September 7, 2011-Montreal, Canada

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And now I’m in Canada.

Funny how that works out.

I’ll put up a post explaining why I suddenly left Germany and wound up here next time (whenever that is going to be); still sorting out the memories from it.Lots of explosions, gunfire, screaming, pain, I blacked out, and now I’m in a hospital. At least I had the good fortune to wind up in a place where, when a young woman is found unconscious and bleeding in a public park, ambulances are called and she is treated.

That was all a few weeks ago. I’ve been sitting in a hospital bed being useless since then. Having your arm torn up/being shot tends to make strenuous activity inadvisable for a period of time. I got questioned by a lot of people asking me why there was shrapnel in my arm, including the police (they tend to get curious about random people lying around the city with bullet wounds). I avoided most of the questions, kept claiming I couldn’t remember. Just wish I could be there when the cop’s ballistics people try to get a match on the gun that shot me. Imagining their faces causes me to burst into unstoppable laughter.

One of the nurses is pretty cute. I’ll confess: a few of the times I called her in have been just so I could flirt with her. She seemed flattered, but told me that she didn’t swing that way. Also, she had a boyfriend.

“Great,he can join in!”

Yes, I am a master at putting people into awkward moments.

……..

I’m avoiding the main subject, aren’t I.

…………

There’s a reason I try to never stay in one place for longer than a week unless necessary. Being hospitalized, I wasn’t able to follow that rule. Hilarity did not ensue.

Sitting awake in my hospital bed at night, only a skeleton crew staffing the building. Wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on around me; just lost in thought (I seem to be spending too much time lost there, lately). Then the lights started flickering, and survival instincts kick in. Looked out the door, didn’t see anyone. No doctors, nurses, janitors, no one at the phone, nobody in sight. Lights kept flickering, on and off. Obviously suspicious, so I decided to investigate.

There I was, in my hospital gown, left arm a useless mess of stitches, bandages allover my body, still limping a bit, walking down the halls of an abandoned hospital determined to confront whatever monster was causing this. Confidence,stupidity, both? You decide.

Lights off, back on…. And there it was. Hey there, Slender Man. It’s been, what, two weeks since our last meeting? Or was it seventy years? Math never was my specialty, you know.

Couldn’t really run away from it, not injured like I was. So, I tried to stare it down.Bit hard to do when you’re dealing with something that has no eyes, but I gave it my best damn shot. Course that didn’t work. It took steps towards me,sometimes flowing with impossible grace, other times with jerking and stiff movements. Six feet away from me, black tentacles exploded out from his back.Too many of them to count…. I could barely tell each individual one apart; as more kept pouring out, it looked like a wall of writhing blackness charging towards me. Braced myself for some kind of horrible pain when it hit…. If onlyI would have been so lucky as to have experienced physical pain from that….

The hospital turned black, with only the white parts of Slender Man’s suit and its pale head as contrast against the darkness. Then the eyes started to appear.Grotesque, ichor dripping eyelids burst from the walls like blisters, opening to show dozens of eyes, all staring at me…. Black tentacles rose from the floor and wrapped around my arms and legs, scorching every inch of skin they touched.They pulled me onto my hands and knees, pulling me down to the floor…. I fought, my arms struggling to prevent me from being pulled all the way down. Sweat dripping down my hair, muscles screaming, the tentacles burning my skin, slowly being dragged down…. Each moment, pushing to keep from being pulled into the blackness at my feet; each moment, inevitably being pulled further down. I looked up at its blank head, and growled. Not like this. No way in hell was it going to beat me at something like this. With a scream of rage, I started to push as hard as I could, ignoring the pain and the smell of burning flesh. It was enough to stop the constant pull, and slowly begin to bring myself back up,fighting for every centimeter I raised myself back from the ground….

Then the stitches in my arm tore open, and in that moment of shock and pain the tentacles pulled me to the ground, into blackness. That’s all I saw for a while:blackness all around me.

My eyes open up, and I’m lying on a stone slab in a dark room. Men wearing robes and ornamental metal masks surround me. I feel tired, can’t move at all. One of them speaks, voice muffled by the mask.

“She’s waking up.”

Another responds. “Already? It’s too soon. Sedate her again.”

And then my eyes are closing again, and I’m adrift in the darkness.

Open my eyes again, and I’m lying in a crater. There’s smoke in the sky, coming from infernos burning in the distance. I’m surrounded by bodies, torn to pieces in bloody and grotesque ways, thrown all over the battlefield. A man in a uniform comes over, and crouches down to inspect me.

“This one’s alive!” He shouts.

More run over, carrying a stretcher. As they lift me up, my eyes close again….Blackness….

Once more I open my eyes. I’m in a cave, face down in a puddle of red. Someone grabs me and flips me onto my back. I see…. Grendel…. Above me, shaking my shoulders,desperately shouting at me to wake up. I still can’t move, can’t do anything. He looks back, and starts to scream, then is pulled into the darkness. My eyes close….

And I woke up back in my hospital bed, screaming. According to the doctors, they found me thrashing and yelling, covered in my blood and with second degree burns on my arms and legs. They were able to put my stitches back in, and treated my burns as best they could. I’ve been told I’ll need to spend more time recovering. Gonna have to ignore that recommendation. I’m getting out of here soon, and don’t plan on taking any breaks like anytime in the foreseeable future. Got that lesson hammered into my brain…. Soon as I finish this post, I’m leaving. Not sure where yet, but anyplace that isn’t here sounds like a good start.

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