Weekly Short Story

"Henry: He Stumbles out of the Bedroom Suddenly Blind" by CSCHWEIZER (continued from the newsletter)

The ‘blue cocoon’ as he liked to call it secretly. It was his own private room, cozy and dark, and painted deep midnight blue. Right in the center was his desk, and on it sat his tattered keyboard and 19 inch PC screen. Now, in the darkness, it was shooting him down a long spiral of stars. Transfixed for a moment, he believed he had reached Hyperspace, and reached out in the darkness for his char.

The screen changed and became a close up of a brilliant yellow flower. So bright, he winced and his eyes instinctively slammed shut seconds before he felt ocular pain. He took a second to adjust, first by squinting, then by a pair of sunglasses found lying on the desk. He rolled himself a smoke, turned the baby monitor down as low as possible and stood it near his eye line, keeping the blazing red led-light voice meter visible.

He began…

It all came in a flash back. Not the acidic kind, all made of bubble-gummy cheese, and crystal-blue sparkles at the edge of your peripheral, no, this was like seeing yourself in a dream. As if you were seeing yourself through the lens of a camera.

(It does not come as a surprise that dreams no longer seem to be linear stories, but different angles from different points of view; so much of our lives have been spent seeing images, either stagnant or flickering. We see things without actually seeing them and they are emblazoned on our brains like a brand on cattle…it is exactly the same thing…Quick…close your eyes…no wait!!!... Read this first, THEN close your eyes and Do It, “JUST DO IT” now…what happened? Did you see the stupid swish of a name brand sneaker or did you see a hoop star flying through the air slamming a ball into a netted ring? Either way, you know what I am getting at.)

So, this image started in a flash back, whether or not acid was involved is yet to be seen…

In the City of Angels, a man stirs…his day interrupted by an intruder…someone from the outside…another living thing, trying to make contact…trying to get in…trying to invade his moment of self-imposed solitude…

“Dammit!” he yelled. “Stop RINGING!!” and with that he slammed his fist on the edge of the typing table causing his breakfast OJ/Vodka to fly up in the air, forming a wide dripping arc of pulp across the tobacco stained plasterboard wall.

He sat still for a moment watching the liquid. It left clean stripes as it reached the floor and slowly disappeared into the brown-orange-whatever color carpet. He stared at the spot where the two met and without moving his eyes, he slowly reached to the table for his glass. It took a few seconds for him to realize that he was staring at the glass on the floor and the drink was no more…then the telephone rang.

He snapped to and reached over for the cord. Somewhere among the growing pile of assorted debris was the old rotary telephone he had saved from his childhood. His hand found the cord, and he gave it a good pull. Across the room, on the couch, a thick black box emerged; exposing its hard shell like a prehistoric flea…but it was stuck. It continued to ring and resist. He gave the cord one big tug, and the box came free. It was so happy to be free that it flew directly into his face knocking him out. The ringing stopped.

Hours later, and feeling as it someone had hit him in the head with a telephone, he rose slowly to find that it was dark outside. This meant one of two things: either it was nighttime or early morning. Either way, he had either missed a work shift or was about to miss one. Just to be safe he jumped into the shower to work it all out. The water always seemed to sort things out. Water felt good on the skin and it is always like a return to the womb…safe, soft, and perfect.

The telephone rang…of course. He heard it from the shower, but was it really ringing or was it just his head? He slumped down to the musky floor of the shower stall, as to not be distracted by the confusing and loud process of standing, and had a good listen….never mind the loud rushing water over his head. Silence…damn…nothing…damn… RIIIING!!!

“DAMMIT!!”

He stepped out of the shower onto the warped lino floor dripping, then reached back into the shower to turn off the tap, and promptly slid backwards causing him to crack his head on the corner of the towel rack (damn towel racks), and become, once again, unconscious.

Some time passes and he wakes up naked, bleeding from somewhere, half in the shower and half out. Getting up slowly, confused, he felt a small throbbing pain on his forehead. He touched it. The blood on his fingers, and the sudden white hot flash at the spot, announced the source of blood in the shower. And the fact that he even felt pain told him something was amiss.

After a quick, gentle clean up with an old tee-shirt and some peroxide, he headed the seven and a half steps to the kitchen. In the freezer, he found some semi-frozen trays of ice. These he dumped into a large plastic tumbler with some orange juice and a whole bunch of chilled vodka. He also grabbed the only other thing in the tepid freezer…a bag of frozen peas. This bag had been in the freezer as long as he had lived there. It was used for the sole purpose of healing swelling bruises. The contents had expired many bruises ago. He slapped the bag on his head and sat down in the duct-taped Lazy-boy chair to think everything out.

He sat back and lowered the lever for full footrest relaxation. His hand was a bit frozen from the large cocktail waiting for him, so he switched hands and took a deep gulp. He swallowed hard and long, and felt the tangy sweetness of the cool icy poison coursing into him. The warmth spread instantly and evenly through his body. It had not yet reached the pain in his head, so he took another long thirsty drink from the oversized cup.

Then the telephone rang.

It startled him so much that he began to choke on the contents of the tumbler. The semi-frozen ice cubes wedged in his throat, and became melting pin-sized daggers of pain; he was being attacked from inside by a drink of his own making. In an icy panic, he reached for the lever of the chair. His cocktail-frozen hand found the lever, but managed to also get wedged into the chair as it folded. This hand being numb, did not feel the crush of the chair, or the increased crush when he shifted to check what the hold up was with his arm.

The telephone continued to ring.

He had somehow trapped himself in his chair and the frozen hand was starting to thaw. He decided to beat the pain and carefully, through filtered teeth, consumed the remaining fluid in the beaker like a whale feasting on plankton. Then with the courage of about three, maybe four, average-sized drunk dudes, he flipped and wriggled and twisted and slammed, and somehow, got himself freed of the hungry chair.

Still, the telephone rang.

Clutching his swelling hand he searched for the black box. It rang somewhere near the pile of clothing and mail by the front door. He leapt to the area, begging it to ring again. But there was only silence. He waited for a few minutes, but the ringing had stopped. He located the cord and slowly followed it to the pile where the telephone was hiding under some stinky shirts…but, the handset was stretched across the room, stuck in the couch.

He retrieved it and held it up to his ear. There was no sound. He flicked the hang-up button several times, as he had seen done in old movies, but still there was nothing. He followed the cord away from the telephone to where it was hooked into the wall…the cord was not even plugged into the wall.

Then it hit him. Someone was messing with him! He looked outside, it was still, or maybe again, dark. He checked his wrist for the time, but remembered that he never had a watch. Then it came to him. The bedroom…

The door was shut. He headed towards it slowly, listening. Was that breathing on the other side of the door? A prick of cold flushed into his spine and suddenly his whole body hurt. He quietly moved to the kitchen and poured another vodka/OJ, this time sans ice. He sat down at the typing table and drank half the glass. Was it last night? His mind raced backwards. When was the last time he saw her? Could it have been two days ago? He looked toward the bedroom door with a bit of trepidation and whole lotta confusion. Could she still be in there?

He set the glass on the table and turned to face the bedroom door…somewhere behind it a telephone rang.

“Dammit”, he yelled “Stop RINGING!!” and with that he slammed his fist on the edge of the typing table causing his breakfast OJ/Vodka to fly up in the air, forming a wide dripping arc of pulp across the tobacco stained plasterboard wall…

…ooooooh.

In a few weeks..."Henry - Searching for Bukowski"

Read last week's story "Henry: The Trip" in Newsletter #3

 

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