Just Don't Die

Wake Up

"Wake up, Blaine."

Oh good, he's stuck in the Groundhogs day of psychotic breaks. He opened his eyes to the darkness. The thought that the voice was different barely crossed his mind when a sound jolted his mind back into reality.

*beep beep beep*

Was that an alarm on his phone? His head pounded again, possibly more so than when he woke up yesterday. He flailed his hand around his bed, trying to find his phone.

As much as he wanted to stay in bed and sleep through this delusion, he knew he had to turn off the alarm on his phone. At least he had his phone now. He rubbed his eyes again and looked around the room. Nothing was coming into focus. It was like there was Vaseline in his eyes. Was he back in the mental hospital? Did his roommate play a practical joke on him by putting something in his eyes? The thought made him shudder.

*beep beep beep*

Bleary eyed, Blaine got out of bed and followed the sound to a black box with red blurry numbers on a dresser. This wasn't the mental hospital. Was he at Dr. Latourney's place? He blinked and rubbed his eyes again while squinting at the still blaring alarm clock. Even with his eyes squinted he could barely make out the red numbers glowing in the dark. A blurry 6:31 glowed in the small black box. He brought it close enough to read the "snooze" button on the top and pushed it as silence filled the room.

Blaine scanned the dark room, still squinting against the darkness and pounding headache. Aside from a few blurry posters, the walls were completely barren. He looked over and saw a closet door and another door. The dresser against the light blue wallpaper and dark brown shag carpet, littered with clothes felt vaguely familiar.

Like a sudden clap in a silent room, the overwhelming feeling of recognition hit him in the pit of his stomach. This is not possible. He had to be dreaming, or hallucinating, or... dead. That's it, the memories from yesterday appearing in his head. That crazy doctor had killed him and this was nothing more than a faint memory of his room as a child. The last synapses firing in his dying brain.

He looked around the room again, realizing for the first time that he was in his underwear. He looked down at his pale, blurry body in the dark. He grabbed at his stomach, or more specifically, he grabbed at the fat now covering his midsection. Now, he was sure he was dead and he was in hell. After joining the army and realizing how out of shape he was in basic training, he had taken great pride in training his body to be a strong as his genes would allow. He had sacrificed so much time and energy just so he would never again be what he was as a teenager. Now, he died and will get to live eternity as a fat, awkward teenager. Perfect.

He walked over to the door in the darkness, stumbling over clothes and whatever else was strewn across the floor. Through muscle memory and a deeply ingrained habit, he quickly turned on the light switch without having to look for it. Light flooded the bedroom and even through the intensity of the headache and the blurriness of his eyes, the room was undeniably his. The nostalgia of his entire childhood quickly and violently settled into his stomach. He needed to find a bathroom and fast.

Without another thought, Blaine jerked open his bedroom door and ran directly down the hall and into the bathroom, immediately emptying his stomach. He sat down on the cold linoleum and leaned his back against the bathtub next to the toilet and stared at the bathroom door. Everything was still blurry and his head still throbbed, but there was no doubt this was the bathroom of his childhood. Even the smell was the same.

The memories from the day before kept falling, jumbled, into Blaine's consciousness. He didn't truly believe for one second that it would be possible to go back in time. However, at this particular moment, nothing he was seeing was believable. He squinted down and stared at the two pink, callous free hands in his lap, trying to force his mind to make any logical sense.