lets hope it's brain damage -short story

Let’s hope it’s brain damage!!!

When I was about seventeen my friends and I would all go and explore the city drains. We were young, unemployed and bored. We had maps of those blue stone tunnels and underground systems like you would not believe. We were the kings of that underground world.
Drain five was my favourite and still is. The sound of the dirty running water and the familiar walls coated in graffiti and gang tags to colourful and elaborate to read properly, just as was intended. Sometimes we would see a young street kid disappear out the end of a drain as we entered it. It was good to know that if the world upstairs ever got to heavy we could just dive into the nearest storm drain and be on home turf.
I remember the day we were being chased by a security team down drain seven. We were sprinting up the wet and uneven blue stone floor, the only light irregular bursts from one of the guard’s torches. I don’t know what it was I slipped on probably that gross orange algae that seems to coat everything. I felt the solid stony punch as my head smacked painfully into the floor and glimpsed a security guard with one hell of an “oh fuck” expression on his face before a slow wet fade out.

When I woke in hospital everything was different. Everywhere I looked shadows flitted and dived, rolling out of my field of vision. My head snapped left then right, the muscles in my neck feeling like hard brittle fibre’s that were painfully breaking every time I’d move my head. I looked back and forth, confused, hurting, thinking I could see some dark form out of the corner of my eye, only to have to disperse when I looked at it properly.
A nurse came into my room. I could tell she was a nurse because of the uniform and her sensible shoes. I looked up at her face. The details came spinning into focus out of a sea of skin colored blurs and visual confusion, “what’s happened to me?” I cried.
The swelling of an ocular something, the disruption of a neural something, the deficit of something. The nurse’s medical jargon was cold and intentional. I had no idea what was wrong with me and she was not about to tell me. As I was lifted from the bed she said with no insurance I was lucky to be alive and that whatever the problem was it would probably soon go away.
I was on the street in minutes, staggering and swaying like a madman. Disgustingly distorted seas of faces rolled and parted. Pain and confusion washed over me. Ghost like images of passers-by darted around me, staying well clear. The world seemed one big sick nightmare. Shadows lunged at me from the corners of my eyes, sending me running frightened in the other direction. I imagined what I must have looked like from a security camera, a deluded or drug fucked teenager staggering and collapsing at the sight of every passer-by. Confusion and fear everywhere I went to my only salvation. The drains.
I sat on the cold blue stone floor and looked off into the comforting darkness. No blurs or ghost like faces just the safe reassuring black.
I thought of the bright bubbly clichéd face of the nurse who wouldn’t even tell me what was wrong with my own brain. It would pass. It had to pass. No-one could live like this.
After night had well and truly fallen I ventured out of drain five and made my way home. The people I saw looked steadier, sometimes I would see someone with a large shadow or weird solar spot hanging over them making the details of their face hard to make out but it was getting better. I would get better.
I stayed locked inside my house for the next couple of days. Just listening to Ramone’s cds, drinking coffee and waiting for myself to get better. In the end hunger forced me outside.

I opened the door the sun hitting my poor unprepared eyes, making them twitch and glaze over. It lessened as I walked to the local supermarket. People’s faces were solid like before. Sometimes I would see an unusually lively shadow or a massive solar spot but they didn’t seem to come at me like that fist horrid day.
I bought a load of frozen pizza and some orange juice. I even scored an extra long look and a smile from the cute check out girl. Outside the supermarket near the taxi rank a religious nut stood harassing innocent shoppers and raving about Armageddon. I laughed to myself thinking something’s never change.
As I walk off I could hear him addressing my back “ you there son, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and personal savoir?” he said as he repeatedly tapped my shoulder. I sighed then turned, ready to smile and nod til he left.
The very second I saw his face I screamed in utter terror and fell backwards onto the ground, my arms jarring hard against the sun warmed ash-felt. I looked up him as I shook with fear. His eyes, nose and mouth all seemed to be floating in his face, like they were hovering as his face seemed to rock and sway like a sickening ocean of skin. His terrible eyes didn’t even address me when he spoke, Those hideous watery orbs just glazed and cocked towards the sun as words wholly unconnected with his mind spouted from his lips.
“what’s wrong with you boy” he shouted, his blistered lips turning upwards and his head tilting backwards to an angle that made the stomach lurch for it was surely broken. Still, he shouted “confess and you will be free” the words came crawling out with a disease-like life of there own. Behind him and above him a wall of shadows began to build as he spoke.
“sorry” I mutter “sorry, sorry” I babble inanely as I crawl backwards, bloody handed with tears of fear streaming from my eyes “I just got out of the hospital, eye problems” I say. His alien and unhuman seeming face looms closer, the skin wobbling and growing translucent, showing the remains of human teeth and malformed cheek bones beneath that foul mess of parasitical human flesh. “let the power of the LORD heal you” he shouted as a revolting parody of a human hand reached for me. My bawl reaches a high pitch scream of the insane as I stand and run madly up the isles of cars.




I sit on the cold blue stone floor and look off into the comforting darkness. I hold my head and cry, feeling the warm salty tears run down the lines in my hands. What the hells wrong with me?
I think of the cute check out girl. Short scruffy red hair, sexy kinda pouty lips. A small nose stud she wasn’t meant to have, blue eyes, nice skin. Everything was going fine in the super market. I could see perfectly, I mean I even counted the number of freckles across her nose. Twelve.
Then that disgusting religious nut on the other hand. He was like a cross between a hideous reproduction of a human and a dodgy eighties video game. Changing all the time but just a fraction to slow so you could see flickers and painful flashes of black. Why did those people who looked like solid shadow just stand behind him, like they were backing him up. They just loomed there like big controlling vultures.
It was like I could look right into these people’s hearts and see what was there. ‘ha’ my laugh fired like a single bitter shot echoing all the way down the blue stone tunnel, more like I fell on my head and fucked up my brain so I can’t see properly. I waited until night had well and truly fallen then walked home.
I Stayed locked up in my house for weeks. Living off frozen pizza and orange juice. All day I would just try tell myself that I was brain damaged and stay calm. My previous conviction against drinking lay discarded with the empty cans of moonshine that piled up next to the couch. Any state other than reality at this time was great.
I tried not to watch TV even though most of the people were normal. Even seinfeld was normal. After a few weeks I was fairly confident that I was getting better. I hadn’t seen anything weird on the TV in the last three day and even the people I looked at through my windows were reassuringly normal.
I looked up at my big fake wood grain sided TV and smiled, maybe I was alright again. As I looked on Scooby Doo was replaced by a news flash, some crap about the pope on tour, it cut quickly to a live feed of the pope giving a sermon to massive throng of cheering people.
I lunged back in my chair, tears running down my face wishing the padding would swallow me, protect me from this hideous image. The alien and corrupt figure of the ancient seeming pope filled me with dread. His blistered facial features rolled and wandered, huge blue/black veins charting a disgusting course through the semi transparent whole of his diseased face.
On top of him loomed a massive black shadow as solid and smooth as polished rock. It’s gigantically wicked clawed feet digging deeply into huge gapping rents in the pope’s dead flesh. Riding his back like a chariot. The sick spindly black arms spread out above, thin dripping threads of deceit and lies fall from it’s finger tips, controlling the once human like a marionette puppet of vacant flesh and bone.
As the words issue from the popes prone lips, black filth spurts forward. Crawling, sliding and oozing out onto the audience and from my tv speakers as if alive with a maggot-like life of their own. I feel the room grow cold and the hair on the back of my neck begin to prickle. A sense of utter horror and cosmic alienation spread over my body. Shadows formed in the corners of my eyes and began to wheel and dive, putting on a show for the next member of the converted.
I jump up from my couch in hysterics, my foot kicking the screen which fly’s back and smashes against the wall. Filling the room with the smell of burning electrical parts and smoke. The shadows stop moving.
Then they start towards me with a cold intent about them. Their calm mock hands spread into claws as they advance. I turn and run up my hallway flinging open the door before me. The solid shadows seem everywhere at once, everywhere I go.
I look above me as I run out the doorway. I see it above me, I feel it’s clawed feet digging slowly into my sides. It’s black corruption running into my body willing it to give in, to die. The black threads drop down in front of my eyes, to my hands and feet. The threads pierce my skin trying to gain control, I scream as I run my tears blurring my vision even more. Just as I draw near the entrance to the stairwell my foot snags on the ancient orange carpet. The side of my head slams hard into the metal edged doorway, accompanied by a sickening crunch.

I sit on the cold blue stone floor and looked off into the comforting darkness. After getting out of the hospital it was hard to remember what happened to me. The specialist they got for me says I had damaged the visual centre of my brain, which made me see things and act crazy. I guess he’s probably right, I can barely remember anything at all.
I walk to the local supermarket to get some frozen pizza and orange juice. I get an extra smile from a cute check out girl. Outside the super market a religious nut is harassing people. For some reason he really seems to scare me, like there is something I should know about him. Behind him stand the rest of his church, women and little kids. The kids stare off into the sun like zombies. You know what? I really think I hate religion.