Fever Dream: Part 2

Have you ever had someone watch you use the bathroom? Not in a guard the broken stall door in the creepy public toilet way… More of a what kind of trouble are you getting into way.

For what is worth, performance anxiety isn’t just a guy problem.

At some point Bat started squeaking about shy bladder and reached in to turn on the faucet. When that didn’t work, she walked right in, squeezed past my trembling knees and turned on the shower.

Somewhere between my legs going numb and an irritated…

Know what? Even I don’t want to hear the rest of that. Suffice it to say, Niagara Falls, eventually… Only more eloquently described and all.

At least I think so. Sometimes I think maybe that part was a dream.

~~~

It can be hard to tell, you know… What’s a dream and what’s real and the other way around.

Because I would have sworn it was some grand, poetic swandive from the second floor balcony into the glittering fountain at the mall… But someone said it was really a flailing leap from a bridge into a sludgy river, in front of God, the police, and rush hour rubber neckers.

Then there was that awful Eliza Doolittle cockney accent, except it wasn’t Audrey Hepburn. It was Julie Andrews… Only she did the stage while Hepburn did the movie and then they switched for Mary Poppins… But the stage plays were on another continent before my time so how did I even know what Julie Andrews sounded like on stage, right?

Look, it made sense in my head before it became words on a page.

I’m supposed to write it the way I remember it… Only, sometimes I am not sure what I remember is what really happened.

~~~

The Bat is gone. So is Middle Of The Night Nose Picker… And Porn-stache is way down the hall, I think with Screamer.

Maybe I’ll look at the hallway now I’m off the stalker leash.

…Maybe I’ll wake up from the dream.

Fever Dream: Part 1

The first thought to register, before sounds, sights or even knowing I was awake was the certainty my tongue was permanently stuck to the roof of my mouth and, worse, had transformed into a medium sized cactus while I slept.

Slowly, other sensations began to register. Lights were on somewhere. People were home and talking… or watching TV… or well, voices filtered in from around a corner. Also, and I don’t mean to be indelicate, if I didn’t pee soon the necessary control muscles felt likely to collapse entirely.

Definitely time to wake up.

~~~

You know when you are away from home and you wake disoriented until your brain catches up? Yeah, this wasn’t like that at all.

~~~

The bed wasn’t my bed. The floor wasn’t my floor… and the creepy, cheerful bat referring to herself in the plural was most definitely not someone I knew.

“Well, good morning Sunshine! How are we today?

Seriously, people actually talk like that? Isn’t that a cliche of fiction?

I still had to pee so took a leap in logic… I would not find the needed facility in the familiar place.

“Bathroom?”

It took a bit of effort to manage the one word. At the first consonant, my lips seemed to fuse. By the time I croaked out the syllables, I could taste blood from my now cracked lips.

The Bat in the doorway pointed inside the room to my left. “Right there sweetie. Leave the door open. I have to watch.”

I’d woken up in Hell.