Excerpt: The Garret

Chapter 1 (first three scenes)

Someone slapped my butt cheek while a woman's murky voice cut through my brain haze. Water lapped the side of my face. I gurgled deep sea diver breaths, and Lloyd Bridges popped into my mind. Someone slapped me hard, knocking Bridges and SEA HUNT back into last night's Nick-at-Night reruns. After a third slap, she called again, "Sir. Can you move?"

I hated being called sir. It made me sound old. In my mind I answered,
"Yes," and tried to roll over. My head brushed against jagged glass. I
stopped. Pain forced tears. The woman's distant, urgent voice echoed in my
head, and then it faded away.

#

A needle prick aroused me. I remembered something blinding white exploding with a deafening roar through the roof of my garret. The oak floor cratered in front of me. A geyser launched me off the toilet with a painful and impromptu enema. The mirror shattered when the far wall stopped my face. I slid down to the floor in withering pain. Flames licked me, and my mind conjured up Armageddon. I had lived badly, and God's retributions had begun. Repent, I thought, and then waited for the light at the end of the dark tunnel. Things turned black.

#

Someone jostled me awake. My eyes opened a slit expecting Satan to be
stabbing me with his pitchfork, but instead, a blond hottie held one leg and
a tall beanpole gripped the other leg. Apollo Creed grasped me under my arm
pits and hoisted me at an odd angle off my glass-strewn, watery bathroom
floor. My favorite tee-shirt was shredded, and everything below my belly
button dangled, exposed like blood-covered fish bait. My singed and torn
pants hung like rags on a beggar around my ankles. I thought I said that I
could walk, but they ignored me. A stretcher accepted me in the living room
just outside where the bathroom door used to be. Some relief, extreme pain,
more darkness.