Detective Antipathy, Chapter One Part One

I’ve got a feeling it isn't going to be a good day. In that place between sleeping and waking I shuffle a bit to find myself not in bed, but on the ground, and sticking to the floor like sweaty flesh on a hot leather car seat in July. The alarm clock buzzes at me from my bedroom and I try to ignore it and all of the aches that come with fully waking up. That’s when I open my eyes to find myself in a puddle of sticky blood. I must’ve been out for hours because it’s a weird shade of maroon-brown and kinda stained my linoleum kitchen floor like Hershey‘s chocolate syrup. I shift a little on the ground in an attempt to sit up and instantly regret it. Pains in parts of my body I didn’t even know existed shatter through me like what was left of the blood in my veins was replaced with shards of glass. My eyes squeeze shut as a burning tear rips down my face, stinging all of the open wounds on my cheek like rubbing alcohol. A loud expletive tries to fly out of my mouth before I notice my jaw is wiggling on the lower half of my head like a loose tooth.

This is when I start wondering if any of my brains got scrambled up on the trip from standing on two feet in one piece, to quivering on the ground in eighty. I ask the typical questions someone would ask if I wasn't so alone and friendless. What year is it? Who’s president? What’s your name? I pause a little too long on the first two, but more or less get everything right, so a smile stretches over however many teeth are left in my face at the silver lining that at least I’m still USDA prime in between the ears. Then my mind flashes back to the last year and all of the stupid shit I’ve done to get me here and I lament on whether my brains were ever that good in the first place. Christ, I deserve it all.