by Jeff Strand
He watched, mesmerized by the blood and mud swirling in red and brown spirals down the drain. It reminded him of something but, in his current state, he couldn’t retrieve the thought and it slid away into the recesses of his mind.
His ears began ringing, his vision blurred and he had to grab the metal bar on the wall to avoid falling down. Voices chattered and gibbered over and over in his head …
… thedevilsassholethedevilsassho
lethedevilsassholethedevilsassh
olethedevilsassholethedevilsass
holethedevilsassholethedevilsas
sholethedevilsassholethedevilsa
ssholethedevilsassholethedevils
assholethedevilsassholethedev …
… twisting his brain into knots. A flood of vomit spewed from his throat covering himself and the glass shower door as he let go of the bar and fell to his knees in a daze.
He sat there on the shower floor sobbing as the spray beat down on his head until he was able to climb to his feet. The puke washed off rather easily, but the dried blood was another matter entirely. It had scabbed and caked all over his lower back and ass crack. He didn’t even want to consider what could have caused such an injury or where it might have happened. For all he knew, he had been gang-raped by a family of inbred hillbillies Deliverance-style out in the woods.
Squeal like a pig, boy! C’mon, squeal! Yew shore got a purty mouth!
Unable to scrub away the dried blood as hard as he would have liked, he simply let the water dissolve the clumps as best as possible, and let the heat of the spray soothe his pain as he tried to remember what the hell had happened to him over the past few days.
•
SATURDAY AFTERNOON—He was feeling slightly more human after the shower and two Percocets that he had left over from when he had his wisdom teeth pulled last year. On second thought, he took four. He wasn’t ready to venture out of his apartment, though—didn’t want to leave his house at all—not even to see a doctor. The pain was still present, but not so bad that he couldn’t think things through.
After his shower, Gordy changed into fresh boxers and a threadbare shirt that said Jesus Hates the Yankees! He collapsed once again on the couch (after flipping the cushions over so he didn’t sit on the stains) and turned on the television when he realized that he didn’t even know what day it was.
“Saturday?” he muttered when he saw the date listed on the channel guide. “What the … ?”
As far as Gordy could tell, he had lost nearly four days of memories. His last recollection, foggy though it may have been, was from Tuesday morning when he had woken up at the crack of dawn to go meet the guys and head out … somewhere. And that was the problem. His memories simply ended there when he left the apartment complex in his beat-up Honda Civic.
In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have taken that many Percocets. His pain had been numbed, especially in his nether regions, but his concentration was shot to hell now. It was only after zoning out and watching twenty minutes of a documentary on the mating habits of African hyenas that he came to his senses and realized that the phone was still in his grip and he had yet to make any calls to see how the other guys were doing. Perhaps they could shed some light on his injuries and what they had been up to in the interim.
He called Ross first. Like Gordy, Ross was “between relationships” and he had much more free time than the others. Unlike Gordy, however, Ross did not have a job, nor did he live on his own.
He lived in his parents’ house in the basement.
Of course, Ross would argue with anyone who described his living situation that way. According to him, it was much more than that. His room in the basement was technically called a mother-in-law apartment due to the fact that it had a separate entrance around back and he could come and go as he wanted (as long as he was quiet). But there were a number of other factors that complicated his claim.
For instance, he only had a half bathroom in what was actually a cramped converted closet, so he had to take showers upstairs. The washer and dryer for the entire family was just off of his living room, and although he did have a refrigerator, it was filled with beer, ice cream and microwave burritos. His place smelled of beans and drier sheets. Accordingly, he ended up eating most meals with his mom, dad, and sixteen year-old twin sisters upstairs.
And then there was the fact that he didn’t have his own phone line downstairs.
One of the twins answered on the first ring.
“Hi Katie. Put Ross on the phone.”
“I’m sorry. Who is this?” she answered in a saccharine tone.
“Gimme a break for once, Katie. You know it’s me—Gordy. Can you please get him to come the phone? It’s very important.”
“This isn’t Katie.” Gordy could hear the sneer linger in the silence that followed. The twins didn’t particularly like him that much.
“Kirstie … sorry,” he sighed and corrected himself. “Can you get him? It’s really urgent.”
“I go by Kit now … and, just so you know, Katie wants to be called Kat.”
Jesus Christ. Give me a break …
“Ok, Kat—I mean Kit—I’ll remember that from now on. Can you please get him? Seriously. It’s kinda important.”
Kit paused, apparently enjoying the act of stringing him along for a few seconds, before relenting. “He’s not here.”
“What? Do you know where he is?”
“I dunno, Gordooooo,” she dragged out his nickname in disdain. “You were with him last, weren’t you? I haven’t seen him since you dipshits left on your trip last week. I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow, anyway.”
“Wait … what trip?”
“Don’t play stupid, Gordo. You know what trip. The one you all were planning so you could get back to nature and do some primitive “male bonding”. That’s what we heard you say when you thought we weren’t listening. I thought it was your idea in the first place.”
< B L I N K !>
Gordy gasped as a light flashed behind his eyes and a sudden rush of vertigo overwhelmed him. His guts clenched and he became lightheaded as a torrent of mental images overwhelmed him, flooding his senses. His eyes rolled back and he fell back, slumping over the stained arm of the couch, telephone falling from his grasp to the floor.
•
TUESDAY AFTERNOON—Gray clouds obscured the sun. A steady drizzle of rain leaked from the sky as the four men hiked up the beaten dirt path. They all wore large backpacks filled with the essentials for a few nights away from civilization—including a significant amount of alcohol—but it was obvious that none of them had been camping in quite a while.
“Gordo—where the fuck are we?” bitched Hector as he stumbled on a small tree limb in his path. “Do you even know where this lake is? This was a completely stupid idea—camping at this time of year.”
“Almost there,” he responded. “You’ll like it. I swear.”
“We’d better,” grumbled Hector again. “My shoes are ruined now.”
“No one told you to wear your Jordans, man. We all knew it would be wet. Don’t you have any boots?”
Hector just muttered unintelligibly in response.
No snow had fallen yet this year, but the perpetual gloom and the smell of rotting, wet leaves hung in the air. The trees had only a few orange and yellow stragglers left clinging to the branches. The last time he had been up to the lake was over two years ago when his parents were still alive. Winter was only weeks away and Gordy realized that this was probably not his best idea, but he wasn’t about to turn back now. The guys would never let him live it down. He resolved to persevere and keep marching onward.
A dog or coyote yipped in the distance and Hector let out a whimper, eliciting taunts from the rest that he sounded like a little girl. Seth lagged behind as usual, staying out of the conversation and surreptitiously sucking on a lit cigarette like it was his mother’s tit. Ross was the only one who seemed unbothered by the weather, probably because he was
already well on his way to getting shitfaced, taking a swig every few minutes from a scarred pewter flask. Big surprise there, huh? What was actually astonishing was that he hadn’t already sparked up a joint. He was probably saving that for after their arrival.
Ross wasn’t the only one who had started drinking. For most of the hike, Gordy had been nursing a PBR tallboy in one hand while gripping a sturdy branch he had appropriated as his walking stick. He already regretted coming along on the trip, but he could never admit that to the guys. He had been the one who had planned it and talked it up over their misgivings. And now, of course, he was sick. The possibility that he would catch a bug had never even crossed his mind, but here he was, wheezing and coughing like an asthmatic schoolboy.
The first hour of the hike hadn’t been too bad. The incline had been gradual and the path was easy to follow, but once they took the trail that led up the mountain to the lake and the elevation increased, his friends began to whine and complain. Especially Hector. Up ahead, the mountain rose sharply on a sheer grade to a cliff face at least fifty feet tall. The trail hugged the face before disappearing around the bend. Worst of all, debris littered the forest floor. Branches, tree limbs, and in some cases even entire trees, had fallen across their route, roots thrust out of the ground as if a moody giant had torn them free. Part of the dirt path even appeared to have been washed away. As they continued up the incline, evidence increased that something had scarred the land in the recent past.
“I guess there actually was an earthquake,” grunted Seth.
“Huh?” Ross said, looking back. “What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t feel anything.”
“Not today, dipshit.”
Gordy intervened, “Wait … was that the one on the news a couple of months ago? I think I heard about it.”
“Yeah. That’s the one. It wasn’t very big, but supposedly the epicenter was right around here.”
Gordy looked around. “Probably why all these trees are uprooted, huh?”
“Ya think?” Seth rolled his eyes and took another drag on his cancer stick. Ross and Hector snorted at his comment. Gordy held back a retort and continued up the mountain. After a few more minutes, though, Gordy was finally on the verge of calling it quits. He was just about to suggest that they turn back and head down the mountain when nature intervened and the light rain transformed into a torrential downpour.
“Are you kidding me?” yelled Hector at the sky. “Are you seriously kidding me? Just what we fucking needed!”
Yelling in frustration, they were soaked to the bone within seconds. The drumming of the rain on the land around them was deafening. Ross hollered, pointing out a mammoth, twisted maple tree half a football field away that had planted roots in the cracks at the base of the cliff face. Seeing no other shelter remotely close to its size, the four men raced to the meager cover beneath its sagging branches.
“Damn it, Gordy,” cursed Hector.
“Oh, give me a break. Like I had anything to do with this.”
“You could’ve checked the weather report,” muttered Seth as he pressed against the mossy trunk of the tree, vainly covering his eyes to avoid some of the more powerful squalls.
Gordy was about to retort again when Ross blurted out, “Guys, there’s a cave here!”
On the cliff face behind the tree, one of the cracks in which the roots were growing was large enough for a full-grown man to squeeze through. Even with his bulky backpack, Ross, who was not a small man, could obviously wriggle through the gap.
“That won’t fit all of us,” argued Gordy. “It looks dangerous.”
“Screw that. If you’re not going in, I will,” Hector said, rushing forward. He ripped away the foliage that had camouflaged the entrance and leaned in, illuminating the interior with the flashlight app on his phone. Lightning flashed and a crash of thunder sounded close behind them. He laughed and took off his backpack. “It gets a lot wider after a few feet. Big enough for all of us! I’m going in.”
“Wait …” Before Gordy could protest, Hector wriggled past the narrow opening into the wider passage beyond. Ross and Seth ducked in after him. Gordy let out a string of profanity and, seconds later, followed his friends into the crevasse.
•
Gordy was shitting fire into a hole in his backyard when he came out of his fog. A guttural howl escaped him as what felt like a torrent of molten lead laced with shards of glass streamed in a brown arc from his ravaged colon. He was leaning forward on his knees, straddled over a foot-deep hollow that, based on the grass and mud caked beneath his fingernails, he had recently excavated with his bare hands. Each spasm of his guts released another steaming discharge into the hole, so painful that he nearly blacked out in agony again. He couldn’t even think.
Finally, after he had apparently emptied the entire contents of his body cavity, Gordy fell forward sobbing and curled into a ball. He lay there in the afternoon sun and moaned for a few minutes before crawling to his feet and looking himself over. He was naked from the waist down. Red and brown streaks ran down his thighs. A few feet away, the remnants of his boxers lay torn to shreds, stained with blood and fecal matter in a ball at the foot of his porch.
“What the fuck is going on?” he blubbered. Something was seriously wrong with him. First, he had lost four days of memories and now this? Who knew what he had done in the lost four days? Gordy didn’t even want to think of what could have happened while he was blacked out. Maybe he had a concussion. Some type of head injury had to be causing these blackouts. The alternative was not something he even wanted to consider.
And then there was the river of shit that was pouring out of him. He didn’t know if it was a disease or some sort of bizarre intestinal infection, but he knew that he had to see a doctor as soon as possible. That was an unmistakable fact. It just wasn’t normal to crap like a fire hose, especially with what felt like enough force to perforate his intestines. He did not want to consider why he was doing it in a hole in his backyard.
Gordy normally hated doctors—in fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone in for a physical—but this time there was no other alternative. He would have to suck it up and seek some help, but first he needed to get clean. Again. He pulled himself slowly to his feet and staggered toward the hose attached to the spigot on the side of his house.
Thankfully, he lived in a relatively wooded area. The Tumasovs, his closest neighbors, couldn’t have seen him doing his business unless they walked through a few yards of brambles that separated their two properties. They were an old antisocial Russian couple with at least ten quasi-feral cats and dogs that used his and other yards in the neighborhood as their own personal toilet. He had waved to them a few times when he first moved in, but when it became obvious that they didn’t want to be friendly, he gave up and left them alone.
He hoped they had at least had their windows closed because he had been screaming pretty loudly and, based upon the pain in his throat and the hoarse quality of his voice, it had been going on for quite some time. Perhaps he was lucky and they weren’t home.
Each step he took induced another wave of burning agony in his nether regions, but he eventually made it to the faucet and gingerly turned it on. He gasped as the water hit him. It was so cold, but the initial shock gave way to relief as the icy flow numbed his raw wounds. Closing his eyes, Gordy let the open hose run freely over his bloody hindquarters, rinsing away the stains and the chunks. The pain was still there, but at least it had subsided to the point where he could think again.
Blearily, he examined his hands. His fingers were raw and swollen, his nails torn and bloody. Dirt stained his pores. Dozens of fresh cuts and abrasions scarred his palms and knuckles. It looked like he had been digging with his bare hands for hours, and when he looked around the yard he realized that might be closer to the truth than seemed possible.
In addition to the open hole he had recently occupied, there were at least five—no, make that six—similarly-sized mounds of torn-u
p grass and earth. Odds were that he had also made a deposit in those holes as well. That settled it—he needed to get to a doctor ASAP. Whatever was going on was much more than an intestinal bug or food poisoning. Neither caused people to black out or go into a fugue state, did they? It needed to be taken care of immediately, but before he could do that, however, Gordy had to change his clothes … yet again.
He climbed the back steps and reentered the house, hobbling like an arthritic old man. Remarkably, other than the fact that the screen was wide open and his cell phone had been left unattended in the middle of the kitchen floor, there was no sign that anything else had happened inside the house since his blackout.
He finished cleaning up in the shower, and pulled on a t-shirt and the baggiest pair of sweatpants he owned. His stomach gurgled and he felt pressure in his lower abdomen. Goddamn, I’m bloated. Feels like I swallowed a bowling ball, he thought. Please let this be over soon. I don’t think my ass can take this anymore. He was deciding whether to go to the ER, or to see if his primary physician had any open appointment soon, when a series of thoughts occurred to him. How did I get home? Why can’t I remember driving? Is my car even in the driveway? Heading to look out the window facing the street, Gordy racked his brain for any hint of what had happened since they had hidden in the cave—if that was even an actual memory rather than the remnants of a nightmare.
Thankfully, his fears were unfounded. His beat-up Honda Civic was parked out front, half on the driveway and half on the piebald turf that he pretended was a front lawn. It was undeniable that it was a dreadful parking job, but otherwise the vehicle had emerged unscathed.
A barrage of barks and growls filled the air. He turned around, wincing at the agony in his ass, and realized that the animal sounds were coming from his backyard. The growls became louder. Peppered with wailing and intermittent yips, the baying was coming through the window over the kitchen sink. Gordy limped over and peered out. One of the neighbors’ dog was in his yard, going psycho barking at something on the ground. Right around where he had left his droppings.