Teeth

Awake

I wake up and the alarm is playing some jangling pop song, the kind where you know all the lyrics and you really kind of wish that you didn't.

Although to be honest I kind of just wish I weren't awake at all. My head aches ferociously, and I feel like I could sleep for the rest of the day and still feel just as exhausted. Must have had one too many b...

Beers.

Except... I don't... think I made it to the bar last night. Did I?  I don't remember having any beer at all.

 I remember...  the streetlight tilting, or everything tilting. It felt like the world had shifted without me, and everything was slowly drifting sideways to me, thick and slow...  And it was cold. And lips, bright red lips and thick lashed eyes.

I still feel heavy. Fuzzy and sluggish, and the bed, with the mattress pad I bought a couple weeks back, is sink-into-it comfortable in ways that almost make it easy to ignore the song demanding that I jump up and throw my hands in the air and spend my rent money on shots.

 Nothing hurts... outside my head anyway (which is pounding mercilessly to the beat of the music.)

Nothing has a mock petrichor of waste and meat and copper. That's... that's good. That's great. It means the glitter of a streetlight off an hunting knife I can see behind my eyelids is just my imagination at work. Too many drinks. Too many ideas kicking around from being pushed to consider writing something edgy. "People love edgy", said my agent. Fuck you too Fred. Thanks for that.

I open my eyes as much as I dare and blink at the sun blasting through the slats in the blinds, my eyes instantly watering.

The light feels just a little too bright and makes my head pound harder, though I am relieved to at least have been spared the usual nausea that usually comes hand in hand with a hangover headache. It has to be an hangover headache.

  It has to be, even though I still don't remember having had a drop of beer pass my lips, though I can still remember some of the other parts vividly, down to the smell of skunky beer and bad breath. Just lying there, replaying it in my head and I can feel cold prickle of fear raising goosebumps on my arms and make my hands tremble... not much... but not much is still enough.

I'm sure it was a dream, but it was such a vivid dream, that in spite of the thunderous headache, I prop myself up slowly on my elbows and gingerly pat down my stomach through the worn thin cloth of one of my favorite sleep t-shirts.

It isn't even tender. There's no pain, no blood, nothing that suggests anything happened. I shouldn't be surprised by this... I shouldn't feel a wave of relief, but I do anyway, as illogical as it is.

After all;  if I'd actually been stabbed, I'm pretty sure I would be in the hospital right now, hooked up to something or other and being lectured by at least one of the Crew for being so stupid.

Maybe it was a bad chicken wing or mozerella stick. Maybe someone got really creative mixing the drinks or... any number of things.  Something totally reasonable and mundane, hell... night terrors even... just... ordinary brain hiccoughs.

Relieved, I collapsed back onto the pillows and let the annoying song continue to belt out something about a club scene that sounds far more lively and exciting than anything I have ever been to, and just let the sunshine soak into me, in spite of the headache, until it slowly warms the fearful chill and warms me to the bones.

Just a nightmare. Everything is fine, and everyone will probably going to have a blast regaling me over the idiot I undoubtedly made of myself last night. I probably danced on tables or sang Karaoke or something awful.