Who is this girl and why does she think I’m going to tell her what I’m doing?
“Just… stuff,” I say, not planning on telling her anything. This is my only place to get away. This is where I can escape reality and she’s interrupting it.
Her purse dog starts wiggling until she puts it back on the ground and then she sits down next to me. Clearly, she doesn’t get that I’m here at the park alone because I want to be left alone. I come here to get away. I need to get away.
“You aren’t very talkative, are you?”
“I’m not in the mood to talk. See that creepy lady there?” I ask as I point.
She looks up at an elderly lady who’s feeding the birds. “The old one?”
“Yes. She loves to talk. Mostly about her bowel movements, but I really think the two of you would hit it off perfectly.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I look like someone who enjoys talking about bowel movements?”
“Definitely.”
She starts laughing as her dog takes off running after the birds, scaring them all away much to the older lady’s annoyance.
Five
When I wake up, my entire body screams the moment I try to move. Slowly, I lift my head, causing the world to swim around me and nausea to hit me hard. I feel like I vaguely remember waking up just to throw up before now, but the area around me appears to be clean. I stay inanimate for minutes as I try to calm my head and the ache in my body. As I finally manage to focus, I realize I’m back in the small room from hell. Why am I here again?
I sit up and try to survey my wounds, finding that I don’t think anything is broken but everything sure feels broken. When I decide there’s really no point to me being up, I sink back down on the ground and close my eyes, hoping that I’ll find sleep.
It’s strange how I miss Shepherd’s floor, but I do.
I try to doze but I can’t get my body to relax, and every time I move or turn, the hard cement pushes into my aching limbs. So when the door opens hours later, I’m still lying in the same spot wide awake. I look up as Shepherd walks through the open door and stares down at me.
“You still alive?” he asks.
“I think. Are you Satan?”
“An angel, actually.”
“Ah. I see.” I slowly roll onto my back to look at him. “Do I look pretty? I feel pretty.”
“I see he didn’t beat any of the sarcasm out of you.”
“So? Did it work? Has my father come running to do anything Tony asks?”
Shepherd just stares at me, so I assume that means no. “I’m supposed to bring you food. It was between Spam and dog food, so I went with the dog food,” he says as he sets a paper plate next to me with a regular-looking sandwich on it.
“You even used a plate.”
“I did but you don’t know what I touched first before assembling it.”
“I’m not even sure I care anymore,” I say as he drops a water bottle next to it. Then he grabs my hand and drops something into it before closing my fingers around it.
“Can I sleep on your floor again?”
“Tony wants you in here. I thought you didn’t like my floor. It was too floory or something.”
“I changed my mind. I love your floor.”
“Yeah, well, I can actually get shit done this way, like… hmm… stuff,” he says before heading back through the open door and closing it behind himself. I open my hand and look at the pills inside it. They look like pain pills, but they could be poison for all I know or care as I pop them into my mouth and wash them down with water.
Then I decide to sleep away the rest of my life.
Trying to sleep away the rest of my life only lasts a couple hours, as far as I can tell, but when I sit up, I feel a little bit better. As in I can sit up without my brain sloshing around and threatening to crush my eyeballs.
Slowly I get up, planning on trying to find someone to let me take a piss so I don’t have to touch the bucket. I walk over to the door and hammer on it before realizing that the last guy that was in here clearly knew how to use a screwdriver better than I