Simonize

 

The wet cloth lay damply across his forearm and he shuddered to think what it would do to is wonderfully tanned biceps.

 

“Alright! I’ll give you whatever you want — just don’t ruin my perfect appearance.” “I want to flush this bottle of flourostat down your enlarged rectum, Mr. Quazir! He He He!!!” Simon shuddered awake from his nightmare and stood looking at the clock on his wall. It was an old wooden clock with a glass front that reflected a facially distorted facsimile of himself. What he hated about it was that it always seemed to be in a different position even though he had never caught it actually moving. It now said 2:44 and he was certain it was past 5:00 am since he had awoken a previous seven times from this homophobic nightmare.

 

Shuffling off down the hallway in his slippers, he watched the static jumping across his cat’s back while it clawed into his sleeping brother’s hair. He wished his brother would quit sleeping in the middle of the hallway, but his mother allowed him whatever he wanted due to infant rights. He grinned at the cat and kept on plodding towards the kitchen.

 

Scratching the back of his head he opened the refrigerator, squinting at its brightness. He paused with his eyes closed to unearth a large chunk of hardened blood from his scalp. He usually found about three of them a day along the line where his skull had been cracked open several years earlier. He had never finished high school because of it and the ex-bully Lawrence still brought him sandwiches once every week to show how he had turned from his evil ways.

 

“Boy do I ever have an ear ache today.” He started to grab out a handful of eggs and some bread when he realised he had said it again. He shuffled the bread and eggs into one hand (releasing an egg to plummet downward) and checked inside his ears with his finger to make sure there was nothing wrong. His ears felt perfectly fine as they always did when he caught himself stating the pointless and untrue phrase. It tended to get him in trouble in situations where he was speaking to very nice attractive girls and they would inevitably say, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” To which he would fumblingly respond, “No, its really fine — I didn’t mean I had an ear ache I just meant that I — well — I didn’t mean anything really. I sort of — kind of —” And he would continue this blabbering until she lost any interest in him and just waited for a chance to excuse herself from the conversation and take care of a dead vase.

 

“I’m not a queer! I am not a queer!” He pounded his fist on the table and made a dramatic amount of noise as it managed to unbalance several china plates vaguely stacked on the other end. Luckily none of them broke and he tried to quietly restack them. “I am not.”

 

Grabbing out two slices, he closed the bag of bread and checked his eggs in the boiling water. Hanging his face directly above the water he allowed himself to be steamed and thought about his dream. He knew he had no attraction towards any member of his own sex and even in the dream it was terrifying — not to mention he wasn’t even present in the dream at all. It just bothered him, primarily as that was the last thing anyone had called him before he died. Or thought he died. He still was relatively sure he had died and that this was some colorful rerun of his old life. It was just as bad, only now people didn’t tell him what to do and he just went around feeling incompetent without being told so. The future looked just as bleak and hazy as what he was going through now.

 

By now his face was dripping and the eggs were finished three times over. He finally remembered them and turned the stove off. Taking the eggs to the table he brushed off some bread crumbs and set them down. He glanced around to make sure his mom hadn’t caught him not using a hot pad, and then grabbed a spoon to start fishing for the eggs. He took great satisfaction in fishing for eggs early in the morning. It was an unexplainable high that he received. His troubles fizzled out of his mind and he focused solely on his eggs, giggling childishly to himself as he fought to make one remain stationery on his spoon. By the third egg he was crying from his laughter and had to put the spoon down and wipe his eyes into his palms. Still he had more chuckles to vent and this only made it so much harder to get an egg to be still long enough for him to get it to the plate. Once he had finally succeeded he laughed so hard through his nose that he had to hunt for a napkin to clean off his face, which of course redoubled his pleasure and he tumbled onto the rug to vent his remaining guffaws in a safe place.

 

The egg sandwich tasted extraordinary after the great outburst of happiness. That was one of the unexplainable quirks he experienced since his accident that he actually enjoyed. The other was the odd fact that his giant hand had mysteriously shrunken down to normal size. It was the first thing he thought of when he first came to in the hospital. As his vision cleared, he could see a doctor, his mother, Lawrence, and several other people as well as a beautiful looking girl who was smiling at him. He immediately moved his hand to hide it, but found it responded very slowly.

 

“It will take it a few months before it works normally again son, your brain was heavily damaged and needs to recover.” But this did not get through to him as he was staring amazed at his hand which looked identical in size to his other hand. He opened his mouth to exclaim, “Thank you Lord!” but only mumbled “Braaauugh ggtthhl aaaaauugh”. Which frightened most everyone and notably the beautiful girl whose smile was replaced by a look of fear as she stepped back from the bed.

 

“That will come to son. Don’t you worry partner — we’ll have you back in shape in no time.”The doctor then stepped back and his mother came forward. Tenderly she bent over, seemingly to kiss him on the cheek. “Shut up you little creep! Look at all the trouble you’ve caused me already! Shut up! Idiot!” She muttered this under her breath into his ear, trying to make it look like she was saying kind gentle things to him while pinching at his arm as hard as she could. Lawrence was the next to step forward. He looked confused and pale and tried to say something to him, but just came out with, “I — I” and then vomited all over Simon’s chest and face. It stung his eyes as his poor reflexes didn’t close them in time and he could not help but breath it in, which forced it to cough back up slowly and painfully.

 

Cleaning off his plate in the sink, Simon stopped thinking about the past and remembered to worry about the present again, which meant he had to take care of the fact that he had to urinate really bad.

“Dear Lord the violent pain!!!!” He cried as quietly as he could and ran penguin-like towards the bathroom. “Why do I always have to notice it at the last minute when my bowels are about to burst asunder for the relentless pressure built up inside!” He whined poetically and sagged his clenching body upon the toilet. The lid was of course up and he sunk down into the already used bowl, but was unable to stop the onslaught that had already opened within him. Cringing, as he felt a bobbing log bump against his back end, he waited as the steaming fire expelled itself. Once it finally trailed off into a pleasant sense of emptiness, he leapt up to wipe himself clean of the unfortunate logging accident. In his disgust he flushed the toilet.

Instantly he realised his fatal mistake and would have pissed in his pants had he not already fully relieved himself. He tried to get the bathroom window open but it was stuck just like the time he had got himself locked in as a child. He started to scurry out into the hall but stopped just beside the mirror. It was too quiet. The bowl had just stopped flushing and was now finishing with the high pitched readjustment noise and no other sound could be heard.

 

Stepping out into the hallway he peered in both directions for any movement or large shadowy creatures in wait. He found none and began to continue on towards his bedroom. Just past his parent’s room he felt he was safe and had actually made it, when an arm shot out of the hall closet and grabbed him by the face. The air was knocked out when he hit the carpet and a wheeze escaped his deflating lungs. A giant pressure was applied to his back causing it to crack unnaturally and his eyes to feel bigger. A scratching thumb started messing in his scalp pulling at the crack where his skull had opened and brought ringing pain to his side. He started to black out from it when he was finally lifted to his feet and shoved up against the wall.

 

“Simon! How many times do I have to tell you not to flush the toilet at night!! I need my sleep Simon!!!” And with that the looming figure left Simon to sink to the carpet panting and recovering his dizzied consciousness.

After several minutes of resting, Simon quietly got back on his feet and made his way carefully towards his bedroom. The cat had finished clawing his brother’s hair and was now whining at his bedroom window to be let out. He opened it and the feline leapt to the tree just outside and crept off to do its nightly business. He watched it until it was too hard to see and then crawled under the covers. His eyes instantly became droopy and it was difficult to even follow the headlights of a passing car go across his ceiling and over his far wall. With a sigh he cuddled up to his ancient stuffed Pooh bear and shrunk up to a fetal position.

 

“I am not a queer am I Pooh?” He muttered half aware and faded into his rest. The bear leaned over and answered him softly, “Yes you are my sorry little faggot. Yes you are.”