BPOV

Apparently the hospital had finally replaced that piece of shit lumpy mattress with a slice of heaven! Oh this is more like it! Gah and these pillows! I wiggled my body weakly into the cloud like surface beneath me, rolled on my side and pulled the covers under my chin.

And that roll should have introduced my face to floor...

Red and heat registered behind my eyes.

Too bright!

Sunlight was streaming in my face. I buried my face in the pillows, breathing deep the cool cottony smell. Blindly reaching for the call button to get someone to close the blinds but finding nothing. That damn nurse had hidden it again. Don't they know it's cruel to tease the cancer patients? I'll have to come up with something special for her today. Apparently cancer makes me quite the caustic bitch. Go figure!

I tried to lever my eyelids from my eyeballs but they were welded shut. The lack of moisture felt like the surfaces had been blasted by sand on a caustic day at the beach, with the wind whipping the grains into furious dervishes, stripping the skin off anything in their paths. Nice way to start the day. I finally dragged them open and attempted to blink some kind of lubrication across them but no dice. It feels like the top layer just shed itself like snake skin. What good is that damn painful IV if I can't even blink without pain!

It took a few seconds for my weak eyes to factor in the glare streaming in the window and adjust to my surroundings before I registered that this was not in fact my room. Although this wasn't actually that much of a surprise, with frequent blackouts triggered by my weakening poisoned body meaning I often missed windows of time between being moved between treatments, day rooms, the fucking assisted bathroom... But this was clearly not any of those places. Where the fuck am I?

It took a few more seconds before the events of the day before or even the day before that... hell who knows how much time has passed, there's no damn calendar in my line of vision – not that I'd been keeping track of days anyway, time was measured by chemo rounds, whether the food would stay down, the number of times the interns took to locate a vein... caught up with me. The final call from the doctors, no more chances for me, end of the line the ride stops here! The anger – get out of my way; I'm not staying here to be humiliated and prodded for your entertainment! The pity in that bitch of a nurses eyes as I cleared out the draws overflowing with pills next to my bed. The acceptance in her eyes as my fist met with her face... Time sped up – the doors sliding open at reception as that low budget counsellor dared get close enough to try coaxing me back to the bed where they wanted me to lay back and wait for death simpered and fawned before they drew closed between us. Apparently his pay check and responsibilities end at the pavement line because he didn't care enough to follow. I thanked him by only using the cash in his wallet towards my transportation – I could have used the amex I found in there but the picture of his sad looking kids in there prompted the purchase of a shiny new X-box system that would be finding its way to them soon instead. Fix what's a home first asshole before you start bitching to me about processing. The truck that bought back memories of running for the first time, except this time no one I loved wished me off or sat with me, I definitely wasn't coming back, phoenix was out of the question, and there was no killers waiting to give me release. I'd keep heading south, maybe Mexico... somewhere warm for sure, I could never get warm these days, something I'd grown used to and then craved, but now sorely missed. But then I'd reached the heat and it was just oppressive, and still empty, more lonely, bigger, emptier, vast, too quiet. And I was still cold. But it was still too hot. And the truck was a piece of shit. And I should have maxed that damn amex out and got the biggest badest thing in the lot – fuck the kids, they had years left to learn to work their old man or at least get the initiative to look at one of those 'how to teach...' therapy books he must have lying around because I sure as shit hope no university produced that dickwad. And I was alone. Again. And there was no coming back this time. And the black white black white. And the pain. And the layers of my life had fallen and shattered like glass at the roadside until there was nothing but the remains of my soul oozing out onto the dirt that I'd clutched beneath my fingers, the blackness rushing in and crashed over my broken body like waves, burying me deep. And then a spark, and a mummer, and the waves stilled, but I continued drowning. Always drowning.

And now somehow I am here. In simple but elegant room flooded with the smell of cedar and magnolia, and soft light, and warmth that threatens to sink beneath my skin. The walls are a soothing cream dotted with beautiful pictures of desert and sky. And a figure sits in the chair in the corner of the room. Who waits with a stillness unbecoming of morality. Eyes closed. Hands resting on knees. His sandy blond hair drifts artfully across his eyes. But there is nothing casual about him. His stance radiates readiness, anticipation, power.

This should surprise me, scare me, have me running for the hills to save my life – waking in a room with a strange vampire in the corner of my room, and yet I am none of these things. Nothing surprises me anymore. I am life's bitch and she takes great pleasure in fucking with me. I am ready now. I found the acceptance that the doctors had bleated on about at that last meeting in the dry Texan dirt at the side of that road. Hurry up and get on with it, I'm tired of waiting. But leave me in this bed please. It is soft and I can almost imagine feeling whole here.

His eyes open.

They are red.

They glitter.

Priceless rubies in an angles face.

His features remain granite carved in the finest of marbles.

I feel the warmth dance closer to the remains of what's left of the edges of my heart.

Hell this would be mercy at this point, let's just get on with it already! I'm working on a limited time frame here buddy.

I unfurled one arm out on the bed and tap at the veins at my wrist with the other. It takes a few moments for them to rise to the surface, there is so little left now, not that they weren't clearly visible under the highly transparent taught skin that stretched over the sinew and bones there.

I pointed at the silvery pearlescent outline left by James's teeth with one shaky finger.

"Your about 8 months too late, I'm not sure how fresh it'll be. But look, I come pre-marked with directions. Insert teeth here asshole"

The man is stone.

Ten seconds pass before the surface of his granite face begins to ripple – I'm almost afraid shards will splinter off, he's quite striking for a killer and it would be a shame to ruin that nose and that bone structure.

His entire body quivers and undulates in the chair before bending at the waist and erupting into full on belly clutching laughter, trying desperately to regain breath he did not need. Apparently I'm quite the entertainer – I would take this act on the road if it hadn't already run out.