Worked
from Rebel Dharma Society
Dave felt the waves of pain slam into his head like a freight train in summer heat. In the desert. He had lost all feeling in his left foot, he was sure, but then how could he be sure of anything? He wasn't even all that certain he existed right at that moment. At the same time he was utterly bereft of every frame of reference, the clarity of his own uncertainty loomed as a Gargantua in the gaps in his mind.
Wetness on the side of his head, which he squinted enough to learn was on a concrete block, was not the puke that he thought it might be. He opened the squint a fraction more, just a hint, before the light seared his brain with its unbridled fury. Tendrils of plasma erupted through his skull and the waves just became more solid. More insistent in their punishments. Dave groaned.
The source of his numbness turned out to be a half-naked woman laying across his left leg. She looked to be in her mid-forties, tanned to leather and staring blankly right at Dave. The eye contact was disconcerting and Dave began to wish he had not come to.
He slowly eased the ache from his neck, previously bent forward against a raised section of concrete, but the pain proved too much for his fragile hold on his mental state. He puked. Although it didn't go far, the woman flinched visibly as specks of it hit her in the face. She didn't blink, as far as Dave could see.
The movement of the throwing up caused the woman to move just enough to allow Dave to rescue his leg from her nudity and weight. She turned out to be bigger than petite and no surprises when the leg screamed as blood rushed into drought-stricken veins and thirst-maddened muscles.
“Great night, hey?”, rasped the woman, her voice a husk of what it may have been the night before, if only Dave could remember it.
“Uh-huh”, was the sum total of his conversational skill.
“We got so worked. I remember shit.”, the gravelly voice continued as the woman began to search for a top. Or her bra.
Dave's phone beeped in his pocket. Instagram. It beeped again. And again. Yet, again. The beeps increased in energy, starkly and inversely proportional to Dave's waning awareness. They formed a sonic exponential curve as they went on and came on in a massive frenzy. Then Snapchat started....
His mates were right. This was a party to change your life. If only he could remember who he had been before.
promo (photo by