25 September 2007

The Bug -- Part 3

There I was standing in the middle of the emergency room hooked up to an I.V., staring at a spear stuck in the ceiling.

Earlier that night, I'd walked passed a curtained-off hospital bed where a team of nurses was pulling the spear out of a young woman who was screaming in pain. Bright red blood covered the floor. The screaming echoed and reverberated throughout the ER.

I looked up at the spear in the ceiling. Didn't look like much now. Not like the spear I'd seen the evening previous.

That was while I was driving up the Baltimore Beltway. Long before the fire-demons started appearing.

I was driving north when a Jeep Cherokee passed on the left. Suddenly, from out of the rear window, a spear shot towards my car. I don't recall swerving. I do recall being snapped awake, or at least more alert. "You ok?" asked MJ.

"Yeah. Fine"

The fire demons lived in the grain of the door. I recall asking a doctor to pull the curtain over so that I'd be out of their line of vision. The fire demons never approached me. They just stayed there in the doorway waiting. Glimmering. Flickering.

I was the one who had called 911. Actually, as luck would have it, Phil was visiting and I asked him to call for me.

I was thinking at the time that I had gone insane. I also thought I was having a heart-attack.

I remember standing alone in front of the bathroom mirror holding in one hand what I was sure was my detached finger. I remember being curled in a wheelchair comatose in the waiting room. I remember making bloody treks down the hall of the ER and back. I remember the mad stare of the janitor on duty.

I was insane.

(To be continued...)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm waiting. Do you hear my foot tapping?