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Book of 2016

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“Down in a hole, feeling so small
Down in a hole, losing my soul
I'd like to fly but my
Wings have been so denied”

Down in a Hole, ALICE IN CHAINS

“Rubber Duckie, you're the one,

You make bathtime lots of fun”

Rubber Duckie, Sesame Street

 
Down in a Hole

 - 1 -

“Sckwabbing tubbbles, you’re some one ...   That makes cweaning time so much fun…  Scrubbbbblllingg bua…bbles yurd the one… slubbing buabbleess….”

Flutter.  His eyes crack open at the sound.  His eyes shut when he is nearly blinded by white light.

“cweaning fime is much fum.”

Flutter.  Again his eyes open at the gibberish that is coming into his head.  He whips his mouth on the across what his is laying on.  An order pops into his noise it faintly detects the smell of urine.  His eyes can’t focus before of the white light.  They shut before the light can pierce his brain.

“Sclubbing babbles…dobado cweaning some time fun”

Flutter.  He tries to keep them open this time.  However light is reflecting in some many ways.  The light hurts.  However the sound hurts more.  What is the non-sense?  There is a rhythm to it.  He can’t hold onto it, and again his eyes shut.

“Cleaning fime so muck fun.”

Flutter.  Again, the eyes open mainly on there own accord.  He doesn’t want them open. He feels if they are aren’t open then he won’t hear it, if he doesn’t hear it, then it can’t hurt his brain.  He can rest.  Yes that is urine he smells.  He shifts his head again and he really smells it now.  His eyes catch the white again and flutter, they close.

“Scuba dubba, dur dah vun.  Makes…”

Flutter.  This time only the right eye open and it looks right into the white god of glare in front of him.  The left cracks but suddenly he feels a nail being driven into his skull right about said left eye.  He shuts it quickly, but this time he doesn’t phase out.  The mind keeps some focus.  He thinks of the sound.  The sound that is ringing in his ears, the one that is made out to sound like a friendly little tune.  However, he goes blank again and he shuts his right eye and flutter….

When he regains some of his senses he realizes the sound that he has been hear isn’t a song, or him talking, but rather is a chant. “Sclubbing babbles…dobado cweaning some time fun” His eyes pop open and try to focus but all he could see in front on him was white.  White with reflected light.  His eyes fluttered back shut.  He didn’t want to be awake.  However the goddamn chant wouldn’t let him go.  “Cleaning fime so muck fun.” The chant grew louder and louder each time his eyes shut.  The smell of urine and dirt filled his nostrils.  He sucked his tongue back into his mouth.
“Makes cleaning time some mud pun” again it was louder and his ears couldn’t shut it out.  He tried, he tried to shut his eyes but the white had taken them.  He tried hard, but the smooth white basin, with the round sides, just held his half opened eyes.  He tried to suck his tongue back in his mouth but his motor skills hadn’t fully come to him yet.  His eyes suddenly unfocused and the white faded into black.

“Sckwabbing babbles, dure pti due, makes cleaning fime so much fun.”  What was a fime?
This made no sense. What was a fime?  Sckwabbing?  The eyes flutter back open but the white light is too much.  His eyes can’t focus.  He only sees reflected light of a giant white basin. The urine is still there so that was real.  What the fuck was this goddamn chant. He shut his eyes.

He tried to focus but nothing was to be found.  He heard but couldn’t see.  He couldn’t comprehend.  He knew there was no fime.  He knew that no one was Sckwabbing.   He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did.  No fime.  No Sckwabbing.

His mind tried to race, but couldn’t. He had to know the chant.  He had to know because he could hear it.  He had to know because he was chanting it.   He wasn’t sure how he knew he was. It sounded like it was a thousand miles away. His mind though started to focus and then it hit him, there was no Sckwabbing or fime.  No, no there wasn’t.  There was only.  “Scrubbing Bubbles, your are the one, the one that makes cleaning time so much fun.”

With his realization his eyes popped open and he saw the basin in front of him.  Only basin wasn’t the right word.  No not the right word at all.  It was a base.  A stand.  He slowly turned his head right and saw more of the same white.  However this wasn’t in the same shape. No the shape to the right was much bigger and longer.  He flipped his eyelids open and shut.  Flutter.

Flutter.  When his eyes open again he could hear it clearly now.  “Scrubbing Bubbles, you’re the one that makes cleaning time so much fun.”  When his eyes adjusted this time he saw white, white with a lighter color.  Was lighter the right word? “Scrubbing Bubbles you’re the one….”

His chin was firmly implanted on his chest; he felt a liquid running down.  His eyes open again and he saw a white froth tangled in his chest hairs.  “Make cleaning time so much fun.”  Flutter.  

Flutter.  “Scrubbing Bubbles you’re the one, that makes…” Through the half slits that were his eyes, his head was turned to the left this time.  He could make out wood. Slightly cracked.  It was wood none though.  White to the right, wood on the left where the hell was he.  “Cleaning time so much fun.”  He looked he slowly and it was slowly, turned his head to the right.  The move movement made bile rise in his stomach.  Flutter…

Flutter.  “Scrubbing Bubbles you’re the one the that makes cleaning time so much fun.”  The chant continued in when he was out, it continued while he wasn’t.  He seemed to think the chant never really stopped it was always there.  He could feel the liquid drop from the corner of his mouth.  Where was he?  He tried to turn his head again, but remembered the turn of his stomach so; he decided that he wasn’t going to do that again.  He was always one who learned things the hard way.  However, one lesson was usually enough.  He stared at the white to his right.  His eyes open a little more.  His eyes ran the up and down and he realized the white was very long.  He detected something else to, very faint but there but there.  Was it urine?  Flutter.

Flutter.  When his eyes once again open he smelled piss.  Not fresh piss, but old piss.  Old Piss that had been around for two or three days and not cleaned.  He again was staring at the large white base in front of him.  He could his chest covered in drool. He couldn’t remember where he’d last been.  This was nothing new to him.  He often woke up in strange places.  He’d never woken up to so much white though.  White that hurt, white that hurt the.  Flutter.

Flutter.  “Scurbbing Bubbles you’re the one.  That makes cleaning time so much fun.”  This time when his eyes opened the white blinded him he could feel his mouth moving.  He could feel muscle in his face mouthing the words.  He also focused on the basin in front of him.  He noticed that is was thicker at the bottom than at the top.  Did it round after that?  The question hurt his head.  The chant drummed on its course.  “Scrubbing Bubbles you’re the one.”  Flutter.

When his eyes popped open and they did pop open this time.  He couldn’t believe he was face down.  How many times has he woken up face down on the floor?  Yes, there were lots of times.  Lots of time he would wake up and be faced down, with drool all over.  Yes there were certainly, to many to count.  However, he had never woken to white tile staring at him in the face.  He had never woken up to the smell of old piss. He’d never woken up face down in his bathroom before.  This was truly a first.  He guessed it was bound to happen.

How long?  How long was that a question?  How long?  Had he been face down in piss?  How long?  He didn’t know. All he knew for sure was that he was on the bathroom floor.  He knew he was pretty much hugging the basin.  He knew that if he raised his head straight up then he might very well hit his head on the seat of the john.  He knew these things, but what he didn’t know was how long?  How long had he been on the floor?  How long had he been face down in the bathroom practically spooning the toilette?

Why was a question he knew the answer to as well?  Why wasn’t an issue?  How many times since he’d started to medicate had he found himself in strange places?  Halfway hidden underneath his bed.  Rolled in the living room carpet, like a large human burrito.   Yes, why he knew.  It was his condition.  A half laugh, half cough escaped his throat and he smiled.

Condition?  He thought.  That was rich.  Could you call it that?  Is it really a condition when it is self-imposed?  Perhaps the reason he woke up face down on the floor wasn’t the condition, but the reasons he did what he did to end up on the floor?  Was that a condition? It didn’t matter.  What mattered was that he knew the why.  He woke up in strange places through out his place.  It wasn’t the condition. No it was the medication that did it to him.  Yes, the sweet, sweet medication.  However, the bathroom floor was new.

What he still couldn’t figure out wasn’t the why, or the how.  However, it was the how long.  No matter where his eyes opened.  It was how long.  How fucking had I been there?  How much more time has expired?  He didn’t know.  He never knew.  He would never know and the not knowing is what scratched the record.  It was the not knowing that lead to the skip.  It was the not knowing how long he’d been there that leads him to continue to ask the question.  Ask the question of not why, or how, or who but how long.  It was a question that based in unreason.  He could never answer the question. However the question wouldn’t leave him alone.  How long.  Had it been an hour, a few, a day.  Yes he’d been out for a day before.  The medication sometimes did that.  The sickening feeling after the sweet pain.

How long?  Much like the damn chant, just stayed in his mind.  He could do everything in his power to try and stop them, but he couldn’t.  He had no control over the record player that was his brain.  Especially, after he first regained his sense of being.  He’d once told her “That you can’t possibly imagine the terror that I felt.”  Coming out of the dark.  Coming back into the light.  The terror was real.

With that he shot up.  His head smacked right into the top of the toilette and he quickly found himself face down on the floor again.  This time staring at a yellowish brown spot that had obliviously been the remains of few shakes that went terribly wrong.   Or had he just missed.  Sometimes in the night, he didn’t pay attention; he tried to shoot in the dark. When he did, he often missed.  He seemed to remember he usual hit the trashcan in those situations.  Well, sometimes.

His eyes refocused on his dribbles.  He slithered away from the toilette.  Inched his body slowly back into the hallway.  As he did this he rolled over, so that his back now touched the tile that had so kindly served as his pillow.  He stared up into the popcorn and this time he was able to sit up with out hitting the toilette.

As he raised himself up he had two thoughts.  The first one of course being “How long?”  The second thing he thought about was her.  Was she all right?  What was she doing now?  Had she had him?  What was going to become of her?