Soup. Maybe the taste of a penny, though copper might not run down your neck as quickly. Metal for sure, filling my gums, overflowing from mouth like a frothy milkshake. I could be dead? Nah. Death would taste better.
A crystal diamond of sound infects my nostils and I start shaking uncontrolably. The froth spins like cotton candy threads around my face and the hands that are attepting to hold me down press harder, crushing my lungs until the only breaths I can take are those seeping into the bloodied cracks of my eyes. I may yet be headed for the pasture. Shouldn’t the cow get a chance to retire first?
“Sir, can you here me?” E.T. is leaning over me, his finger lit, his voice low and slow. He is waving that stupid light in my face. Waving and pressing and poking and proding. I shake and froth and throw up and bleed, and he is waving that dam light in my face.
“Sir, You’ve been in an accident.” He is not E.T., he is an EMT.
“Sir, can you sit up for me?”
“No,” I foam a word his way.
“What about your legs,”
“What about them?”
“Can you feel your legs at all.”
“At all? No, all the sudden, sure.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” I sit up and push the light out of my face. My coat is missing. My hats are gone. My hair, matted and now caked by the drying blood that has cooled in the winter breeze flops atop my head like a bushy cap.
“What happened?” I ask, retorically.
“You were hit by a cab.” Says the street nurse.
“You said that?” I struggle to my feet with the help of the alien trasportor, his funny uniform dusted by a slight spray of hobo. Mine most likely.
“Would you like to go to the hospital?” He is polite at least.
“Do I have to?” I ask, looking around for anything the yellow troll did not steal.
“No.” He looks me over again before starting back to the ambulance.
“But you should.”
“Nah.” I assure him. “I’ll be fine. But thank you.”
“No problem.” He places a small bag inside the back of the giant striped van and closes the doors. Before I can change my mind there is another call and the two of them, this polite stranger and his driver are off to save another life, leaving me standing on the curb, looking for a new place to sleep.
Matthew Newton
DOC #81868
Powerful writing. Keep it up.