.
Rudely interrupting this eremitic silence as I ascended, my heart audibly pumped itself as loudly as if I had been running instead of standing still, and each one after the next was more exhaustingly pronounced. I blinked to help myself concentrate on a relevant object, knowing that this would last no more than a few more minutes. The doors opened when floor 15 had been reached, causing me to become distracted by the heat and humidity that accosted me with its tropical effluvium. It was warmer here than it was outside, which was very odd, and the whole place looked different too. There was less lighting here, a problem probably caused by the electrical failure. Above the map of the floor, fastened by two poles, was a sign that read “BURN WARD”. This must be where they burn the garbage, I thought. I flipped through the card with my fingers before re-reading the instructions, only to find out that the work did, in fact, involve disposing raw and recycled waste. I must have come to the right place. I doubt it will get any worse than this though… or will it? My heart, I realized, was not racing nearly as fast as I had thought it was.
Shortly afterwards, I was distracted by a little girl who unnoticeably walked up to me from behind. Peculiarly enough, her face was disguised with a ghoulishly hideous Halloween mask that appeared to have been applied by an actual professional make-up artist, and poked me, gesturing to me to pay attention to the doll she held.
That’s funny. Halloween was yesterday.
I was too high to critically observe her childish actions, but they were childish, nonetheless, so I patted her on the head when she finished giggling. My fingertips by chance managed to pass through where her ears were supposed to be while I did this like she were a ghost, and I was awestruck at the harrowing level of effort put forth into making her appear to have no ears whatsoever! So real, yet so subtle, the makeup was a true masterpiece.
“Hey, you kinda look like a cute and adorable Maneki Neko”, I said to her. “Why would such a cute Maneki Neko thing like you be doing in this place called a burn ward? Should be called cute ward instead!”
Ensorcelled amidst this mysterious craftsmanship, I was unconscious that my hand kept on patting her head in a robotic motion, as the principal fragments of the tragedy that I had just entered slowly fell together in my head, and I sensed a momentous consideration around the corner. The skin, withering wrinkles on the skin in blotchy patches, hid her earflaps, giving her a listless demeanor as the drooping flanks of her eyebrows fluently integrated into her real skin. She looked up, and began to laugh, which disturbed as that cackling was then being accompanied by a virulent tremolo. I imagined what last night’s gem dealer would say in this situation.
“Yo’ ***** yo mind be so ****ed you cayn’ e’y’n be shu’n ‘da **** up fa’ five minutes.”
A wretched disturbance came from her disfigured smile, and at this point, the festive spirit in me had gradually diminished into a neutral expression, then into a petrified glare. The Halloween mask, was in fact, not a Halloween mask.
Walking backwards away from her, I galloped to a glass sliding door where it seemed like I could make use of my life-saving card. I whipped it out to make them open while my heart raced again, and by a narrow chance, locked her out away from me. Instead of finding refuge, I had stumbled into the intensive recovery unit, an even more humid and moist room with patients that were either in a deep sleep or a coma, and red-colored litterbins, the color of the kind of bins I had to collect and dispose. Sickeningly enough, there were dozens of litterbins, each located next to the bed of each patient. A flurry of questions came to mind then. Should I even be allowed here in the first place? Where are the gloves I’m supposed to use, and am I even going to be supervised? Feeling my high even out into a fabulous ride, I did not care all too much and was freely content with getting straight to work.
The first bin was located next to a man with a crispy, protruding lump on his misshapen forehead, most likely from the result of a traumatic accident, and trying not to look, I did. From his scalp, down to his chest, what looked like singed segments of skin besmirched the muscular region that laid a smidgeon below, entwined in a abstruse mess like a network of swollen rivers and creeks. His face looked like a cheese pizza, with extra sauce, minus the cheese, that is.
Arousing the sinewy fibers of the thin strands of charred, yet, perhaps still salvageable skin, they flapped in a maniacal frenzy every time that I would inhale a full breath, and puffed the air out in a single prodigious sigh directly on top of the burn wound. An unsettling appetite for certain foods made a contemptuous beckoning for me to think of them in everything I saw. What I needed was food, calories, anything located nearby. Unlatching the cover of the bin to collect the bag inside, and because of the strange mechanism used to unlock it, I was forced to subdue myself beside the carnal disaster. Oatmeal. Now, I wanted oatmeal.
On the areas that abjured serious injury, a corrugated buffer rife with liverworts and auburn lumps of goo that were like brown sugar isolated his abdominal muscles; I was suddenly in the middle of a phantasmagoric feast, not a quarantine for the physically handicapped. I still craved oatmeal. Taking a quick glance at the reddest part, the center of the wound, my mind changed. Now, I could think of nothing else other than a medium-rare, or on second thought, a rare steak. My hunger exploded when I saw the stubbles of the hair on his head, short from being shaven not too many days ago, I conjectured, generously covering his ravished scalp like pepper and other tempting spices on a grilled membrane. Being neither amused nor satisfied with the delirious imagination caused by these perceptual distortions, I continued to collect and dispose of each bag, until I finally encountered another temptation.
I objected to even go near this person. The horrific stench cast into my general direction as I neared the bed reminded me of the inside of any kind of restaurant that served a combination of cheese, tomatoes, and grease in the same dish. A clamant reflex seized my esophagus before I was thrown back into that wondrous spell again, and saw the cryptic allure of the bandaging on this woman’s arms and feet. Meshing into the gangrenous collage of despair, I could only feel hungrier. Spaghetti. Yes, that will be the first thing I shall eat as soon as I get home, even though it seems about as bad as the food I ate at the University of Florida’s cafeteria one time when I was visiting there. The tan bandages, at a closer look, were more like sheets of pasta separating layers of beef and tomato sauce, only there was not any pasta, beef, or tomato sauce. Concerned about the dubious work I was assigned, I came at a crossroads soon enough. Taking me by total surprise, I hurriedly managed to vomit into a bag that I had just collected, as the answer to all of my questions laid before me.
My knees trembled as I stood aghast, but intrigued at the same time at the one-armed specimen that was standing next to my last trash bag. I say one-armed because one arm was healthy, while the other had a purplish, but undoubtedly gangrenous decay at the tips of its elbow. And I say “its”, because a clownish mask covered its face, like that character Kabal from that video game Mortal Kombat 3. My intuition was unable to adjust to the necessary proprieties at hand; they were nowhere to be found as I wrapped a paper towel around my index finger. I used this finger, while extending my arm into a straight line, to lift the mask, and lunging downward in response to the gaping rim of the mask was a circumscription of weeping pustules festooning the underside of the mask with its residual crust. It reminded me of apple pie.
There was much left to be discovered on this stationary specimen that was something you would only get a single chance to exploit in a lifetime. The mask was one of them. People who say they wouldn’t stop over and harmlessly get a closer look at a tragic accident are liars. I then thought that there was a universal trait within all humans to, from across a reasonable and safe boundary, discourteously witness close details of any grisly scene so long as it does not interfere with their usual business, such as driving along a red-coned, congested highway on a motorcycle, passing along the stalled lanes of cars by riding so closely to the cones that their feet would graze the edges of them, and that they would get an awesomely short look at what may possibly be cooler than having a gallery of pictures of me and Will Smith doing the things together that Will Smith does, with our arms crossed and our backs poised against the other, wearing sunglasses, and only, sunglasses. And for those who say they wouldn’t be curious if they were standing here like me in the first place, then why does traffic always move so slowly like every driver desperately wants a turn? If I saw a couple of automobiles flipped-turned upside down up ahead around under by a bridge, I think I’d drive away pretty ****ing fast!
I grazed those cones today, and fed the decrepit splendor one more inch of revelation. A maggot dropped out of nowhere, and mortifyingly, I went into a miniature seizure, seeing black spots like I was about to faint, and tripped over a drawer of many medical utensils and devices, causing a loud whack when my hand slapped the bed as I fell. Reacting to the coeval impact, the body, apparently still live, twitched periodically as maggots writhed upwards from the festering underside of its neck, rudely awakened from their cryptic slumber of what I guessed to be two or three days long. Gross! What kind of a hospital is this, and where are the nurses to check on the patients? It’s not like they would be able to know about that problem in the first place, I mean how can they? The patient can’t speak and can barely move; it was no wonder nobody had noticed sooner. Strangely, I had heard only a few of them rummaging around with papers here and searching for some Viagra prescription pills in what seemed to be a pharmaceutical inventory, but that was the only time. I knew it this because I heard one of them say, “Where did I hide the Viagra in here last night, Harry?”
Forget that last bag of trash, I’m getting out. Assuming there were no rules or regulations in this place, I decided that this would be the end to my horrific journey, as well as my once-in-a-lifetime high. Having no supervisor to verbally instruct or watch over me, the last step I took was to go back to that old woman who must have been higher than me for giving me this silly credit card thing with its vaguely stipulated conundrums. Leaving the mess to itself, I turned away to shun this floor once and for all. Ironically enough, a thought that hospitals were the dirtiest places ever occurred to me; hundreds of sick folk with all sorts of diseases parade in and out of that waiting room in a single day. Bacteria and viruses breathed into the air from many of the sick linger and cling onto the walls, waiting. I had volunteered myself to work in a hustling mecca for germs from possibly every country, germs for which I have no bodily resistance. In an instant, I had found my way to a very large restroom on the floor, hardly used, with the ceiling lights shining off of the riveting format of the tiles. As I doused my head and arms in water from the sink to remove the filth, I remarked at the excessive grandeur of this restroom that had about forty to fifty toilets, on each side of the room, yet it seemed like many days would pass before anyone would even use it. It even smells better than a normal room.
My stomach had an intense pain I wanted to cure, but unfortunately forgetting to bring any money with me, I couldn’t afford any food. The only cure was to make that first-in-a-lifetime high into a, although smaller, second-in-a-lifetime high, and attain the essence of an average day once more. Besides, almost an hour will pass by the time I get home in this kind of traffic at this time of day, and during that time, no eating will get done.
Drying my hands, the pellucid tranquility that glided into my ears allowed me to hear every nuance of each step and every hand movement I made into my pocket to retrieve that priceless bud; its scintillating mountains and depthless valleys of lodged, eroded glaciers were legendary, bought in that part of downtown, where I must first leave my regular, four-wheeled, functioning car with 26-inch spinning rims in my garage, and rent a ****ty one to drive. I folded my legs together as I got into a stall to sit on top of the toilet seat so nobody would know I were inside if they walked in, and opened a few of the windows nearby. The moment I started to break the weed into the bowl of the pipe and began to smoke, I heard the loud creak of the main restroom door swinging open, and a pair of footsteps gaining in volume.
I continued to prepare my pipe, careful not to drop any residue, but right before I managed to take the lighter out, I heard more footsteps congregating into the same stall that was adjacent from me after making a total revolution around the area to make sure if anyone else such as me, was here. I didn’t know what was going on until I heard belt buckles hit the floor, and an opprobrious intonation emanated from next door. Again, I woke up for this ****? Although I was itching for a smoke, I really didn’t want to endure this any longer, but it would have been difficult for me to get up and leave without alerting and embarrassing them because of my awkward presence, so I stayed put. The noise pollution from next door took the form of a crescendo, and within minutes, climaxed in a hedonistic denouement by the man shouting, “YEAH, THAT’S THE SPOT, HARRY!” No sounds were to be heard for five to eight seconds.
By the time this happened, I was so psychologically ravaged that I had forgotten my intention to not make my presence known, and stood upwards, dazed, to blow my cover, upwards enough to the point where I was just in time to witness not a man and a woman, but two men.
Realizing my error, I quickly ducked back down, but not before catching a refulgent peep at one of the men on their knees, teeming with a rigid perseverance as an immaculate avalanche of semen had charged onto his nose, and nimbly cascaded down his bountiful cheeks and pausing at the bottom of his chin, before the ominous force of gravity morphed the love sauce into a peculiar stalagmite like a levitating chandelier. Speckling his sideburns, one second was long enough to see him swipe his brows and remove the dried material, which simultaneously removed any hair stubbles he had on those areas, and exposed the smooth textured skin underneath. The rest of his face, however, was in point blank range of the hydrant, completely drenched, with gleaming rivulets of baby batter sneaking onto his burly, strong chest. Yet, his posture remained stoically adamant like a Buddhist monk, and even his mouth that was as wide as the Grand Canyon, appeared to meditate as the tongue orbited the inner rim of his lips in a refraining manner, percolating the seed with his pearly teeth. Glazed donuts. I will stop at a donut store on the way home.
There was an awkward pause after they both saw me and flinched in horror, but suffice to say, they didn’t appreciate the audience that I had granted them, and proceeded to chase me. They chased me far down to the end of the halls, to the stairs, where I ran and ran away from these two hastily clothed men, and I didn’t even know why. I stormed outside so quickly, few people could comprehend the spontaneous stampede before their eyes.
All of my other thoughts I came up with earlier that day were irrelevant as I kept on running. Because I forgot exactly where I had parked my car, I went to the street and prayed that a taxi would be empty and available as I was now a hundred yards ahead of those two men. Seeing a cab dash by, I whistled for it to stop, and it actually did. I hopped inside and just told him to drive. I never told the driver when to stop, and he started to question me, wanting to know if I even had enough money to pay him as we reached the city limits.
I may regret this, but I had to keep myself safe, and far from whoever these men were. Today was the day that I left that part of Philadelphia, my place of birth and residence for as long as I’ve known. The place where autumn leaves would skitter across into the corners of the fenced playground where I spent most of my days when I was a child, while my friends and I would run up and down the basketball courts for hours, chilling, and relaxing outside of school before it started every day. But now, a couple of guys, whose private identities I had serendipitously exposed to me, were bent on getting their hands bloodied in a relentless hunt. Being somewhat more at peace than expected, I told the driver to drive to Bel-Air, where my rich aunt and uncle lived. I’ll get them to pay for the ride.
Here, I sit in a cab that I whistled for, not planning or thinking too much about my next move except to notice a pair of plush dice in the mirror and telling the driver to go to Bel-Air. We didn’t converse like normal folk usually would, partly due to the contemplative realm of thought that had kept me rapt and in high hopes of finding insight in any of the scenes I had witnessed today. That night, I pulled up to their house. It was 7 o clock, or 8, I didn’t keep a close track like I usually would. Finally, feeling like a prince in his kingdom, I waved my head around, knocked on the door, and sat on an expensive reclining chair.
Worrying that even my nostrils were beginning to dry up just as much as my mouth, I am relieved to see a water fountain in the quiet lobby that I finally arrive into and drink from it. I realized I had completely underestimated whatever it was that I had just smoked, and now that I gave it a second thought, regretted not to thoroughly examine it under a good light first. The high is still increasing, and I was pretty sure where this was going. The weed was exceptionally strong and was obviously going to reach too great of a physically unpleasant level, though I am responsible for this. Then again, I glanced into the bag in my pocket to decide whether or not driving back home and compromising a missed opportunity for a number on a sheet of paper because this weed was way too potent, was a good idea.
How else could one forget the robustness within each of the precisely cultivated flowers I had seen the night before; or the hairs, immersed in a mountainous trickling of dusty brown crystals, that were so large and constricted that it caused them to vividly pulsate like mutated veins, endowing itself with a mesmerizing attribute while the enthralling rhythm of this breath-like motion floored me with eagerness? I remember now that when I had first seen it, I had been unable to focus my attention towards anything except the silvery pink hairs lacquered onto or shelved between the fresh calyxes that had been meretriciously stained in a wine-red, amaranthine color, until the merchant grabbed a large bud and snapped the crisp matter in half. Doing so revealed the middle of the bud, which both disappointed and satisfied me at the same time because without any warning, he relieved me of the mounting suspense stirred by this exotically foreign bud, inconsiderately spoiling a proper savoring before the disembodying ritual of the product. Still, I was dumbstruck and was not in a position to complain, as the walls of each of these jagged and broken sides of the bud also exposed a two-dimensional, lateral vantage of the thriving multitude of hairs inlaid. The air of its preservation had a thaumaturgical property that had numbed my ability to smell; on the inside, the hairs were not pink, as the calyxes, folded like stacks of purple laundry, kept the hairs unscathed for several months as they aged and cured. Like the inside of a geode, flamingly gay chunks of crystals lavished the inner surface, overjoyed that the delicate chest trapping them for ages had finally been opened, but to their dismay, they would be divided and allotted from hand to hand, only to be locked into some other kind of box; but this, I was told, and could see, had “some seriously silver hairs ‘n ****”. I recalled the moment when he said that to me right before I bought it, then was glad that at least the deal turned out to be in my favor.
“Yo, they be some seriously silver hairs ‘n **** in ‘dis. See?” he joyfully growled. I hardly listened to him and stuck my hand out with the cash held plainly in sight.
“Really? No time though, I should be in bed already.” I replied.
“*****, reck’nize who I ‘eeyizz, ‘n what I saye’yizz, ‘n what I be saysin’ is ‘dat ‘dis ghetty green be sold out by ‘da enn’uh tuh’ night, ‘n I ain’ gon’ play ‘roun’ ‘dis time cuz ‘dis be unbuhmutha****in’lievable green, y’aygn know yuh heard?, ” and hearing this, I thought I had readily understood what he had told me, then left with the cabbage.
I was wrong. I would have continued to expound, on this dense fragment of probably the most incredible weed ever, the equivalent of four pages of a marathon of syllables written in a size 12 Times New Roman font, but having no longer been able to grasp or process any more visual stimuli, my legs wanted to stand there in front of the fountain. Thoughts drifted independently, objects in my peripheral vision congruently expanded in size while the ones in the center of my attention had been erased of any cosmetic imperfections, and laughter settled, waiting nearby for an inappropriate moment. In an attempt to control myself, I simplified my priorities, and will have been stopping the usage of obscure combinations of adverbs and adjectives in order to construct a picturesque exegesis of everything I sensed, one at a time. Luckily, I had carefully noted what I am instructed to do. Down the left hallway in the lobby, and the third door on the right wall is what I believe to have heard. I then step over the threshold of the door to come face to face with my supervisor.
Introducing herself, she happened to guess who I was correctly, told me to go to floor 15, and then handed me a special card, with the instructions written on the back, used to access certain areas, pointing a finger at the door. I was already exiting before opening my mouth, which was a good thing since answering questions was not something I could do very quickly at the moment. I was back into the lobby and heading straight for the elevator, admiring the card that the elderly woman sitting in that modest room had just given me by flipping it through my fingers. I thought of that same modest room, a modesty that was absent in the minimalistic furnishing of the waiting room, where the chairs bore such a non-utilitarian swagger that judging by the obese man that was sitting in one of them, could have supported a far heavier weight than their wiry, exiguous frames would have inferred, despite the precariousness of their lopsided proportions made possible by modeling and fooling around with its protean seat cushions, armrests, cup holders, built-in neck and back massagers, and an auto-fellatio assist button which would instantaneously snap the back and seat of the chair violently together if pressed. In addition, on the left armrest of each one was stamped a catechismal montage of comical illustrations, intended to advise those with neck, spinal, or back complications to abstain from
pushing that button, or consequently suffer from a stiffening remorse. The rest of the interior was different in that it was lackluster in comparison. Tidily hung portraits of important-looking persons coupled with monotonous discolorations caused by accidental bleach spills on the Persian rugs that covered the waiting room, did a poor job of entertaining me while I stood waiting for the elevator to arrive. When it finally did, I stepped inside and the numbers on the buttons transformed into undecipherable foreign symbols, following on cue with the eerie seclusion conjured by the feelings of being permanently encased in a metal box like a volunteer from an audience being in a magician’s act. I was really high.
Rudely interrupting this eremitic silence as I ascended, my heart audibly pumped itself as loudly as if I had been running instead of standing still, and each one after the next was more exhaustingly pronounced. I blinked to help myself concentrate on a relevant object, knowing that this would last no more than a few more minutes. The doors opened when floor 15 had been reached, causing me to become distracted by the heat and humidity that accosted me with its tropical effluvium. It was warmer here than it was outside, which was very odd, and the whole place looked different too. There was less lighting here, a problem probably caused by the electrical failure. Above the map of the floor, fastened by two poles, was a sign that read “BURN WARD”. This must be where they burn the garbage, I thought. I flipped through the card with my fingers before re-reading the instructions, only to find out that the work did, in fact, involve disposing raw and recycled waste. I must have come to the right place. I doubt it will get any worse than this though… or will it? My heart, I realized, was not racing nearly as fast as I had thought it was.
Shortly afterwards, I was distracted by a little girl who unnoticeably walked up to me from behind. Peculiarly enough, her face was disguised with a ghoulishly hideous Halloween mask that appeared to have been applied by an actual professional make-up artist, and poked me, gesturing to me to pay attention to the doll she held.
That’s funny. Halloween was yesterday.
I was too high to critically observe her childish actions, but they were childish, nonetheless, so I patted her on the head when she finished giggling. My fingertips by chance managed to pass through where her ears were supposed to be while I did this like she were a ghost, and I was awestruck at the harrowing level of effort put forth into making her appear to have no ears whatsoever! So real, yet so subtle, the makeup was a true masterpiece.
“Hey, you kinda look like a cute and adorable Maneki Neko”, I said to her. “Why would such a cute Maneki Neko thing like you be doing in this place called a burn ward? Should be called cute ward instead!”
Ensorcelled amidst this mysterious craftsmanship, I was unconscious that my hand kept on patting her head in a robotic motion, as the principal fragments of the tragedy that I had just entered slowly fell together in my head, and I sensed a momentous consideration around the corner. The skin, withering wrinkles on the skin in blotchy patches, hid her earflaps, giving her a listless demeanor as the drooping flanks of her eyebrows fluently integrated into her real skin. She looked up, and began to laugh, which disturbed as that cackling was then being accompanied by a virulent tremolo. I imagined what last night’s gem dealer would say in this situation.
“Yo’ ***** yo mind be so ****ed you cayn’ e’y’n be shu’n ‘da **** up fa’ five minutes.”
A wretched disturbance came from her disfigured smile, and at this point, the festive spirit in me had gradually diminished into a neutral expression, then into a petrified glare. The Halloween mask, was in fact, not a Halloween mask.
Walking backwards away from her, I galloped to a glass sliding door where it seemed like I could make use of my life-saving card. I whipped it out to make them open while my heart raced again, and by a narrow chance, locked her out away from me. Instead of finding refuge, I had stumbled into the intensive recovery unit, an even more humid and moist room with patients that were either in a deep sleep or a coma, and red-colored litterbins, the color of the kind of bins I had to collect and dispose. Sickeningly enough, there were dozens of litterbins, each located next to the bed of each patient. A flurry of questions came to mind then. Should I even be allowed here in the first place? Where are the gloves I’m supposed to use, and am I even going to be supervised? Feeling my high even out into a fabulous ride, I did not care all too much and was freely content with getting straight to work.
The first bin was located next to a man with a crispy, protruding lump on his misshapen forehead, most likely from the result of a traumatic accident, and trying not to look, I did. From his scalp, down to his chest, what looked like singed segments of skin besmirched the muscular region that laid a smidgeon below, entwined in a abstruse mess like a network of swollen rivers and creeks. His face looked like a cheese pizza, with extra sauce, minus the cheese, that is.
Arousing the sinewy fibers of the thin strands of charred, yet, perhaps still salvageable skin, they flapped in a maniacal frenzy every time that I would inhale a full breath, and puffed the air out in a single prodigious sigh directly on top of the burn wound. An unsettling appetite for certain foods made a contemptuous beckoning for me to think of them in everything I saw. What I needed was food, calories, anything located nearby. Unlatching the cover of the bin to collect the bag inside, and because of the strange mechanism used to unlock it, I was forced to subdue myself beside the carnal disaster. Oatmeal. Now, I wanted oatmeal.
On the areas that abjured serious injury, a corrugated buffer rife with liverworts and auburn lumps of goo that were like brown sugar isolated his abdominal muscles; I was suddenly in the middle of a phantasmagoric feast, not a quarantine for the physically handicapped. I still craved oatmeal. Taking a quick glance at the reddest part, the center of the wound, my mind changed. Now, I could think of nothing else other than a medium-rare, or on second thought, a rare steak. My hunger exploded when I saw the stubbles of the hair on his head, short from being shaven not too many days ago, I conjectured, generously covering his ravished scalp like pepper and other tempting spices on a grilled membrane. Being neither amused nor satisfied with the delirious imagination caused by these perceptual distortions, I continued to collect and dispose of each bag, until I finally encountered another temptation.
I objected to even go near this person. The horrific stench cast into my general direction as I neared the bed reminded me of the inside of any kind of restaurant that served a combination of cheese, tomatoes, and grease in the same dish. A clamant reflex seized my esophagus before I was thrown back into that wondrous spell again, and saw the cryptic allure of the bandaging on this woman’s arms and feet. Meshing into the gangrenous collage of despair, I could only feel hungrier. Spaghetti. Yes, that will be the first thing I shall eat as soon as I get home, even though it seems about as bad as the food I ate at the University of Florida’s cafeteria one time when I was visiting there. The tan bandages, at a closer look, were more like sheets of pasta separating layers of beef and tomato sauce, only there was not any pasta, beef, or tomato sauce. Concerned about the dubious work I was assigned, I came at a crossroads soon enough. Taking me by total surprise, I hurriedly managed to vomit into a bag that I had just collected, as the answer to all of my questions laid before me.
My knees trembled as I stood aghast, but intrigued at the same time at the one-armed specimen that was standing next to my last trash bag. I say one-armed because one arm was healthy, while the other had a purplish, but undoubtedly gangrenous decay at the tips of its elbow. And I say “its”, because a clownish mask covered its face, like that character Kabal from that video game Mortal Kombat 3. My intuition was unable to adjust to the necessary proprieties at hand; they were nowhere to be found as I wrapped a paper towel around my index finger. I used this finger, while extending my arm into a straight line, to lift the mask, and lunging downward in response to the gaping rim of the mask was a circumscription of weeping pustules festooning the underside of the mask with its residual crust. It reminded me of apple pie.
There was much left to be discovered on this stationary specimen that was something you would only get a single chance to exploit in a lifetime. The mask was one of them. People who say they wouldn’t stop over and harmlessly get a closer look at a tragic accident are liars. I then thought that there was a universal trait within all humans to, from across a reasonable and safe boundary, discourteously witness close details of any grisly scene so long as it does not interfere with their usual business, such as driving along a red-coned, congested highway on a motorcycle, passing along the stalled lanes of cars by riding so closely to the cones that their feet would graze the edges of them, and that they would get an awesomely short look at what may possibly be cooler than having a gallery of pictures of me and Will Smith doing the things together that Will Smith does, with our arms crossed and our backs poised against the other, wearing sunglasses, and only, sunglasses. And for those who say they wouldn’t be curious if they were standing here like me in the first place, then why does traffic always move so slowly like every driver desperately wants a turn? If I saw a couple of automobiles flipped-turned upside down up ahead around under by a bridge, I think I’d drive away pretty ****ing fast!
I grazed those cones today, and fed the decrepit splendor one more inch of revelation. A maggot dropped out of nowhere, and mortifyingly, I went into a miniature seizure, seeing black spots like I was about to faint, and tripped over a drawer of many medical utensils and devices, causing a loud whack when my hand slapped the bed as I fell. Reacting to the coeval impact, the body, apparently still live, twitched periodically as maggots writhed upwards from the festering underside of its neck, rudely awakened from their cryptic slumber of what I guessed to be two or three days long. Gross! What kind of a hospital is this, and where are the nurses to check on the patients? It’s not like they would be able to know about that problem in the first place, I mean how can they? The patient can’t speak and can barely move; it was no wonder nobody had noticed sooner. Strangely, I had heard only a few of them rummaging around with papers here and searching for some Viagra prescription pills in what seemed to be a pharmaceutical inventory, but that was the only time. I knew it this because I heard one of them say, “Where did I hide the Viagra in here last night, Harry?”
Forget that last bag of trash, I’m getting out. Assuming there were no rules or regulations in this place, I decided that this would be the end to my horrific journey, as well as my once-in-a-lifetime high. Having no supervisor to verbally instruct or watch over me, the last step I took was to go back to that old woman who must have been higher than me for giving me this silly credit card thing with its vaguely stipulated conundrums. Leaving the mess to itself, I turned away to shun this floor once and for all. Ironically enough, a thought that hospitals were the dirtiest places ever occurred to me; hundreds of sick folk with all sorts of diseases parade in and out of that waiting room in a single day. Bacteria and viruses breathed into the air from many of the sick linger and cling onto the walls, waiting. I had volunteered myself to work in a hustling mecca for germs from possibly every country, germs for which I have no bodily resistance. In an instant, I had found my way to a very large restroom on the floor, hardly used, with the ceiling lights shining off of the riveting format of the tiles. As I doused my head and arms in water from the sink to remove the filth, I remarked at the excessive grandeur of this restroom that had about forty to fifty toilets, on each side of the room, yet it seemed like many days would pass before anyone would even use it. It even smells better than a normal room.
My stomach had an intense pain I wanted to cure, but unfortunately forgetting to bring any money with me, I couldn’t afford any food. The only cure was to make that first-in-a-lifetime high into a, although smaller, second-in-a-lifetime high, and attain the essence of an average day once more. Besides, almost an hour will pass by the time I get home in this kind of traffic at this time of day, and during that time, no eating will get done.
Drying my hands, the pellucid tranquility that glided into my ears allowed me to hear every nuance of each step and every hand movement I made into my pocket to retrieve that priceless bud; its scintillating mountains and depthless valleys of lodged, eroded glaciers were legendary, bought in that part of downtown, where I must first leave my regular, four-wheeled, functioning car with 26-inch spinning rims in my garage, and rent a ****ty one to drive. I folded my legs together as I got into a stall to sit on top of the toilet seat so nobody would know I were inside if they walked in, and opened a few of the windows nearby. The moment I started to break the weed into the bowl of the pipe and began to smoke, I heard the loud creak of the main restroom door swinging open, and a pair of footsteps gaining in volume.
I continued to prepare my pipe, careful not to drop any residue, but right before I managed to take the lighter out, I heard more footsteps congregating into the same stall that was adjacent from me after making a total revolution around the area to make sure if anyone else such as me, was here. I didn’t know what was going on until I heard belt buckles hit the floor, and an opprobrious intonation emanated from next door. Again, I woke up for this ****? Although I was itching for a smoke, I really didn’t want to endure this any longer, but it would have been difficult for me to get up and leave without alerting and embarrassing them because of my awkward presence, so I stayed put. The noise pollution from next door took the form of a crescendo, and within minutes, climaxed in a hedonistic denouement by the man shouting, “YEAH, THAT’S THE SPOT, HARRY!” No sounds were to be heard for five to eight seconds.
By the time this happened, I was so psychologically ravaged that I had forgotten my intention to not make my presence known, and stood upwards, dazed, to blow my cover, upwards enough to the point where I was just in time to witness not a man and a woman, but two men.
Realizing my error, I quickly ducked back down, but not before catching a refulgent peep at one of the men on their knees, teeming with a rigid perseverance as an immaculate avalanche of semen had charged onto his nose, and nimbly cascaded down his bountiful cheeks and pausing at the bottom of his chin, before the ominous force of gravity morphed the love sauce into a peculiar stalagmite like a levitating chandelier. Speckling his sideburns, one second was long enough to see him swipe his brows and remove the dried material, which simultaneously removed any hair stubbles he had on those areas, and exposed the smooth textured skin underneath. The rest of his face, however, was in point blank range of the hydrant, completely drenched, with gleaming rivulets of baby batter sneaking onto his burly, strong chest. Yet, his posture remained stoically adamant like a Buddhist monk, and even his mouth that was as wide as the Grand Canyon, appeared to meditate as the tongue orbited the inner rim of his lips in a refraining manner, percolating the seed with his pearly teeth. Glazed donuts. I will stop at a donut store on the way home.
There was an awkward pause after they both saw me and flinched in horror, but suffice to say, they didn’t appreciate the audience that I had granted them, and proceeded to chase me. They chased me far down to the end of the halls, to the stairs, where I ran and ran away from these two hastily clothed men, and I didn’t even know why. I stormed outside so quickly, few people could comprehend the spontaneous stampede before their eyes.
All of my other thoughts I came up with earlier that day were irrelevant as I kept on running. Because I forgot exactly where I had parked my car, I went to the street and prayed that a taxi would be empty and available as I was now a hundred yards ahead of those two men. Seeing a cab dash by, I whistled for it to stop, and it actually did. I hopped inside and just told him to drive. I never told the driver when to stop, and he started to question me, wanting to know if I even had enough money to pay him as we reached the city limits.
I may regret this, but I had to keep myself safe, and far from whoever these men were. Today was the day that I left that part of Philadelphia, my place of birth and residence for as long as I’ve known. The place where autumn leaves would skitter across into the corners of the fenced playground where I spent most of my days when I was a child, while my friends and I would run up and down the basketball courts for hours, chilling, and relaxing outside of school before it started every day. But now, a couple of guys, whose private identities I had serendipitously exposed to me, were bent on getting their hands bloodied in a relentless hunt. Being somewhat more at peace than expected, I told the driver to drive to Bel-Air, where my rich aunt and uncle lived. I’ll get them to pay for the ride.
Here, I sit in a cab that I whistled for, not planning or thinking too much about my next move except to notice a pair of plush dice in the mirror and telling the driver to go to Bel-Air. We didn’t converse like normal folk usually would, partly due to the contemplative realm of thought that had kept me rapt and in high hopes of finding insight in any of the scenes I had witnessed today. That night, I pulled up to their house. It was 7 o clock, or 8, I didn’t keep a close track like I usually would. Finally, feeling like a prince in his kingdom, I waved my head around, knocked on the door, and sat on an expensive reclining chair.