I've harnessed my exhaustive photo manipulation skills (i.e. I downloaded Gimp and fucked around for an hour) to bring you this amazing image for my NaNoWriMo Novel. Enjoy it, and this next chapter!
Thank fucking God. Is that my coffee? Jesus, what did you guys do, grow the beans first? Please tell me you got my order right. One milk, two sugars. You know what, fuck it, I don't care if it's gas station coffee at this point.
Oh Christ. That's... that's pretty fucking bad. Is this gas station coffee? You know what - I don't even give a shit any more.
No, it's fine - I wasn't expecting Starbucks. I just miss Wawa coffee. My dad managed one before he died. I basically grew up there. Hell it was the only way to spend any time with him, since the damn things are all open 24 hours.
What do you mean you've never been to a Wawa? Jesus, I'm really not in Kansas any more, am I.... Well do me a favor, next time you're in the Mid-Atlantic, stop in. It's a lot better than a 7-Eleven.
Yeah, no, I'm getting to it! Jesus, can't I just enjoy my coffee for a second? Where the hell was I, anyway?
Right, the shipping container. That fucking shipping container. I don't know how long I was stuck in there. As soon as that bastard Simon slammed the door on me, I pretty much flipped my shit for God knows how long. Curled up in a ball on the cold steel floor - is it steel? Aluminum? I don't know what they make shipping containers out of. All I know is that it was cold, and dirty.
I really let go, considering all the shit I had been dealing with that morning. Waking up soaked in blood, complete stranger in my house, that bizarre ambulance accident apparently caused by some psycho who had the ability to control me - and I guess anyone around him - with his voice, and then getting locked up in a fucking shipping container because some nameless fucker on the other end of a FaceTime call was orchestrating the whole goddamn thing. You better bet I flipped my shit in there.
I don't know how long it took me to stop wailing. Eventually I cried myself out, simply from exhaustion. I might have passed out for a bit, too - when I came to, I felt like I was frozen stiff. I knew I had to get up and at least walk around a little to keep from cramping up, but the darkness of the inside of that shipping container was terrifying.
You ever been inside a closed shipping container? Those things are darker than the inside of the Devil's asshole. There was maybe a little bit of light seeping in from the door, but it was closed and locked tight enough to give me barely a glimmer. The door didn't give an inch, either.
So, half-blind, I decided to begin exploring the inside of my new home. When Simon had frog-marched me in there God knows how long before that moment, I caught a quick glimpse of a dirty floor, filled with a few dry leaves that had accumulated in the corners, but from what I remembered of that look the rest of the shipping container had been empty.
Those things are around 40 feet long, so I had plenty of space to walk down and back, but I was terrified of smashing my nose into one of the walls. I shuffled, shivering, with my right hand along one wall and my left hand in front of me, leaves crackling under my feet.
I had started at the door to the shipping container, so I went all the way down the right side until I found the back end with my hand. I turned, stepping gingerly, and took the less-than-a-handful of steps it took to reach the opposite wall of my prison. The dirt and leaves swirling around my feet and ankles made my skin crawl.
When I found the next corner, I pivoted once again, shuffling on my heels until I was aiming back the way I had come. I took a tentative step forward and shrieked as my bare foot brushed up against something that wasn't a leaf.
Oh god what the fuck was that!?
I squeezed my eyes shut - though I don't know why, looking back on it now - and probed forward with my foot again. I took me a second to find it, but finally there it was. A soft lump, irregularly shaped, relatively small. It didn't move much when I prodded it.
I sank down to the floor of the shipping container, fanning my hands out as I searched for the strange object. Finally I brushed over it and yelped. It was furry, but cold. I felt what could only be little paws.
Oh Christ a fucking mouse, are you kidding me? Well at least I've got something to eat now.
I sighed, sitting back on my haunches, and felt around until I could feel the thing's tail. I picked it up. "Lovely," I said. The sound of my own voice surprised me. I cupped it with my other hand and felt something sticky and wet on its fur. With another cry I dropped the mouse - more like flung it, really - and then began shaking my wrist violently to get the residue of what I imagined was the remnants of little mousie blood off my fingers.
The mouse thumped softly to the floor of the shipping container. I grimaced, pulled my left hand close to my nose, and sniffed, not knowing what I was expecting to smell. The damp, sticky feeling was still there, coating my thumb and forefingers as I rubbed them together. I was about to wipe my hand on a corner of the now-filthy hospital gown I was wearing, but instead I decided to rub my fingers on the corrugated steel of the shipping container's wall.
A harsh, metallic scrape echoed through the shipping container as I wiped my hand on it, like Freddy Krueger sliding his stupid knife hand down a chalkboard. I pulled my hand away like I had palmed a hot stove and pinched my thumb and forefingers together.
That mouse blood on my fingers was still there, but it wasn't wet and sticky any more. It had changed somehow - it was hard and rough, almost jagged, like I was wearing finger cots made from rough-grit sandpaper. It was just on the pads of my fingers, though, and it was still felt like the thinnest of coatings.
I shook my hand again, this time even more vigorously. "Fuck fuck fuck," I shouted, not knowing how else to react. On the third "fuck" I felt those strange barb-like coatings fly off my fingers; at the same time there was a sound like a dozen ball bearings hitting a tin can as several small holes appeared in the opposite wall, letting in a spiderweb of light.
I blinked at the sudden sunlight, holding up my hand to shade my eyes. Once my vision adjusted I turned my hand over - my fingers seemed completely normal. There was no trace of whatever I had touched on them. In fact, my thumb and forefingers were completely clean, like I had just scrubbed them. The rest of my hand was still dirty from pawing around the confines of my makeshift prison.
The blood...? What?
I looked behind me to where I had tried to wipe my hand off on the wall. There were three short, rough, pitted scrapes in a diagonal swipe at around chest-height. I put my hand up to it - the pattern matched.
This is way too fucking weird. What the hell is going on here?
I thought back to the first thing I remembered waking up this morning. Blood, everywhere, and apparently none of it mine. The strange arc of red on the floor of the ambulance, and the bizarre way the ambulance and the pickup truck seemed to form around that arc.
Did I do that?
I looked back and forth between the two walls again.
Did I do this ?
Forgetting the cold and the ache in my bones, I fell to my hands and knees and began searching furiously for that dead mouse. If I could get some more of its blood, maybe I could... well I didn't know. Do something. Anything.
If anything, the small amount of light I had now seemed to be more of a hindrance than a help. The light grew incredibly dim just a few steps from the holes in the side of the shipping container, and I had been so flustered by the dead mouse that I didn't remember where I had tossed the stupid thing. I went over and over what I felt were the same spots, thinking with each second that elapsed that I was one second closer to having that bastard Simon come back and losing whatever chance I had of getting the hell out of this situation.
Finally I found the thing. I was right - it was a dead field mouse, killed by who knows what. Probably a feral cat or something. More accurately, it was half of a dead field mouse. The back half. I held back the bile rising in the back of my throat.
"Shit." I had started talking to myself at this point. "What the fuck am I supposed to do?" The half-mouse swung to and fro in the dim light. I tried not to let my skin crawl as I felt its lifeless tail dangle between my fingers. I reached up with my other hand - the one that had been covered before - and I grabbed the corpse firmly. I looked away. Screwing my eyes shut, I closed my fist and squeezed as hard as I could.
You ever grab a handful of furry Play-Doh that's been stuffed with Jell-O? Yeah, neither had I until just then. Honestly I don't know how I didn't throw up.
Long story short, I coated the entire palm of my hand and the pads of my fingers in cold, slimy, bloody mouse guts. I dropped the squished mouse corpse and tried to hold my hand out of the range of my vision. Instead, I looked at the dozen pinprick holes I had somehow punched through the side of the shipping container.
I had no idea if I could do it again. Or even if this was going to work in the first place. At this point I didn't have anything to lose, except probably my sanity - which I thought was already slipping anyway. So, I walked over to the front of the shipping container, feeling around with the hand that wasn't coated in mouse guts, until I found what felt like the door mechanism.
I just stood there for a minute, trying to figure out what should do next. Should I try flicking my wrist again? What if I missed and ended up wasting all that blood? Could I just try scraping my way through? Would I break my hand if I tried punching it?
Maybe I can just, I don't know... slap it?
I found a smooth spot on the interior of the door.
That should work, right? Just an open-hand slap. Might sting a little but I don't think I can hurt myself doing that.
I grimaced, hefting my bloody hand, trying not to feel stupid. I took a deep breath - inadvertently breathing in the smell of mouse guts - and pulled my hand back. Gritting my teeth, I slapped the spot on the door as hard as I could.
The shipping container rang like a bell. The door bucked against my hand, crumpling around it like I had slapped a piece of aluminum foil. The hinges holding the sides of the door in place groaned, bent, and gave way; I pulled my hand back and the entire door toppled forward, landing with a crash on the asphalt.
Shocked, I stepped out of the shipping container. Except for a few bits of what looked suspiciously like mouse guts under a fingernail, my hand was completely clean. The door had a rusty red handprint-sized stain where I had slapped it.
Well, shit. Now what?