The Spiralling

Chapter 23: Death by Embolism

There was a certain unnatural whiteness as I opened my eyes. They felt as dry as the Sahara when I did. All I could see was nothing- for a second there i thought I was blind due to the freak electrical accident I had, but thank God I did not have to live with that fear and apprehension for long.

I was expecting the same scene I had seen just before I was knocked out, but I was somewhere else, somewhere different. Somewhere that wasn't so wet, so full of dead men and discarded guns.

A white shroud of a blanket was covering the lower half of my body and below my head was a similarly hued pillow and bed. The rest of the room were shades of beige, brown and black. It felt like paradise especially after what I've been through, peaceful and quiet.

For another second there, I thought I was in heaven, until I shifted my head to the left to realise that I was on IV drip. Angels and rescued souls do not need IV drips, and neither would bandages have any use in heaven either.

Like waking up from a long night of comic mania, it all gushed back into my mind- the pain all over my body. Without knowing it in the fight I had with Mindy, I was bruised all over, cut everywhere. The worse were the deep gashes in my chest and stomach. Despite the thick bandages covering them, I could still feel the cold air rushing through the deep crevices in my skin. The exposed nerve endings were crying out to me- I felt like fainting all over again. My only way to fight that urge was to remember that those gashes should have been stitched up by now- the eerie feeling I had revolving around those injuries were just phantom aftershocks, I reasoned.

It wasn't even the worse part. I started remembering- right from the first day this shit started boiling all the way down to what seemed like moments ago. All the finest details were there. The humiliation and defeat at the hands of Demoness, my chance meeting with Grandmaster that ended in disaster with Marcus getting all shot up- whether he was still alive was an open question, a very good one at that.

I remember the four of us meeting up- Me, Mindy, Aldan and Michael, and I certainly remember how only the two of us made it out. If I could relive the entire last week, would I be able to recall the fight I had moments ago? Certainly. I remembered fighting Demoness, only to discover that Mindy was her, only to discover that I've done more harm than I had ever imagined to regret, that the harm I did was irreversible, and all this was not just towards my dear Mindy.

In other words, not only had I single-handedly killed Big-Daddy, mind-fucked Mindy to detour her from being a good superhero to an even better arch-villain, but I had also caused the death of those dozens of people who died the past few days under Demoness or Mindy's reign of terror.

Just when I thought I would be alone for a few hours, more than enough time for me to weep without being seen, a certain person knocked on the door to my ward and entered. Surprised, I quickly swallowed up my self-pity and sadness to present a more prideful, tougher survivor's front. It was a little too much to swallow however that I could only do it halfway. A few tears had escaped my grasp on manhood.

"Dave, are you well?" I recognised that voice, that strong, elderly and wise baritone. I could only muster up enough energy and enthusiasm to say a weak 'hey'. The only thing keeping me from going to sleep or sinking back into unconsciousness out of despair was my concern for the traumatised Mindy.

"Where's Mindy?" I had to ask. New York aside, everything I've done so far was all in the name of saving her.

"Let us not venture into that first..." The Grandmaster replied. I became distraught and angry at him- he should have known how much Mindy means to me, either that, or maybe he knew it too well.

"Tell me!" Where I found the energy to yell at a 50 plus year old man who was probably ten times as wise and powerful was way beyond me, but then again, it was a miracle that I even survived this long, and it was a bigger mystery how I managed to subdue Demoness- or Mindy, my Godsister, albeit by frying my hair off at the same time.

"Dave..." I could see all kinds of emotions raging through his mind. It wasn't very obvious, but then again I knew, as people grew older they learn better how to hide their raw feelings.

"Fuck it! Just tell me!" Something was up, I knew it. It was just a matter of what. From the severity of his mood, I could tell it was something huge.

"Mindy, she..." Different ideas were presenting themselves to me, the same way as last time when I tried writing comic books and like that time, all those ideas were bad. She could have gone into a coma because of me- I know what electricity could do. She could be cold and dead, "The girl was mentally unsound... I had sent her to a mental institution."

I wasn't able to decide whether it was good thing or a bad thing at this point. Was it better if she was an unforgiving, cold-blooded little mass murderer? Or was it preferable that she was a crackpot all along?

"All will be well, I had made sure she was put under the care of an old friend." In my mind, I was thinking, 'does it matter?' I've heard about mental cases- they take a very long, long, long time to recover, what more for Mindy who had some fucked up short-circuits in her brain that convinced her to kill dozens upon dozens indiscriminately, "He'll take care of her, you have my oath."

"Wait, but she's badly injured and- " And then, I remembered how much I had hurt her in our last dance in the rain. A broken rib or a few, a broken right arm, probably a fractured leg, plenty of bruises...

"Dave, it has been three days before you came to." I was shocked but at the same time there's no surprise. I was exhausted, badly beaten and finally shocked half to death by my own stupidity, "Mindy was given the necessary attention before she was sent to the institution."

"How is she?" I had to know, yet the more I understand, the more I get worried and anxious, the more I would blame myself and think of emptying that bag of colourless shit and replacing it with air for pumping into my vein. Death by embolism, was that the right medical term? But then again on second thought, it seemed too painful a way to go, so I banished that thought away immediately, not that I would really entertain suicide.

'Her body will heal, but her soul... My friend, Doctor Paul's diagnosis and prognosis are both unfortunately poor." My stomach was twisting at the thought of it. Mindy was fine to me just a week ago, even a day ago, before she was 'kidnapped'.

"How bad is it?" She seemed sane whenever she was around me, or at least just shaken and recovering from having lost her real father. How could this be? How could this be? How on Earth, Earth-2, Earth-3 and the planet Krypton and X could this be, I kept asking myself.

"The doctor- he said had had seen nothing like it, yet he is a renown practicing psychiatrist for over 30 years." The Grandmaster went on as I stared blankly at him- I was staring at something else, at a Mindy I imagined in my head to be quite insane, having mutilated herself beyond recognition, having easily fought her way out of her strait-jacket, "I had seen shellshocked, traumatised soldiers from many foreign wars driven mad by the horrors they had seen and experienced, he said. The good doctor, you could say he introduced me to my craft- he said Mindy is more mentally damaged than every one of those patriots put together."

Death by embolism suddenly seemed like a very good idea.