'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here

'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,'
'I don’t know where. . .'
'Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

Alice in Wonderland

Chapter Four:

What Drugs Did They Give Me?

My memories of what happened after my fall are really blurred and scattered. Like wet watercolor paints, everything collides and blends until there is no separation. I remember being grabbed and pulled, throwing around like a rag doll devoid of its stuffing. I saw bright lights and heard the muffled sounds of conversation, sometimes the sound rising with panic, and the rolling of a vehicle I could feel myself inside. And screaming—endless, mindless, toneless shrieking . . .

And then, suddenly, everything was soft, clear. When I opened my eye, I knew instinctively that they were those of a child, specifically my younger self, for when I looked around me I saw color for the first time in half a decade. It was so vivid, so bright, and so beautiful it hurt, stinging my eyes. It took me a moment to realize that the stinging was from my tears. My throat felt tight, sore. I was afraid—terrified, actually—and the waves of panic were threatening to pull me beneath their murky depths. Then, someone was suddenly there, cradling me in their arms, reassuring me that I was all right and suddenly it was over.

Even before I peeled open my sticky eyelids, I knew I was in a hospital--from the blinding light that pierced in my brain to the bitter smell of peroxide in the air. The too familiar itch of a paper-doll hospital gown prickled against my back and I sighed. I hated hospitals; maybe there were refuges for some people, but they were nothing but torture chambers for me. All my life, my adoptive “family” had dragged my through every hospital, put me through every test to try to find the “psycho gene” lodged in my brain. Tragically for us all, they had found nothing—cue the violins if you want. Frowning, I sat up, groaning a little from the ache in my head and lower back. A thin layer of mud from my hair covered the pristine silk of the pillow.

“Fancy work you’ve done here,” a dry voice commented from beside me and I looked up to see a rail-thin nurse glaring down at me in disapproval.

“Sorry,” I muttered, self-consciously rubbing at the back of my filthy head. “Um, can you tell me what happened?”

The nurse shrugged her bony shoulders effortlessly and it made me squirm. Nasty. “A witness said you fell and hit your head pretty hard, but there’s no sign of damage. You can leave whenever you’re ready,” she added, which really meant, “get the fuck outta the way because we have more important patients who do not woogies everywhere.”

“Thanks,” I began to say, but she shimmied off before I could finish. What a cuntface.

Thinking back, Nurse Cuntface had mentioned a witness—that had to be Sexy Man. But if he saw me fall (which I know he did) they why did he bail and leave me in the dirt? More importantly, why would he wait for an ambulance and then bail? I made no sense; all this thinking was baiting the headache swimming in the back of my skull.

A swish from across the room made me turn my head and I saw a panicked Amy running in white platform leather boots. I would’ve laughed if I didn’t think it would hurt.

“Are you all right?” She yelled from halfway across the emergency room and everyone turned their heads to gawk at her. Somehow, I had a feeling that the hospital staff was just going to get fed up and throw our weirdo asses out on the street, hypothetical lawsuit or not. The feeble mattress flipped uncomfortably as Amy threw all of her more-than-average body weight beside me and yanked me into a bone-crushing hug.

“I’d be better if you weren’t strangling me,” I whispered through gritted teeth.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” She squeaked and quickly released me, restoring my breath and heartbeat to normal levels. “What the fuck happened? Why did you stab that guy with such mad ninja skills? Just for the record, such ninja skills were never mentioned to me,” she added with a jealous glower.

“If I knew I had them, you would be the first one I’d tell,” I reassured her.

“Well, now that we know you’re a ninja, you’ll have to pick a village. . .”

“Konohagakure,” I responded swiftly.

Amy rolled her eyes. “You’re such a goody-goody,” she teased.

“Bitch, please. You’d only pick Otogakure because of Orochimaru’s tongue.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she snickered and then pushed herself off the cot. “C’mon, we should get going; the normies are staring at us all chibi-eyed style.”

“Oh, dear,” I sighed wearily, dragging my tired ass up and following Amy out of the ER. After signing myself out of the hospital, we left the hospital and I slipped into the mocha leather passenger’s seat of Amy’s retro Love Bug. As the car fired up, Gackt burst from the speakers full force and I relaxed into the familiar pounding rhythm and dreamy, unintelligible lyrics. Driving nearly a hundred miles as usual, Amy peeled—literally—out of the hospital parking lot and onto the road. Once we were safely coasting along the nearly-empty streets, Amy turned on me and began her interrogation. With a groan, I explained about the Godzilla monster in the bookstore and of Sexy Man’s very un-heroic departure. I even tossed in my Monet paint job dream, too.

“That’s very odd,” Amy proclaimed a few silent moments after I finished my story time.

“To you, possibly, but to me it’s just the usual,” I muttered, sleepily rubbing my cheek against the cool leather like a contented cat.

“True,” she agreed, then added, “but we’ll figure this all out tomorrow. You look like you’re going to pass out right here, right now.”

“Mmmm,” I muttered, nearly snoring. I had no idea of how tired I was until I was curled into a happy place, of sorts. You would think that after fainting a person would be well-rested, but the bubble of adrenaline from my pseudo-fight and from my drug trip dream had burst and I was now simply exhausted. For a moment, I wondered if I should call my “parents” and tell them of my whereabouts (no doubt the whole town knew about my Day from Lunatic Hell), but dismissed it out of spit. It wasn’t as if they kept tabs on my out of parental love—they were just worried that I’d stir us some voodoo and smear their perfect picket fence image even further in the mud.

It wasn’t until the car lurched to a start that I realized I had been silently angsting the whole drive. I turned to face Amy and her rimmed, dark gaze was focused on me.

“You have bags under your eyes,” she noted softly.

“I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” I admitted in a slightly cracked voice.

“You will tonight,” she said in a determined voice as she turned the engine off and heaved herself out of the driver’s seat. Reluctantly, I pulled my lead-weight body from the car and followed her into her apartment building. I was so tired I even forwent he stairs to weight for the elderly elevator that always took its sweet-ass time to show up.

Amy stared at me with eyebrows raised. “If you die, it’s your own fault,” she commented and I grunted in response.

After what felt like—and very well could have been—years, we were in Amy’s apartment. To be quite honest, I don’t really remember the way there since I was nearly zonked out by then. I do remember Amy pitching my overnight back at me, yanked from its hiding place beneath her bed, and changing into the pajamas inside it—I was working it out stylishly in my oversized Ryuk tee-shirt and red and green Christmas boxers. I also remember snuggling comfortably into the hand-woven blankets thrown carelessly over the lower half of Amy’s bunk-bed. After that, it was smooth sailing as I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Oh, another thing—I also remember that the creature from my classroom this afternoon was perched on Amy’s nightstand.

...

A/N: It’s short, I know, but it seemed a good place to end it. Sorry too everyone who remembers this chapter differently—way differently—but after re-reading it, I decided to go in a different direction. After all, drafts are as fluid as water and ever changing, so please disregard the previous forth chapter. I hope you enjoyed the new one in its place. :D