The man awoke with a splitting headache. It hurt so badly that the feeble light seeping in through the smoke-yellowed blinds sent waves of pain all the way to his pinkie toes. He rolled to the side of the bed, left leg crushing what appeared to be a half-eaten bag of pork rinds, and placed his sock-clad feet on the floor.
Facing the wall in this way, he first noticed both the smell and sound of another person, and realized he was not alone in the room. Glancing back slowly, so as not to startle whichever black-guard or pimp might be lurking in the poorly vacuumed corners of the large, but sparsely furnished room, he instead was surprised by the slender form of a young woman, blond hair spilling out of the covers like seaweed pulled by current, pasted to her skull in spots by sweat, what looked like vomit.
Checking the insides of his mouth for film or indications of enamel depletion from stomach acids, he decided that the puke did not in fact belong to him, and that the young woman (he decided to call her Juicy, from the seat of her training pants, neatly folder over the room’s only chair) was lying in a puddle of her own vomit that had long since leaked into the blanket. But how did she go from neatly folding clothing to a near comatose state (she yet breathed), in the course of four hours?
For his last clear memory was of his watch reading two, and the grandfather clock clearly showed six. He guessed that the sunlight striking the stained blinds head on indicated morning, but at this latitude, who knew? He vaguely knew where he was, had been there a few weeks before, at some sort of party with girls he had met on the flight back from
Damn, he thought, it’s nearly impossible to … think. I’ve been standing here for a good fifteen minutes, stark naked, next to a vomit-spackled girl I named Juicy, and have not even begun to wonder where my clothes could be, where the new cellphone had gotten to (the one with the many numbers gathered from too many women for him to count sober).
His cellphone beeps just as he had programmed it, dissonant cords that grate his nerves and can be heard even when buried under the clothes of a surprisingly large and diverse number of other people, their whereabouts, for the time being, unknown.
Wading through the various suit jackets, screen-printed t-shirts, saris, wedding gowns and acid-washed blue jeans, the compact warmth fills his palm, the realities of Being Connected lessening the tightness at the base of his skull, easing the pressure from the backs of his eyes, soothing the urgency of bladder voidance. It was a full four days later than he assumed, four days lost to whichever void of drug-induced, vodka-hazed binge he had sunken into.
Mr. Quo picks up his phone, and dials his mother.
She is dead. He had not forgotten, but had called her anyway. He had wanted to hear her voice on her mobile service’s messaging menu, but the phone company had deleted it on behest of his siblings.
His mother had died not long before, and he suspected that he had been trying to drown his sorrow in liquor and bodily fluids, like those of Juicy now stirring on the bed. He smelled her on his hands, and knew he would have to shower soon to rid himself of all immediate memories of that morning.
Clad in a motley selection from the pile of clothes that had hidden the phone, a rubber-wheeled vehicle passes by, distinguishable from the din of some great machine working away in the depths of the building only by its silence, but barely viewable through the crusted, muddy panes at the window. That would be the Count, on his way to market.
He realized that this room, this charnel of poor housekeeping, poorly piled clothing, stained windows, blinds, is somehow connected to the greater building complex that also contains the modest, clean rooms he calls his own. The walls slide past, some freshly painted, some peeling paint onto unsuspecting passers-by, were there any worth mentioning. The corridor goes on seemingly forever, the walls bending back on themselves, so that he believes he can see himself far off in the distance, if only his eyes worked well enough to make out something that far away.
Every once in a while, he knows that a strange, angry man roams the halls, wanting to yell at small children and piss off of balconies, threatening innocents on his way to the local drinkery, flinging rocks onto the freeway, causing mass carnage and the rending and twisting of metal. But for the most part, the strange and angry man walks alone though the halls, yelling loudly enough for the good people to go back inside their rooms before he passes, eyes straining at the peep-holes, children sent to their rooms to complete their school-work.
After a seeminly endless and painful walk (the spare shoes he found are a poor fit), he slumps against room 333, close enough to the exit to make for an easy escape, but far enough to discourage religion salespeople and beggars.
Ioanni Elymucampus fecit. 2005
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