Notes from the Future: Felonious Monk, Part V

"Wow, totally not dizzy anymore," I say. "Hey, if I disappear any time soon, will you tell Veronica I love her?"

"Of course, Edward," says Henrietta, taking the syringe from the redhead, who looks familiar somehow. "This may pinch a bit," she says, lifting my gown as I raise an asscheek.

POP

I slam to the ground, hard, gravel biting into my left knee, hip, elbow and shoulder. The wind is knocked out of me and I am gasping like a fish out of water, struggling to breathe or sob or cry out for help. It's dark, it's cold, and I can smell something coppery -- is that blood? My blood? Fuck. This has to be the worst feeling next to disembowelment. With luck, I'll never know. 

Finally, I can get a breath. This hurts, too, and seems to send alarm bells of pain ringing in all the parts of me that didn't hit the gravel directly: chief among them is my right leg which now feels like it's bleeding again. 

I can see where I am: I'm in the compound. I feel like I've been here before. I'm in the middle of a large, open area between the Hospital house to my right and a much larger, higher house with multiple levels of decking to my left. Behind me and to my right, I can see as I curl into a fetal position, is the barn where Veronica is (or was, or will be?) kept.

I could swear I was here before. Dizziness and a sense of impending déjà vu make it really difficult to pinpoint the memory. 

My password for my first e-mail address was radradagast. 

Where the fuck did that come from? That was on some ancient monochrome computer screen in, like, 1989. CompuServe? Wow. 

Okay, what am I doing here? 

I try to sit up and realize I've gashed my right hand open on the landing. Two cuts in the meaty, muscly parts: one below the thumb, one below the pinky. Both are bleeding freely. Well, there's nothing for it: I need to sit up. I put my right hand down to push myself up and it's caught on a string from the neck of my hospital gown, but I push myself up to my elbow anyway.

I feel something at my neck really pull, then give. The gown? This felt stronger. I ease myself onto my ass, and now I'm facing the barn. That doesn't feel right. I lift my ass in the air and try to pull my gown under me, but something jingles behind me.

I scoot around in a slow, draggy kind of way, grunting and gritting my teeth from the leg pain. It's too dark to see anything, so I feel around with my left hand. And there, under my left thigh and very close to my nutsack, is what feels like a round disk made of metal.

Bringing it close to my face, I realize it's one of the two copper discs I wear around my neck. On one side, a pentacle. On the other, the Sanskrit symbol for Om. Automatically, I check with my right hand, looking down to see that, indeed, the leather cord on which I'd worn this disc is broken. It's not surprising that it came apart so easily, I've been wearing this thing for years. 

I have to pee. Getting up and moving isn't an option. I pee where I'm sitting. It's soaking into the gown. I don't care. Realizing the disk is dirty, I put it into the stream of my urine and piss it clean. This strikes me as a very Teutonic cleaning technique and I giggle. There's a slight rumble deep in the ground and I wonder if the Norse Gods are angry with me. Then I realize that my right index finger is cut and bleeding as well, because I'm bleeding all over the talisman -- pendant -- whatever it should be called.

Bleeding. Blood and metal. That's what Future Me said would mark a place, bind me to a spot or a person. Anchor, he said. It works like an anchor. Gold is best. Would copper work?

Can't hurt. I squeeze my right index hard, pushing more blood out onto the disk. I cover it, front and back. It looks black and glisteny in the night. 

Youchers McOuchers, my head. Okay. That's, wow, that's painful. My vision is spangly. There's a dark patch in the gravel ahead of me, a small dark patch near my left heel. I reach and am not limber enough, so I toss the talisman and it lands a little low right of the spot. I shift my left heel to try to move it to the center of the dark spot, where it will be seen. Everything is spinning. I manage only to cover it with some dust and gravel, I'm going to have to 

POP

Dropping hard on my left side again onto a jagged claw of fallen branch, I feel hot sharp twangs of pain as the branches and wood tear into my chest, side and belly. 

I'm panting. It's dark, but getting light. There's a lump of dry brown grass in front of me that is rocking back and forth slightly. Oh, boy, dizzy. The rock, wait, lump of grass is turning. It's turning to look at me with a large, black eye and quivering whiskers and long brown ears.

I feel my eyes widen.

Chauncey.

I reach out with both hands.

"Chauncey," I say, as cheerily as I can. He hops toward me. I pet his nose.

It feels so nice to pet a bunny's nose and head when you're in pain. I smile, I pet him. He does that settling-in thing where he rocks back and forth, seeming to tuck his feet under himself and get a little fatter. I pet him some more, sliding forward over the log. He opens his eyes, whiskers twitching. 

I try to slide a little more forward but the branch -- I glance down -- fuck, it's a log -- the scrapy log is scrapy on my junk. I've had enough of that. No more junk scraping. All I want is a change of clothes. I want clean a bath and clean clothes, damn it! 

The dizzy amps up. Shit, this is getting to be a pretty clear sign. I'm about to pop. I focus on Chauncey, there are several of him doing wavery treetop dances. I grab the one closest to the middle and spook the one on the right, who tries to run away. I lunge, grab him with both hands and firmly hold him to my chest as I try to roll onto my back but oh shit the scrapy log is

POP

Whump. 

The air is knocked out of me again. But I'm on my back, with Chauncey safely held in my arms. And even though I'm allergic to him, I'm gasping for breath and thrashing my legs around. I let go of him and he leaps off me to the left, his overlong claws tearing at my belly. 

"Je ... sussss," I sort of grunt, if by grunt I mean scream in my head.

Breath returns like a recalcitrant college hooker and I just lay here, cozy for the first time in a long time. 

I'm in my yellow tent. On my sleeping bag and sleeping pads. So cozy. The light is gentle it's warm. Fuck this race, I'm sleepy.

I close my eyes, breathing deeply. Okay. Time to sleep. 

I start to think about when I backpacked the Roosevelt/Solomons trail in 2009, starting in Hetch-Hetchy Valley and going up through mosquito-infested Tuolumne Meadows to head south along Lyell or is it Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile? That river. And mosquitoes everywhere because it was still July and the females were swarming. All I wanted was to be in a tent and cozy and there was nothing worse in that moment than those fucking mosquitoes all over the backs of my legs, biting through my socks and all over my face, constantly buzzing and flitting and whining at me like my ex-girlfriend. She didn't suck blood, but she may as well have sucked my soul through other means, and I was on those neverending switchbacks. All I wanted was to be in a tent, cozy and protected. And I'm here. And my leg hurts. But I think, if I just breathe ...

The softest feeling, or maybe a sound, of bubbles. Like I've lain back into a pool of big flouncy bubbles and some of them have burst but most are supporting me ... pop-pop-flounce-pop ...

I sigh, sinking into the pad. I feel better. Much better.

Feels good just to breathe ...

It's actually pretty nice, here.

Breathing ... heaving breaths, breathing sighs ... I chuckle a little ...

They're nice to me, I can tell. One of them even spent extra time giving me a sponge bath, a very thorough sponge bath that she had to clean up after.

Oh, I'm dreaming. This is ... can't get too excited, but ... wow, this feels like lucidity. Full lucidity. I move my fingers and I feel cloth, not sleeping bag material but cotton. I smell disinfectant.

I hear beeping.

Holy crap, I'm dreaming I'm back in the hospital bed. Wow.

And dizzy. I'm dreaming I'm dizzy. I'll crack my eyes to get a focus point on the tent wall. I ease the left eye open.

Standing to my left is me, in this torn, messy hospital gown. Reaching toward me. Reaching really, really close to me. Do I not know that we'll seize? Is this sill a dream?

The world seems to flip upside down for a moment, then rights itself. Um ... maybe I'm not dreaming.

I open both eyes a little.

"Tad," I whisper. He freezes, his hand over my chest, we make eye contact and he's staring at me out of my eyes as I'm staring at him out of mine and we're each looking at ourselves through the other's eyes and it's like a tunnel, sucking our minds together because I know that what I'm looking for as I reach toward me is both what I was looking for before when I did this after the dream, and also what I'm looking for now: whether or not I have the talisman with the pentacle and Om. I reach up with my right hand and show other me: "Only one. I'm Future Me. This doesn't seem like a dream."

"This isn't a dream. I need to find a way to click back in, so that we occupy the same place," Standing Me says. "This is the second time I've arrived at this spot, and now I know why I'm here. I think."

"Quick, give me a blowjob. It's not gay because we're the same guy," we say at the exact same moment.  We're laughing when someone shouts from the hallway.

"You there! Stop in the name of the Prophet!"

Sssssnap, CLICK

Gunshot.