My Own Brand Of Karma

I woke in a feverish frenzy. Slinging the covers off my bed I muttered some incomprehensible words. The room was lit by the pale streaming fingers of the moon that shone through the windows. The light was too bright, and it made me realize that something was wrong inside my stomach, inside my mind. Shooting pains seized me in a death grip as I writhed like a hooked worm on my rumpled bed. Tears and prayers to God were the only thing that could come out of me. I grabbed my hair and pulled as hard as I could several times to avoid the pain. I started hitting my leg with all the strength I had, I pounded all over my body and the momentary but acute pain was relief for an instant. Was this my punishment? Incoherency began. I could hear the cold sweat swelling inside my pores and scraping down my temples. My heart was about to stop, I could feel it. Somehow I managed to stand on wobbly legs and stumble into the bathroom, my dogs started barking at me furiously, as if I were an intruder. I reached to brush them out of the bathroom but they growled at me and backed away with the fur on their neck raised.

The pain started worsening and I collapsed on the floor of the bathroom. The room started looking more like hues of red and blue as I stared at the door lying on my side with my ear pressed on the hard tile. The whole room turned red, gradually, then to blue. I started throwing up, my body didn’t heave, and there wasn’t much discomfort as it formed a puddle not far from my face. The little bits of undigested food began to quiver. My brow furrowed involuntarily. Then, somehow, from the pool of stomach fluid this fish came, as if he were rising from a deep ocean. My vision began to get choppy; my brain could no longer keep up with my eyes. I only saw blurred snapshots of the room as the fish flopped around on the ground.

The next morning I awoke on the floor. After collecting my thoughts I realized the prudent thing to do would be to clean up the mess. So I grabbed some paper towels and some disinfectant and cleaned the bathroom floor more than once where the fish had died. I put its carcass in a glass jar full of chemical preservatives and slapped a white label on it. With a permanent marker I wrote: JOE. Then I opened the closet at the far end of the room and placed it on the third shelf down, sixth spot over, right next to DAVID.

When the phone rang a feeling of euphoria came over me. I hesitated to pick it up because I knew what this was. It was Paige, she told me that Joe head eaten some bad fish last night and he was really sick… he had to be checked into the hospital for food poisoning. She said she needed me to come into work to cover for him because now they were short-handed. Even though it was my off day, I was glad to do it. Besides, last week I covered for David.

I never liked Joe. Maybe I’ll save the next label for him also.

© Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved - Ryan Valich

As always I am looking for feedback on my words. I would love to make new friends who share the same passion for writing and abstract ideas and I invite anyone to make comments, either good or bad, and to contact me.