Chapter 61

A couple days later, after talking to a few random people and being put on anti-depressants, still being bored out of my fucking mind, some doctor came in to tell me a situation. She told me that there were some rooming problems, that the hospital was getting too crowded, that they'd have it settled within a couple days, but that just temporary I'd have a roommate. As if things weren't messed up enough, right?

It wasn't so bad, I guess. Raven and Saphrin were still around, hadn't started traveling again yet, came by every day to spend time with me. Mark, too. And I was so desperate for his company that I ignored all those things that had been said between us, wanted to save it for after the hospital.

The roommate was some guy named Chris. He wasn't so bad, I guess. We didn't talk to each other that much, he didn't watch wrestling so he didn't know who I was, and that was good. We pretty much ignored each other, he seemed pretty out of it anyway. He was there because of some drug problem, seemed all distracted.

That was the day that they took the bandages off my burned arm. I could kind of move it then, it didn't hurt so painfully, just was sore. I could do certain things with it, and they said I could start a kind of physical therapy then if I wanted to, but I said I didn't. When they took the bandages off I could only stare at what I'd done to myself, amazed. It brought back weird memories of when I was a kid, when it was all healing. Weird because I didn't know how to feel about it, because I'd been so battered and bruised that I couldn't get upset over it now. I was too detached for that at the time.

It also made me think about Paul…I wondered what was going on with him, what he was doing with his life. It wasn't that I liked him, no, I hated him, as I always have. It's just that…being in the hospital, being drained by all the drugs, being bored, was making me think too much. I was only wondering because…it was just a strange thought. He was alive, somewhere in the world, living…I just wondered what he was up to. He was up to something, right?

Maybe he was dying. That would be pretty fun, right?

Anyway…Mark had decided to take a while off, talked it out with Vince and everything. He was staying in a hotel in the same town as the hospital, the same place where Raven and Saph were staying for a while. Raven was going to leave for the road again, Saph was gonna stay for a while longer. I appreciated that. Maybe we'd built some bridges over the whole thing, because she didn't seem as distant with me at all since we'd had that talk. And since then we'd both apologized to each other…I felt happy that she was healing too. I felt really bad for not seeing how hurt she'd been by everything, as bad as I had been.

She was being really good to me, though. That was what was important, that was what made me forget to hold a grudge against her for being cold to me for the previous couple months.

When they took the bandages off, and I had more mobility in my arm from it, it started hurting again. On and off it would, now it did again. When I complained about it, they just gave me more painkillers, ones which made me drowsy. Chris was staring at me, I bet he was jealous. They were trying to give him rehab, weren't giving him any medication. I felt kind of bad for him, actually. He seemed like a nice kid, he was in his twenties I think. And that afternoon I'd already had Saphrin and Mark visiting me, no one had come to see him. He was so mysterious…

I was thinking about him when I fell asleep. I was wondering about who he was, why he were there, what he was like. I figured if we were both going to be in the same room, even "temporarily" as they put it, I would get to know him. I made a promise to myself that when I woke up I'd make conversation with him. The room was getting hazy around me as I thought about it, as I looked from his side of the room and the bed they'd shoved in there to window next to me, outside, over the trees, looking at what I could see of the parking lot. When I looked at the ceiling everything just kind of smeared together.

It wasn't like falling asleep, I felt kind of like someone was pulling me down. Like I was drowning. The dream world and the hospital room kind of overlapped as I lay there, as I tried to make my vision focus, as the music started to fill my head. Renholder. It was another song. By A Perfect Circle. I knew that I was going to have a nightmare again. I wanted to wake up, I thrashed around in darkness, blinded, wanting to get away. But…the reality of it sunk in as I calmed down. I'd been drugged, it wasn't my choice, I wasn't going to wake up.

The song just surrounded me, in blackness. I couldn't tell where it was coming from and didn't know where I was. I was really disoriented, felt like how it was when I was unconscious in the hospital, when Mark was there to talk to me. I tried calling out to him but made no sound.

As disorienting as the music was, it was also kind of peaceful. After struggling for a moment I finally relaxed, tried to figure out what was going on. Over the music I could hear quiet voices, not whispering, but just far away. Slowly it got louder, and I could see something in the blackness. Hear things, over the music, too. Slowing fading in was Portishead, Mourning Air. It got confused, mixing with Renholder.

Beth's high, almost weak sounding voice was strung into everything else. "Have I got the strength to ask? Beyond this window I feel so alone until we have total honestly. If I tremble or fall, I'm reaching out in this mourning air…"

I could smell food, it made me feel warm inside. And the voice grew louder beneath the two intertwining songs. Just as I grew accustomed to the song, it faded out, focusing just on Amber. She was in the kitchen, cooking something, singing to herself as she stirred something around in a saucepan. She was singing something by Red Hot Chili Peppers, pacing the room to the refrigerator, wiping her hands on the thighs of her jeans.

"And now I see you in a beautiful and different light…he's just a man and any damage done will be all right…" she sang. She grabbed a bottle of milk out of the fridge, walked back to where she was standing, poured some into a cup before putting it back. She was standing next to the stove again when Jake waddled in, rubbed against her feet. She giggled, took a pinch of breading in her fingers from a bowl on the counter and knelt down, feeding it to him and stroking his neck. "Call…out my name…. Call…and I came…" she sang. Her voice was so sweet and beautiful.

I was trying to talk to her but couldn't find the voice inside me. So I just stared, my chest feeling like it was falling. She wore no shoes, or socks. She had a toe ring on, her toenails painted platinum purple, matching her hair. She scratched the top of Jake's head, treating him like a cat. "Dusting off your savior…the life that you had narrated, you were my man…" she closed her eyes and sighed, a lazy, happy smile crossing her, so that she almost started laughing. She scooped Jake into her arms, pressed her face into him, lightly hugging. "I love him, Jake," she said. Then giggled insanely. She sat down on the floor, put Jake in her hap. Jake nibbled her fingers on one hand, she placed the other over her stomach. "I'll tell him soon," she said. "He'll be really happy…I know how much he'd love a son…"

Did this make me want to cry? The drugs were diluting my emotions. I was having trouble deciding how I felt. Was I happy because I could see that she really loved me? Should I smile over that or start bawling? I just wanted to be with her again…

Then I heard a door slam. Her head snapped up, medium length strands of purple falling over her eyes as she looked up in worry, as she stood up, slowly letter her fingers uncoil and her arm fall limply to the side. Silence fell around each of us, she stood completely still, mouth opened a little. I couldn't tell where these images were coming from…in the corner of my eye, yet I could see it very clearly. I was actually quite confused when I tried to figure out where the images came from. I just saw them, didn't know how. I wasn't there in that kitchen with her, where I could love her, where I could protect her from this ominous force.

Renholder swelled around me as we both heard the footsteps. Slow, heavy footsteps. She stepped backward soundlessly, her feet making no noise on the tiled floor. Her eyes darted around the room. The footsteps stopped.

"Kane?" she called out. She sounded all weak and scared and feminine. There was no answer. Jake started walking out of the room, she reached out to grab him but he was already almost at the door into the back hallway, and she bit down on her lip, eyebrows coming together, not running after him. More footsteps came. "Kane…?" she asked again, though it was almost a whisper. Her hands were shaking.

She turned her head towards the doorway, all of a sudden looking right at me. Her eyes were in direct line of mine, except…I wasn't there. It was like a coincidence or something that she was staring right at me, I was just in her way. My heart, wherever it was, started feeling kind of icy. I was confused, I could feel my body but it wasn't there, as if my eyes were just closed. I couldn't see anything except these images of Amber. The music got so loud that I couldn't hear anything except that anymore. It made my stomach churn.

Amber's eyes filled with darkness and worry.

"Who's there?" I saw her mouth form the words, even though I still couldn't hear her. "Hello?" she said. I wanted to scream to her but couldn't do it.

The song never ended, never really began, either, just kind of looped around, never breaking. I felt so lost as I stared at her.

Then…

I don't really know what happened. Everything just got kind of slow. She turned her head, the hair that shifted was in slow motion, her eyes were still going right the hell through me. I was paralyzed watching this, the song surrounded me and lulled me into being mesmerized, everything stopped moving…it was so quiet and still…

There was a loud sound that came with the flash. Like a bang, or a kind of rip. Within the barriers of the sound flashed in front of me a different Amber, still standing there, still looking at me, but not…her. It was the Amber I'd seen at her funeral, her hair curled, cheeks blushing with makeup, color drained from her face. For only that flash I saw her eyes, not clearly enough to really understand, just seeing smears and clouds of light blue where they should've been. Then she was back to normal staring at me. I felt like I was shaking, couldn't stand watching this but didn't know what else to do. For an eternity she stared again, eyes cold, beyond me, the fire slowly dying from them.

Out of nowhere, all I could hear was screaming. Pained screaming, agonizing. Her image flashed again, I saw blood dripping down her face, down into her eyes, down onto her breasts and soaking her shirt so that the color couldn't even be recognized. Fuck fuck fuck I was getting desperate, I wanted to help her so badly, I wanted to be there, I wanted to stop this, but…I couldn't. I just had to stand there and watch, the way I watched my parents burn alive, I was watching this.

She was really screaming at the top of her lungs, it was killing me. Off in the distance I heard Claudette crying, and Amber started to sob. Things were crashing down onto the floor, mixed in with her cries.

The clean, unharmed Amber never came back to me in image from then on, as she screamed. I felt like crying, I could feel tears on my face, wherever that was, the music faded out so that all I could hear was the brief piano line. Amber stared at me with her bloody eyes…they turned gray, then blue…then gray again…her whole body was turning gray, fucking rotting, decaying right in front of me. I wanted to close my eyes and not look…but I realized that they were already closed.

"Kaaaane," she cried out. "Kane where are you? Don't let this happen to me…our baby, Kane…" she was choking on her own blood, I heard it, but only saw her rotting corpse before me, her eyes sinking in the sockets, lips pulling back to show blackening teeth. I wanted to vomit.

Why did the world work like this? Why were such beautiful creatures ruined this way? Why me? Why the fuck me? Oh my God, I couldn't see anything but the veins that were showing beneath her skin, deepening in color, the hair which thinned and an the pieces of her that were turning to dust. Mold was creeping up in all the little creases that her face had created, shadows slowly growing. It made me so fucking sick, yet there was nothing I could do about it.

Her eyes flattened out, like dead grapes, shriveling to nothing, leaving black holes in her face. How I missed the color they once bore…

Hey…

Amber…

Hey, man…

I sat up abruptly when I woke up, feeling the small hand on my own before anything else. Thinking it just might have been her, I got all excited and turned, and saw…blue hair. Glasses. A nose ring. My heart fell as I looked a this girl. She couldn't have been more than maybe seven or eighteen, about five feet tall, standing next to my bed. My throat felt dry, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't talk.

"Hey…" she said softly. "Are you okay? I think you were having a nightmare or something…"

"Thanks," I said to her, not knowing what else I could say. When I closed my eyes, I still saw…those images. I hated it, it actually made me sick, so that after a while I finally got up and staggered into the bathroom. I was there about a half hour, vomiting, then just sitting back on the floor, trying to calm down. My heart was racing, sweat was breaking out all over my face and my neck. Everything was so fucked up.

The girl's blue hair…didn't anger me, necessarily, but made me nervous. Amber just as easily could've had blue hair, rather than purple, and the colors were very similar to each other…it was like a different version of Amber…like…Claudie…

Would Claudette have looked like that? Could I just pretend that this was fifteen years later and that she was all grown up? She was visiting me in the hospital cause she loved me, because I suffered and injury and she cared about me, wanted to spend time with me. Would this place be easier to cope with if I just…pretended that the blue haired chick was my guest instead of Chris's?

I don't know, maybe it would kind of amuse me if nothing else. I was bored, after all.

I cleaned myself up and went back into the room, laid back down in bed. The girl looked at me, nervously, turned away as soon as I looked back. My hands wouldn't stay still, I was bored, I was trying not to stare at her so lovingly as if she was my daughter,  I knew it would've creeped her out.

After the sun went down she grabbed up her things to go. I was lying back in bed, my eyes closed but I wasn't sleeping. I kept seeing that gross vision of Amber, I couldn't help it. It was so disgusting…but keeping my eyes open was just exhausting.

The girl walked to Chris's bed, I was listening to her footsteps. She kissed him, probably on the cheek. I heard her voice, really quietly. She must've thought I was sleeping. "I'll come see you tomorrow, hun. Just relax, get some rest. And be careful, your roommate is really fucking creepy," she said to him. My body felt shocked by the words, it weighed me down inside, a great…embarrassment? Damn, the hospital had really messed everything up, I wasn't sure the word I wanted to use to describe it.

I waited a few minutes after she left, didn't want to make it blatantly obvious to Chris that I'd heard what she'd said. I kept it discreet as I left after she did, went to use the payphone because I absolutely didn't want those nurses hearing anything.

Mark answered his phone, knowing it was me. "What's up?"

My stomach was turning. "Mark…"

"Yeah? What is it, Kane?"

I closed my eyes, saw Amber's rotten eyes holding me in place. I felt like I was going to vomit again. "Can you umm…" my voice fell apart. I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Please, I'll do anything you want, Mark. I'll go to therapy, take meds, whatever…just…let me stay with you?"

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"I can't stay here another minute. Mark, I'm begging you…"