This is what happens when you have too much time on your hands and too much Diet Coke in your system...
CHAPTER II
A Person Can Take Only So Much Comforting. Otherwise It Would Be Cruel And Unusual Punishment.
Eddie had just settled back and gotten comfortable just as there came a rather loud knock at the door, the knock becoming constant as though the person was fixing to eventually break through the door with their fist.
"Hold on!" Eddie tried to yell out, but the knocks kept coming so he figured his words must have come out intelligible. Sighing in anger, he tried desperately to push himself back into his wheelchair and maneuver it around the couch.
"I'm coming god dammit!" He yelled, not really caring if they understood him or not. His head was throbbing with the migraine and the constant pounding was only making it that much worse.
He took a deep breath as he opened the door, about to say 'Can I help you?' with forced graciousness, but instead, he found his words stuck halfway up in his throat as he took in the woman before him.
Standing in his doorway was a 6'5" bearded woman who was built like, in the worse sense of the word, a sumo wrestler. Rolls, upon rolls of fatty flesh were crammed into a little, white dress that looked like it was about to explode from over-compaction.
He couldn't help but have a double take on this woman standing before him.
Her disgustingly obvious bleach-blonde wig tilted to one side of her head and nested a rather large, boldly white hair clip. Her skin was frighteningly pale as though it had never seen the light.
Her eyebrows kind of reminded Eddie of two black caterpillars that had accidentally died on her forehead, shading a pair of hard, steel gray eyes that were so bloodshot that not even the white showed through.
Dark, purple bags of sleeplessness hooked under her eyes, seeming to be at least an inch in depth, swooping down on her cheeks. Her rounded nose nearly swallowed her entire face and a terrible three o'clock shadow shaded her upper lip.
The only makeup she bothered to use was a vibrant red lipstick that made her puckering lips so bright they could pass for a traffic light.
And to top off her truly unforgettable face, thick, black whiskers poked out of random spots on her chin, flaunting like lampposts against her white skin.
He had to hold back the urge to gag as the smell of her assaulted his breathing rights.
A plain, silver cross hung heavily on an incredibly long chain, the cross dangerously close to being swallowed up by the woman's boldly audacious exposé of her cleavage.
Clipped almost inconspicuously onto the chest of her dingy, white jacket was a pin with the name BERTHA in stenciled, black lettering and a sparkling red cross sticker stuck next to it.
"You Alden?" The woman boomed, her voice so deep that she had the effect of thunder rolling through the room, almost manly.
"Y-y-yes…" Eddie's pulse began to race as he suddenly felt his life to be in danger.
"You da one dat's sick?" Her verbalization was slathered thickly with a German accent that almost slaughtered her words unintelligible.
"Yes…" That's all he could bring to his throat at the moment.
"I your nurse for today," She stomped into the room, her white tennis shoes doing little to quiet her footfalls.
Eddie blinked away the sweat from his eyes and cleared his throat, trying to force out conversation. "I take it your name is Bertha…" He smiled, only to drop it as she looked at him in confusion.
"It says on your nametag…" He said meekly, quickly pointing to where he had read the name, then quick to pull in his appendages as if she might bite them off.
She looked down at her chest and ran a hotdog-like finger over the lettering. "No. Name is Annabella. Bertha last name. Annabella no fit on nametag." She stuck a thumb into her chest, proudly exploiting her name.
"You call me Annabella. Good for you?" She raised a shaggy eyebrow towards him, seeming to dare him to object.
"That's fine," Eddie laughed lightly, trying desperately to ease the discomfort and bring down his rising temperature.
Her appalling eyes stayed locked on him for a couple more seconds before tearing off as she waddled into the room, taking a long sniff through her nose. Her fanned, white skirt shifted nervously over her butt and thighs, repulsing Eddie.
"So dis your kitchen?" She thundered, spreading her arms wide in the direction of the fridge and countertop. She turned to him and smiled widely, showing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.
"Yeah," Eddie smiled back, wiping the collected sweat away from his face and running the clasped kleenex under his nose. As she turned back to face the kitchen again, Eddie shut the door and cringed inwardly, swearing with all his heart that he was going to get Jane back for this, even if it was the last thing he did.
He took a moment to recollect himself before turning around and beginning to push himself back over to the couch. He cinched his eyes shut as the woman began loudly opening and closing cupboards, sending flares of pain through Eddie's head.
"So why you in dat wheelchair?" The woman asked, standing up from her crouched position behind the counter, a pot in her hand.
Eddie paused a minute, looking at her.
Why did she want to know that? Was she planning on bashing him over the head with the pot when she found out he was chair-ridden? No, she would've done it by now.
"I, uh, I got hurt and had to get an operation." He didn't really remember a lot about it, only what Jane had told him, but she sugarcoated most of it, so he couldn't be sure on anything.
"So nothing wrong wid dem feet o' yours?" Eddie shook his head in complete confusion.
Annabella just shrugged and went back to exploring the kitchen. As Eddie made his way around the far side of the couch, maneuvering his wheelchair so that it sat between the couch and the coffee table and made it easy to pull himself up onto the couch.
His struggle onto the couch was only interrupted once by a fit of coughing that made him sink to one knee until he could recover. It took him a moment to catch his breath before he was able to push himself up onto the couch.
Finally up, he stretched himself out and let his aching head sink back into the pillows, the pain easing off just a tad.
"You got a bafroom?" Annabella's voice rolled like a storm.
"It's down the hall to the right." Eddie cringed as he closed his eyes, his head feeling like it was going to explode, while she pounded off in the direction he'd given her.
He sighed stuffily as his hand groped for the tissue box, pulling it in so that it rested on top of his chest. Hearing Annabella rattling around in the medicine cabinet above the sink.
Good thing he had hid all the condom boxes in a different place.
There was a moment of relaxation before something small and sandpapery rubbed across the bottom of his bare foot. Eddie jumped and his eyes snapped open, taking in the little black and white face of a pouting kitten.
It squeaked a tiny noise that could barely pass for a meow and looked up at him with huge, green, pleading eyes. Eddie laughed and sat up, faltering when a wave of sickness washed over him by the redirected blood-flow.
After it passed, he bent and picked up the kitten, lying back once again and placing it on the top of his chest, watching it. The kitten sat there for a moment before deciding to survey its new territory.
Sushi walked up to his shoulder and looked him straight in the face, then she gave him a big sandpaper kiss on the chin. Eddie cringed and laughed, petting the cat with his thumb, getting a low purr going in the cat's throat.
The cat nestled down against his neck, purring noisily now right below his ear as Eddie closed his eyes again, listening to the rhythmic vibration of the cat's throat as he slowly began to drift off into the darkness.
He was drifting into the abyss when suddenly the hair on the back of his neck stood up on end and a strange feeling crept over him. Like he was in a warm place and was suddenly smothered by a cold shadow, almost like he was being watched.
He groaned slightly and twitched, seeing if the feeling would remove itself from his skin, but it stayed. And, strangely, it moved, seeming to come closer and a series of sharp needles brushed across his skin.
He took a deep breath in annoyance and reluctantly began to float back into consciousness, his eyes lazy to his command to open as they slowly fluttered apart to reveal -
"HOLY SHIT!" Eddie yelled, his eyes wide and his breath stuck in his throat.
Annabella was bent beside him, her ugly face hanging dangerously close to his, her fat cheeks drooping until they - oh god, that's what brushed against him. Eddie was completely repulsed as he closed his eyes and gently raised a hand, maneuvering it so that it was against her shoulder, and pushed her away.
Annabella put up no resistance and stood up, her knees cracking. The crack would have been louder, Eddie guessed, if they had not been surrounded by a padding of corpulent flesh, the idea made him want to puke.
"You awake now Alden?" Annabella asked, her voice making his spine shake and his stomach tie itself in knots.
"I think I'm gonna be sick…" Eddie said more to himself, gently moving Sushi from his shoulder as he sat up.
"You already sick." Annabella pointed out, something black stuck between her teeth, forcing Eddie to look away.
"No," Eddie tried to explain as he stumbled in the direction of his wheelchair. He forced himself to move quickly, the bile already beginning to rise in his throat.
Even though it was against doctor's orders to walk just yet, he had no choice. As fast as his legs would carry him, he fled to the bathroom, unable to close the door behind him as he fell to his knees and worshiped the porcelain god.
Annabella rocked back on her heels and smiled to herself, taking her precious time as she waddled to the bathroom, seeing Eddie knelt over the toilet, all hell breaking loose.
She reached over and took the hand-towel from the ring, waiting until he finally sat up before waddling into the bathroom. Eddie's face was dangerously pale and sweat speckled his forehead.
Annabella bent down and handed him the towel, which he used to wipe the sweat from his head then wipe the spit from his chin.
"You feel better now?" She asked, taking the towel back from him and watching him scoot back from the toilet.
It took him a moment to gather his breath. "I-I don't think I can make it back-" He was about to finish his sentence with "without the wheelchair" but she interrupted.
"Come," She threw out her flabby arms, reaching down and beginning to pluck him from the floor. "I carry you." Without any chance of escape, Eddie was gathered into her arms and squashed against her chest.
He tried many times to object as she began to waddle back out into the living room, but he was only silenced.
"Shush, shush." Annabella said like a mother to her child. "You sick. I take care of you." She smiled in friendliness at herself as she brought him around to the couch.
Sushi peered up from the cushions at the awkwardly handled Eddie and the well-fed girth of Annabella, mewing softly.
"Shoo!" Annabella commanded, Sushi seemed puzzled for a moment before she arched her back and fluffed her hair, showing her teeth and letting out a small hiss of animosity.
Annabella just leaned back and laughed a booming laugh that could only be compared to an elephant dying. "Woah!" Eddie grabbed onto Annabella's shirt, not wanting to fall, her breath unnaturally hot against his arm.
As she finished laughing, she leaned forward and brought her foot down as hard against the floor as she possibly could without breaking through, scaring the cat AND Eddie nearly half to death.
Quick as lightening, the cat took off into China's room and scurried under the bed, Eddie having no such pleasure of escape.
"Why you have cat anyway? Make you more sick what it does." Annabella mumbled rhetorically to herself as she set Eddie down on the couch, finally freeing him from a flabby fate of being swallowed whole.
"No lying down," Annabella warned him and he looked agitatedly questioning at her. "You eat soon." He was about to object that he probably wouldn't be able to keep it down, but she stopped him again.
"No argue, just stay up." She said, and from the daring look she gave her, he wasn't about to.
"No move." She said, rising and lumbering off toward Eddie's bedroom.
After she disappeared into the doorway, Eddie breathed a sigh of relief and hunched down on the couch. Jane was gonna pay for this…big time…
Suddenly, Eddie became very cold, goosebumps breaking out across his arms as he sighed inwardly to himself, feeling like shit.
Then, Annabella's footsteps resounded behind him, and he cringed. He jumped as something heavy fell across his shoulders and he looked up to see her motherly tucking a blanket around his neck and back.
"Thanks," Eddie said between coughs, leaning forward to grab a tissue and pull the box in with him as he leaned back. Then Annabella came around front and tucked another blanket around his chest and neck, nearly suffocating him when she leaned over.
"There." She smiled satisfactory to herself as she stood, surveying her handy work. "I go get food now." She set off to the kitchen where she had been cooking before.
Eddie let his head fall back against the couch as he pulled the blankets more closely to his body, shivering slightly as a cold chill rolled up his spine. He tried to ignore it, letting his mind wander on more important things, like what he was going to do to Jane.
Then quickly, Annabella made her faithful return with a tray steadily held in her pudgy hands, a bowl of steaming soup, a glass of water, a dozen saltines, and one immense, white pill set astray on it. She sat heavily down on the chair opposite Eddie.
She cleared a spot on the coffee table as she set down the tray, smiling proudly at her dinner that actually didn't look too bad. Even though Eddie seriously doubted that he could keep anything down right now.
"Eat now," Annabella boomed, watching as Eddie opened his mouth to object.
"I don't think I can eat that right now…" Eddie mentioned, becoming fainthearted as her eyebrows raised and her eyes widened and she stared at him appallingly, as if he'd just said the most heinous of words.
"Why?" She asked, threw out her arms in shock, signaling towards her food. "Does it not please you?" She seemed hurt that he did not want to eat her food.
"No, Annabella." He tried to reason and calm the disgruntled beast that could easily eat HIM. "It's not your food, I'm sure it's wonderful. I just don't think I can keep anything down right now. I feel very sick."
Annabella put her hands on her hips and turned her head so that she looked at him from the corner of her slitted eye, breathing heavily through her nose, blowing something out of it.
Eddie held back a shudder, closing his eyes and trying to regain his somersaulting organs. She stared at him for a moment as if to confirm his story and then suddenly clamped a hand across his forehead, her hand covering well below his eyes as well.
It felt like someone had pushed a recently soaked nylon filled with unprocessed sausage onto his head, unconsciously sensing that she was about to crush his skull at any second.
After a moment, she released his head and he tried to regain his spinning thoughts, blinking away the fading lights of his eyes as his life flashed through his head.
"You're very hot." She stated blandly, beginning to unpeel the blankets that he clutched closely to his freezing, shivering body. He had a moment of courage before it shallowed itself to a pitiful vulnerability.
He clutched his arms around himself as he tried to keep at least a tiny bit of warmth against him. At the moment, he cursed his deceitful head.
Annabella stared at him for a long while, screwing up her face as she seemed to be negotiating something in her head about him. Then she puckered out her lips and leaned forward and plucked the uncommonly large, white pill from the tray and stood difficulty up.
Eddie was perplexed that she didn't offer him the water also.
"What's that for?" He asked, confusion clogging his mind.
"Turn over." Annabella stated.
"Why?…"
But suddenly, the horrific realization hit him square in the face.
"Hell no." Eddie threw up his hands in defense, as if he was stopping a bullet.
Annabella tilted her head and looked at him challengingly.
"No. No, absolutely not." Eddie shook his head in disbelief and complete resistance.
"You must." She stated in defense.
"Do not even THINK about it. There is no way in HELL you're going to get close enough to stick that thing up my…hell no." He couldn't even finish his sentence, the thought was so revolting.
"Alden!" Her voice was so loud that it literally shook the walls, one corner of the sheet across China's bedroom falling off of its nail.
"Your wife pay me. I do my job. Now." She grabbed him roughly by the arm. "You turn over."
It was now or never.
"The fuck with that!" Eddie wrenched his arm free and sprang up from the couch before Annabella could react in time.
In a second, he was stumbling over the top of the couch and landing dumbly on the floor on the other side, his legs giving out momentarily. He went just short of collapsing before he forced himself back up, hearing the monster roar behind him.
"You not suppose to walk!"
'Desperate times call for desperate measures.' The words flashed across his mind as he worked his legs in the direction of the bathroom, ignoring the swallowing headache that was beating on his brain.
He swore he could feel her beefy fingers sweep past his shirt as she made a swipe for him, luckily coming up too short.
He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, and he slid in to the bathroom with the beast pounding after him, her footsteps threatening to break through the ground.
As he reached the bathroom, he turned and the seconds of complete terror as he watched the situation unfold, it bowed into slow motion, doing a play-by-play.
"RRRRAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" Annabella yelled with a wide, oval-shaped mouth as she leapt solidly into the air, majestically getting all two-hundred-and-something pounds to lift off the ground and actually move in his direction.
Her head swiveled as she flew through the air and her fatty rolls flopped from side to side as she came inch, by fatty inch, closer to him.
His hands were slow as he groped blindly for the doorknob, his eyes not able to tear away from the flying woman that was soaring toward him.
"NNNOOOOOO!!!!" Annabella fumed.
It took time to find the door, almost too much time. Every second dragging on as though they lasted for an entire minute, everything rolling along.
Eventually, he found the door and he put all his weight on it to shove it closed, hastily turning the lock as the last fatal minutes of his danger came within mere inches.
The sound of a two-hundred-pound woman hitting a solid wooden door at mock one speed is indescribable! The groaning of the wood as she slides down the amazingly unbroken wood is disgustingly astounding!
Eddie stood in silence for a split-second, everything replaying in one, deft flash.
But the silence didn't last.
The beast still lived.
Suddenly, there was the sound of fingernails digging into the door as Annabella clawed her way back up onto her feet, the breath having been compressed out of her with her fall.
She wheezed a sound so horrifying that the hair on the back of Eddie's neck stood straight up on end, threatening to pull right out of his skin.
Then the wheezing suddenly became mixed with the sound of her beefy fist rhythmically pounding against the door.
He guessed that she lacked the breath to call out his name whilst she pounded, and horror struck his throat as she began to frantically turn the handle to the door, not letting the small fact that it be locked stop her.
He began to back away from the door, swearing with all his heart that he heard the wood begin to splinter beneath her pounding fist.
"No…" He whispered beneath his breath, inconceivable that it could happen, but feign to reality.
"No…no…no…no…" He shook his head and continued backing away from the door, his hands held out to protect himself and his footsteps unheeded.
That's when it happened. That's when fate took control.
He took one fatal step backward, right onto a sideways bottle that Annabella had negligently thrown to the floor while she had rummaged through the medicine cabinet.
In one, fluid motion he was thrown up into the air and smashed backwards into the ground, his head striking the side of the bathtub and leaving a long, red smear as blackness thundered over him.
CHAPTER II
A Person Can Take Only So Much Comforting. Otherwise It Would Be Cruel And Unusual Punishment.
Eddie had just settled back and gotten comfortable just as there came a rather loud knock at the door, the knock becoming constant as though the person was fixing to eventually break through the door with their fist.
"Hold on!" Eddie tried to yell out, but the knocks kept coming so he figured his words must have come out intelligible. Sighing in anger, he tried desperately to push himself back into his wheelchair and maneuver it around the couch.
"I'm coming god dammit!" He yelled, not really caring if they understood him or not. His head was throbbing with the migraine and the constant pounding was only making it that much worse.
He took a deep breath as he opened the door, about to say 'Can I help you?' with forced graciousness, but instead, he found his words stuck halfway up in his throat as he took in the woman before him.
Standing in his doorway was a 6'5" bearded woman who was built like, in the worse sense of the word, a sumo wrestler. Rolls, upon rolls of fatty flesh were crammed into a little, white dress that looked like it was about to explode from over-compaction.
He couldn't help but have a double take on this woman standing before him.
Her disgustingly obvious bleach-blonde wig tilted to one side of her head and nested a rather large, boldly white hair clip. Her skin was frighteningly pale as though it had never seen the light.
Her eyebrows kind of reminded Eddie of two black caterpillars that had accidentally died on her forehead, shading a pair of hard, steel gray eyes that were so bloodshot that not even the white showed through.
Dark, purple bags of sleeplessness hooked under her eyes, seeming to be at least an inch in depth, swooping down on her cheeks. Her rounded nose nearly swallowed her entire face and a terrible three o'clock shadow shaded her upper lip.
The only makeup she bothered to use was a vibrant red lipstick that made her puckering lips so bright they could pass for a traffic light.
And to top off her truly unforgettable face, thick, black whiskers poked out of random spots on her chin, flaunting like lampposts against her white skin.
He had to hold back the urge to gag as the smell of her assaulted his breathing rights.
A plain, silver cross hung heavily on an incredibly long chain, the cross dangerously close to being swallowed up by the woman's boldly audacious exposé of her cleavage.
Clipped almost inconspicuously onto the chest of her dingy, white jacket was a pin with the name BERTHA in stenciled, black lettering and a sparkling red cross sticker stuck next to it.
"You Alden?" The woman boomed, her voice so deep that she had the effect of thunder rolling through the room, almost manly.
"Y-y-yes…" Eddie's pulse began to race as he suddenly felt his life to be in danger.
"You da one dat's sick?" Her verbalization was slathered thickly with a German accent that almost slaughtered her words unintelligible.
"Yes…" That's all he could bring to his throat at the moment.
"I your nurse for today," She stomped into the room, her white tennis shoes doing little to quiet her footfalls.
Eddie blinked away the sweat from his eyes and cleared his throat, trying to force out conversation. "I take it your name is Bertha…" He smiled, only to drop it as she looked at him in confusion.
"It says on your nametag…" He said meekly, quickly pointing to where he had read the name, then quick to pull in his appendages as if she might bite them off.
She looked down at her chest and ran a hotdog-like finger over the lettering. "No. Name is Annabella. Bertha last name. Annabella no fit on nametag." She stuck a thumb into her chest, proudly exploiting her name.
"You call me Annabella. Good for you?" She raised a shaggy eyebrow towards him, seeming to dare him to object.
"That's fine," Eddie laughed lightly, trying desperately to ease the discomfort and bring down his rising temperature.
Her appalling eyes stayed locked on him for a couple more seconds before tearing off as she waddled into the room, taking a long sniff through her nose. Her fanned, white skirt shifted nervously over her butt and thighs, repulsing Eddie.
"So dis your kitchen?" She thundered, spreading her arms wide in the direction of the fridge and countertop. She turned to him and smiled widely, showing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.
"Yeah," Eddie smiled back, wiping the collected sweat away from his face and running the clasped kleenex under his nose. As she turned back to face the kitchen again, Eddie shut the door and cringed inwardly, swearing with all his heart that he was going to get Jane back for this, even if it was the last thing he did.
He took a moment to recollect himself before turning around and beginning to push himself back over to the couch. He cinched his eyes shut as the woman began loudly opening and closing cupboards, sending flares of pain through Eddie's head.
"So why you in dat wheelchair?" The woman asked, standing up from her crouched position behind the counter, a pot in her hand.
Eddie paused a minute, looking at her.
Why did she want to know that? Was she planning on bashing him over the head with the pot when she found out he was chair-ridden? No, she would've done it by now.
"I, uh, I got hurt and had to get an operation." He didn't really remember a lot about it, only what Jane had told him, but she sugarcoated most of it, so he couldn't be sure on anything.
"So nothing wrong wid dem feet o' yours?" Eddie shook his head in complete confusion.
Annabella just shrugged and went back to exploring the kitchen. As Eddie made his way around the far side of the couch, maneuvering his wheelchair so that it sat between the couch and the coffee table and made it easy to pull himself up onto the couch.
His struggle onto the couch was only interrupted once by a fit of coughing that made him sink to one knee until he could recover. It took him a moment to catch his breath before he was able to push himself up onto the couch.
Finally up, he stretched himself out and let his aching head sink back into the pillows, the pain easing off just a tad.
"You got a bafroom?" Annabella's voice rolled like a storm.
"It's down the hall to the right." Eddie cringed as he closed his eyes, his head feeling like it was going to explode, while she pounded off in the direction he'd given her.
He sighed stuffily as his hand groped for the tissue box, pulling it in so that it rested on top of his chest. Hearing Annabella rattling around in the medicine cabinet above the sink.
Good thing he had hid all the condom boxes in a different place.
There was a moment of relaxation before something small and sandpapery rubbed across the bottom of his bare foot. Eddie jumped and his eyes snapped open, taking in the little black and white face of a pouting kitten.
It squeaked a tiny noise that could barely pass for a meow and looked up at him with huge, green, pleading eyes. Eddie laughed and sat up, faltering when a wave of sickness washed over him by the redirected blood-flow.
After it passed, he bent and picked up the kitten, lying back once again and placing it on the top of his chest, watching it. The kitten sat there for a moment before deciding to survey its new territory.
Sushi walked up to his shoulder and looked him straight in the face, then she gave him a big sandpaper kiss on the chin. Eddie cringed and laughed, petting the cat with his thumb, getting a low purr going in the cat's throat.
The cat nestled down against his neck, purring noisily now right below his ear as Eddie closed his eyes again, listening to the rhythmic vibration of the cat's throat as he slowly began to drift off into the darkness.
He was drifting into the abyss when suddenly the hair on the back of his neck stood up on end and a strange feeling crept over him. Like he was in a warm place and was suddenly smothered by a cold shadow, almost like he was being watched.
He groaned slightly and twitched, seeing if the feeling would remove itself from his skin, but it stayed. And, strangely, it moved, seeming to come closer and a series of sharp needles brushed across his skin.
He took a deep breath in annoyance and reluctantly began to float back into consciousness, his eyes lazy to his command to open as they slowly fluttered apart to reveal -
"HOLY SHIT!" Eddie yelled, his eyes wide and his breath stuck in his throat.
Annabella was bent beside him, her ugly face hanging dangerously close to his, her fat cheeks drooping until they - oh god, that's what brushed against him. Eddie was completely repulsed as he closed his eyes and gently raised a hand, maneuvering it so that it was against her shoulder, and pushed her away.
Annabella put up no resistance and stood up, her knees cracking. The crack would have been louder, Eddie guessed, if they had not been surrounded by a padding of corpulent flesh, the idea made him want to puke.
"You awake now Alden?" Annabella asked, her voice making his spine shake and his stomach tie itself in knots.
"I think I'm gonna be sick…" Eddie said more to himself, gently moving Sushi from his shoulder as he sat up.
"You already sick." Annabella pointed out, something black stuck between her teeth, forcing Eddie to look away.
"No," Eddie tried to explain as he stumbled in the direction of his wheelchair. He forced himself to move quickly, the bile already beginning to rise in his throat.
Even though it was against doctor's orders to walk just yet, he had no choice. As fast as his legs would carry him, he fled to the bathroom, unable to close the door behind him as he fell to his knees and worshiped the porcelain god.
Annabella rocked back on her heels and smiled to herself, taking her precious time as she waddled to the bathroom, seeing Eddie knelt over the toilet, all hell breaking loose.
She reached over and took the hand-towel from the ring, waiting until he finally sat up before waddling into the bathroom. Eddie's face was dangerously pale and sweat speckled his forehead.
Annabella bent down and handed him the towel, which he used to wipe the sweat from his head then wipe the spit from his chin.
"You feel better now?" She asked, taking the towel back from him and watching him scoot back from the toilet.
It took him a moment to gather his breath. "I-I don't think I can make it back-" He was about to finish his sentence with "without the wheelchair" but she interrupted.
"Come," She threw out her flabby arms, reaching down and beginning to pluck him from the floor. "I carry you." Without any chance of escape, Eddie was gathered into her arms and squashed against her chest.
He tried many times to object as she began to waddle back out into the living room, but he was only silenced.
"Shush, shush." Annabella said like a mother to her child. "You sick. I take care of you." She smiled in friendliness at herself as she brought him around to the couch.
Sushi peered up from the cushions at the awkwardly handled Eddie and the well-fed girth of Annabella, mewing softly.
"Shoo!" Annabella commanded, Sushi seemed puzzled for a moment before she arched her back and fluffed her hair, showing her teeth and letting out a small hiss of animosity.
Annabella just leaned back and laughed a booming laugh that could only be compared to an elephant dying. "Woah!" Eddie grabbed onto Annabella's shirt, not wanting to fall, her breath unnaturally hot against his arm.
As she finished laughing, she leaned forward and brought her foot down as hard against the floor as she possibly could without breaking through, scaring the cat AND Eddie nearly half to death.
Quick as lightening, the cat took off into China's room and scurried under the bed, Eddie having no such pleasure of escape.
"Why you have cat anyway? Make you more sick what it does." Annabella mumbled rhetorically to herself as she set Eddie down on the couch, finally freeing him from a flabby fate of being swallowed whole.
"No lying down," Annabella warned him and he looked agitatedly questioning at her. "You eat soon." He was about to object that he probably wouldn't be able to keep it down, but she stopped him again.
"No argue, just stay up." She said, and from the daring look she gave her, he wasn't about to.
"No move." She said, rising and lumbering off toward Eddie's bedroom.
After she disappeared into the doorway, Eddie breathed a sigh of relief and hunched down on the couch. Jane was gonna pay for this…big time…
Suddenly, Eddie became very cold, goosebumps breaking out across his arms as he sighed inwardly to himself, feeling like shit.
Then, Annabella's footsteps resounded behind him, and he cringed. He jumped as something heavy fell across his shoulders and he looked up to see her motherly tucking a blanket around his neck and back.
"Thanks," Eddie said between coughs, leaning forward to grab a tissue and pull the box in with him as he leaned back. Then Annabella came around front and tucked another blanket around his chest and neck, nearly suffocating him when she leaned over.
"There." She smiled satisfactory to herself as she stood, surveying her handy work. "I go get food now." She set off to the kitchen where she had been cooking before.
Eddie let his head fall back against the couch as he pulled the blankets more closely to his body, shivering slightly as a cold chill rolled up his spine. He tried to ignore it, letting his mind wander on more important things, like what he was going to do to Jane.
Then quickly, Annabella made her faithful return with a tray steadily held in her pudgy hands, a bowl of steaming soup, a glass of water, a dozen saltines, and one immense, white pill set astray on it. She sat heavily down on the chair opposite Eddie.
She cleared a spot on the coffee table as she set down the tray, smiling proudly at her dinner that actually didn't look too bad. Even though Eddie seriously doubted that he could keep anything down right now.
"Eat now," Annabella boomed, watching as Eddie opened his mouth to object.
"I don't think I can eat that right now…" Eddie mentioned, becoming fainthearted as her eyebrows raised and her eyes widened and she stared at him appallingly, as if he'd just said the most heinous of words.
"Why?" She asked, threw out her arms in shock, signaling towards her food. "Does it not please you?" She seemed hurt that he did not want to eat her food.
"No, Annabella." He tried to reason and calm the disgruntled beast that could easily eat HIM. "It's not your food, I'm sure it's wonderful. I just don't think I can keep anything down right now. I feel very sick."
Annabella put her hands on her hips and turned her head so that she looked at him from the corner of her slitted eye, breathing heavily through her nose, blowing something out of it.
Eddie held back a shudder, closing his eyes and trying to regain his somersaulting organs. She stared at him for a moment as if to confirm his story and then suddenly clamped a hand across his forehead, her hand covering well below his eyes as well.
It felt like someone had pushed a recently soaked nylon filled with unprocessed sausage onto his head, unconsciously sensing that she was about to crush his skull at any second.
After a moment, she released his head and he tried to regain his spinning thoughts, blinking away the fading lights of his eyes as his life flashed through his head.
"You're very hot." She stated blandly, beginning to unpeel the blankets that he clutched closely to his freezing, shivering body. He had a moment of courage before it shallowed itself to a pitiful vulnerability.
He clutched his arms around himself as he tried to keep at least a tiny bit of warmth against him. At the moment, he cursed his deceitful head.
Annabella stared at him for a long while, screwing up her face as she seemed to be negotiating something in her head about him. Then she puckered out her lips and leaned forward and plucked the uncommonly large, white pill from the tray and stood difficulty up.
Eddie was perplexed that she didn't offer him the water also.
"What's that for?" He asked, confusion clogging his mind.
"Turn over." Annabella stated.
"Why?…"
But suddenly, the horrific realization hit him square in the face.
"Hell no." Eddie threw up his hands in defense, as if he was stopping a bullet.
Annabella tilted her head and looked at him challengingly.
"No. No, absolutely not." Eddie shook his head in disbelief and complete resistance.
"You must." She stated in defense.
"Do not even THINK about it. There is no way in HELL you're going to get close enough to stick that thing up my…hell no." He couldn't even finish his sentence, the thought was so revolting.
"Alden!" Her voice was so loud that it literally shook the walls, one corner of the sheet across China's bedroom falling off of its nail.
"Your wife pay me. I do my job. Now." She grabbed him roughly by the arm. "You turn over."
It was now or never.
"The fuck with that!" Eddie wrenched his arm free and sprang up from the couch before Annabella could react in time.
In a second, he was stumbling over the top of the couch and landing dumbly on the floor on the other side, his legs giving out momentarily. He went just short of collapsing before he forced himself back up, hearing the monster roar behind him.
"You not suppose to walk!"
'Desperate times call for desperate measures.' The words flashed across his mind as he worked his legs in the direction of the bathroom, ignoring the swallowing headache that was beating on his brain.
He swore he could feel her beefy fingers sweep past his shirt as she made a swipe for him, luckily coming up too short.
He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, and he slid in to the bathroom with the beast pounding after him, her footsteps threatening to break through the ground.
As he reached the bathroom, he turned and the seconds of complete terror as he watched the situation unfold, it bowed into slow motion, doing a play-by-play.
"RRRRAAAAAHHHHH!!!!" Annabella yelled with a wide, oval-shaped mouth as she leapt solidly into the air, majestically getting all two-hundred-and-something pounds to lift off the ground and actually move in his direction.
Her head swiveled as she flew through the air and her fatty rolls flopped from side to side as she came inch, by fatty inch, closer to him.
His hands were slow as he groped blindly for the doorknob, his eyes not able to tear away from the flying woman that was soaring toward him.
"NNNOOOOOO!!!!" Annabella fumed.
It took time to find the door, almost too much time. Every second dragging on as though they lasted for an entire minute, everything rolling along.
Eventually, he found the door and he put all his weight on it to shove it closed, hastily turning the lock as the last fatal minutes of his danger came within mere inches.
The sound of a two-hundred-pound woman hitting a solid wooden door at mock one speed is indescribable! The groaning of the wood as she slides down the amazingly unbroken wood is disgustingly astounding!
Eddie stood in silence for a split-second, everything replaying in one, deft flash.
But the silence didn't last.
The beast still lived.
Suddenly, there was the sound of fingernails digging into the door as Annabella clawed her way back up onto her feet, the breath having been compressed out of her with her fall.
She wheezed a sound so horrifying that the hair on the back of Eddie's neck stood straight up on end, threatening to pull right out of his skin.
Then the wheezing suddenly became mixed with the sound of her beefy fist rhythmically pounding against the door.
He guessed that she lacked the breath to call out his name whilst she pounded, and horror struck his throat as she began to frantically turn the handle to the door, not letting the small fact that it be locked stop her.
He began to back away from the door, swearing with all his heart that he heard the wood begin to splinter beneath her pounding fist.
"No…" He whispered beneath his breath, inconceivable that it could happen, but feign to reality.
"No…no…no…no…" He shook his head and continued backing away from the door, his hands held out to protect himself and his footsteps unheeded.
That's when it happened. That's when fate took control.
He took one fatal step backward, right onto a sideways bottle that Annabella had negligently thrown to the floor while she had rummaged through the medicine cabinet.
In one, fluid motion he was thrown up into the air and smashed backwards into the ground, his head striking the side of the bathtub and leaving a long, red smear as blackness thundered over him.