There Will Be Blood

February 2, 2015

So I’m sound asleep this morning, 4 am, and I hear a slight noise and start to stir when my forehead explodes. Thinking I’m under attack, I pull my handgun out of my shorts and start firing. Six shadows are killed.

I jump out of bed and get stabbed in the foot. I run to the bathroom and flip on a light. Blood is spewing from my head, and a severed vein in my right hand is shooting a geyser of blood six inches into the air. A one inch shard of glass is sticking in the heel of my right foot. Blood covers the bathtub and the floor; blood runs down the wall from the light switch.

I grab toilet paper and try to stop the hand from leaking, but each wad of paper turns redder than a rose. And now I feel sick, and my head throbs. The bathroom looks like a suicide or a murder occurred. I think, “Dexter.”

I walk into the kitchen, bloodying my carpet, to get paper towels. Blood spews over my dishes in the strainer. I think, “Psycho.”

(I also think, what a horrible singer is bloody Idina Manzel, having held the National Anthem end notes for ten seconds, mistaking that and her grimace trick for artistry. Why do modern singers grimace so much? Because they’re hoping we’re distracted by the face and not listening to the voice?)

The blood stops flowing after thirty minutes. I investigate my own crime scene. It seems that dame I picked up at the Super Bowl party waited until I feel asleep then she hit me over the head with a champaign bottle. She took my money, my Medicare card, all the cat toys, my peppermint Altoids, Jennifer Lawrence’s pink underpants—J-Law left them here when she visited over Christmas—my the complete works of Rod McKuen, my Holy Bible and my unholy Bible, my collection of newspaper plastic sleeves, my good hairpiece and my bad hairpiece, my Phyllis Schlafly voodoo doll, my Stan Musial bobblehead, my woven cat hair serape, and a sweet potato.

Just kidding. The light fixture on the ceiling over the bed, a glass plate type, fell and shattered on my head. Could this be because I’m fracking my own backyard? Because it’s groundhog day? Because Scout the Cat loosened the nut holding the light fixture? Was this the actual Obamacare Death Panel?

The emergency room glued my hand, my foot and my head. A lovely nurse gave me a tetanus shot. A nice doctor told me I have a “slight concussion.”

Can you tell?

 

 

 

 

 

 

About Eugene Jones Baldwin

I am a writer: non-fiction, fiction, journalism (Alton Telegraph), essays (The Genehouse Chronicles) and have a website: eugenebaldwin.com. I've published a couple dozen short stories and had eleven plays produced. Current projects: "Brother of the Stones" (available on Kindle), a book of short stories; "The Faithful Husband of the Rain, short stories"; "A Black Soldier's Letters Home, WWII,;" "There is No Color in Justice," a commentary on racism; "Ratkillers," a new play. I am an avocational archaeologist and I take parts of my collection of several thousand Indian artifacts (personal finds) to schools, nature centers, libraries etc. and talk about the 20,000 year history of The First people in Illinois. (See link to website) I'm also a playwright (eleven plays produced), musician, historian (authority on the Underground Railroad in Illinois, the Tuskegee Airmen) and teacher.
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