rebounding around town
Jordan
Visiting hours are over for the day.
So . . . who’s in the room with me?
It’s dark, for starters. Obvious tip-off that whoever they are, they shouldn’t be here. The lights are turned off. The door
is open just enough so the glow of the fluorescents in the hallway reaches into my hospital room. Just this dim green sheen
over the linoleum.
I have the sibilant hiss of my respirator, the steady beep of my heart-rate monitor, keeping a rhythm in the room. My body
is a snare for a jazz band, the drummer sliding his brush over me with every rasp from the respirator, the air spitting through
its tubes.
All I can do is listen to myself, the machines connected to me, keeping me alive. This constant ache resonates through the
rest of my body. I keep occupied by trying to pinpoint the pain.
Here’s a new game: Where is each particular discomfort coming from?
That throbbing in my leg . . . Is it rooted in my tibia? Or fibula? Which broke?
That sting in my shoulder . . . Is that the clavicle? Or did the acromion snap?
See? So much fun. The options are endless.
That dull throb in my lower back? Is that—
Wait. Someone is standing behind the open door. I see the vague outline of their silhouette. Their head leans over by about an inch, maybe even less, peering out.
They’re looking right at me. Staring. All I see is one eye.
It’s red.
So this is a dream. Of course. I know it straight away. Nothing but a nightmare. Glad we got that out of the way. The best coping
technique for bad dreams, I’ve found, is rationalization. I don’t live on Elm Street, therefore I don’t have to fret over Freddy. Today is not Friday the 13th, so I won’t worry about Jason. This has been my
defensive mechanism ever since I was a kid and I watched The Exorcist for the very first time. Way too young.
You identify the hallmarks of the scary movie, compare them, pinpoint the differences between you and the film’s victims,
and see how you differ.
Easy. Safe. Rationalization. Case closed.
Now I don’t have to be afraid.
The rules still apply as an adult. So . . . now that I know I’m just dreaming, I don’t have to worry so much about the shadow
man behind the door, peering out at me with his one red eye. I even look away from him at some point. See? I’m not afraid.
My attention simply drifts away from him, traveling over the ceiling above my hospital bed. He doesn’t scare me.
I don’t have to keep my eyes on him, this swarthy silhouette with the one red—
Oh. Sorry. Make that two red eyes.
The man just moved. Only by an inch or two. He’s no longer hiding his head behind the door. Now he’s completely peering out,
his neck extending from behind the barricade.
That neck of his actually looks a lot longer than it should. I can’t see where it connects to the rest of his body, whoever he is.
There’s a part of me that can’t help but wonder if he has a body at all. Maybe he’s just a head, all neck, a root of some
sort, a stalk of some kind, growing out from the ground.
It’s getting hard to rationalize this man away. I’m running out of coping mechanisms. He’s not saying anything. Just staring
back at me. Should I say something? Speak first?
Hello, it says—or, I think it says. I don’t see its lips move. “It.” It’s no longer a “he.” Its voice is all wet gravel, raspy.
No inflection of gender. Just rasp. It could be anything, I don’t know anymore. There’s nothing human about it, even if it’s
the height of a human being.
“Who are you?” I ask. My voice is dry, cracking. There’s a crust caking the corner of my lips.
You sound thirsty, it says. Again—the voice doesn’t reach across the room as much as resonate from within me, almost as if I’m hearing it speak
from deep inside my head.
Would you like me to fetch you some water?
“I want you to tell me who you are.”
Oh. Just a visitor, passing through.
“Visiting hours are over.” There, see? Rationalization. This thing can’t be visiting me because the designated hours for receiving
visitors at this hospital have come and gone for the day, obviously, therefore the nurse-on-call would have sent this entity
the way it came, wherever it came from, telling it to try again tomorrow during the regular hours of operation.
The brushstroke of my respirator hisses, slides and skids, adding the faintest percussion to our conversation. I’m not one
for smooth jazz, but the gauzy effect of the machine pushing its ventilated air through my body, breathing for me for these
last few days, gives this moment a slightly sultry soundtrack. Not the exact type of music I would’ve picked for this particular
nightmare, but so be it. Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.
Wait a minute. Dream logic here . . . How am I talking if I have a tube down my throat?
The question distracts me. I blink twice, suddenly aware of the sensation of plastic funneling across my esophagus, pressing
against my gullet, reaching down deep inside. There’s medical tape adhered to my lips, holding my respirator in place so I
won’t spit it out.
In that blink—eyelids fluttering once, then twice, open, shut—the thing with the red eyes moves even closer to me.
So much closer now. At the edge of my bed.
I don’t even see its feet move. If it even has feet at all.
It just . . . drifts. Now I can see all of it.
Humanoid. A silhouette that is in fact its body, its skin.
It’s not just the dark, not simply shadows, but the body itself.
Cindered to a burnt crisp. Everything except the eyes. Those remain red.
It tilts its head to one shoulder, taking me in. So thirsty, it says inside my mind. You need something to drink . . .
It’s true, I really do. My mouth is a desert. My lips are so chapped, crinkling underneath the medical tape. But I don’t want
to take anything from this thing. Whatever it offers me, I don’t want it. For whatever reason, I don’t want to be in this
thing’s debt.
Now that I know I can’t talk, I don’t want to.
You must be so parched.
Its red eyes glance at the IV drip to the side of my bed. It’s a cheap trick—made you look—because my eyes immediately follow
his, locking onto the collapsed bag dangling overhead, distracting me. The saline solution is all sucked up, the translucent
bag is now just a shriveled sac, nothing more than pruned plastic. How long has it been empty? When was the last time the
nurse-on-call changed it? I’m so parched, so dry, so unbelievably—
Thirsty, it says again.
Much closer now.
The thing hovers above me, leaning over my chest, examining me from only a few inches away. I shouldn’t have looked at the
IV drip. Shouldn’t have looked away from it. That was a cheap trick. A dirty trick, distracting me like that. It knew I’d
look away from it.
Now it’s too late. Now that it’s here, its cindered breath spreading across my cheeks, my chest, my neck, it continues to
draw near, leaning over, scrutinizing every inch of skin.
Here, it says, extending its hand. Let me help you.
Before I can protest, before I can move—
The thing wraps its swarthy fingers around the respirator tube and . . . tugs. I feel the pressure in my chest. Something’s
stuck, lodged down deep. It won’t budge. Not just yet.
So this thing on two legs tugs again, much harder this time. The medical tape at my lips peels, cracks, releasing the skin around my mouth.
There we go, it says. The tube lodged into my lungs gives. Not by much. Just a millimeter or so, who knows, but the budge feels endless, a mile over tender flesh, plastic scraping against my insides, a coarse brush grating across the soft lining of my esophagus.
Just got to put your back into it, it says, tugging harder now.
The tube gives.
And gives.
The respirator unspools from my throat. It’s pulling the crenellated hose free from within me, like some kind of magic trick—The
Endless Handkerchief, which, let’s be honest, is one of the worst magic tricks there is, just a goofy joke of interconnected
hankies, a daisy chain of different colored tissues, how stupid can you get—up until the ribbed tubing reels its way out from
your throat, your lungs, just a never-ending hose scraping away at your insides, unspooling, unspooling, oh my god, when will
it ever end, how much is there?
The jagged edges of the tube clink against my teeth as I try to breathe. I’m choking. The air is obstructed by the very device
that’s supposed to be breathing for me. I can’t help but gag, chest heaving, my entire body surging up and dropping back against
the bed in some fish-out-of-water flop, breathlessly begging for this to all be over with. End it now.
Almost there, the thing with the red eyes says. By the time it tugs the last of the respirator’s tube from my lungs, I feel the plastic
tip of the hose whip out from my lips, as if it were the tail of some never-ending serpent whipping about the air.
I’m free to breathe on my own. Free at last to gasp.
There, it says. Much better, yes?
I’m coughing so loud, surely somebody is going to hear me. Save me.
Now . . . Let’s get you something to drink.
I want to say no, I want to say stop, please, don’t, please, but the words aren’t there. Before I can move my chapped lips,
force my shriveled husk of a tongue to manipulate the sound of my own exhale, this thing takes its own hands and slips its
cindered fingers into my mouth, one hand cupping my lower jaw, the other pressing against my upper incisors.
It forces my mouth open as wide as the bones will go. I feel the hinges in my jaw pop.
Down the hatch . . .
The thing with the red eyes pours forth. Into my mouth.
It is fluid.
Water.
Tar.
I guzzle it all. Every last drop. It fills me up, every last inch, every corner, every nook and cranny, I have never felt so full in all my life, so complete, I am drowning with it and
now it is me and I am it and who can tell where one ends and the other begins any—
—more.
I gasp for air the moment I wake, bolting upright. My eyes open and I’m met with light. There’s a bed beneath me, but I’m
not in the hospital anymore.