nibolgomeh – [Short Story]

“I stink.”

As sad as it may seem, that’s the only thing I can think of right now. I stink. I look and smell like some who should be working in a butcher shop. Its all raw meat and iron and I’m covering in this sticky red shit and I’ve got all kinds of cuts and bruises from all the stuff that happened over the last twenty-four hours. There’s a broken shotgun covered in teeth marks in my hand, and all I can think is “I stink.”

I stink, and I don’t think a shower is going to make me feel clean.
Ugh. I think some of it is on my face too. Man, I wanna lick my lips, but I’d hate to swallow something nasty.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that the sun is coming up. The sun is coming up and now I’m going to have to see all the shit I did in the dark exposed to the light.

Hoo boy, that’s not going to be fun.
I don’t really expect anyone to see this and understand what happened. No, its pretty nasty shit laying here in the dark, in this musky smelling warehouse with me. In fact, is it even a warehouse? This could be some abandoned ballet studio for all I know. Still a musky smelling location, to be sure, but someone out there would probably get pissed if I called a ballet studio an opera house.

Either way, this place is a derelict and I should write a letter to the city council instructing them to burn this god forsaken shit hole to the ground. I mean, I’ve got punctures in my shoulder from very rusty and very exposed nails here. That kind of bullshit wouldn’t be accepted in Somalia!

Oh. The fireball is nearly over the mountains.

And as it comes up, man, everything in this Warehouse-slash-Opera house reminds me of how seriously screwed up the world is today.

The red, oily stuff on me heats up, reminding me it isn’t blood and I’d like to get it the fuck off me as fast as I can. So, knowing that, I make my way towards the bathroom, of this place, kicking aside the headless stump of a body that happens to be lying in the way.

The walls are splattered with the red goo. Not just red goo, but there’s bits of stone scattered all around here and there too. Thats right, I didn’t think that guy’s head would come off so easily, but a shotgun can do wonderous things no matter how hard a person claims their skull to be.

It’s not until I get into the bathroom that I realize the water doesn’t work.
Abandoned building. Right. There’s no electricity, so why would there be running water? How stupid of me.
I bet my sisters at home wondering where I’m at. I really hate to do this, but I guess I’ll have to walk in the house looking like a horror movie villain. Maybe I should stash the gun somewhere first, though.

I really do feel like the bad guy here, though.

Sure, that guy was a douche. But maybe tricking him into coming here and gunning him down in cold blood was a dick move. I mean, I’m sure I could’ve come up with a better way to go about discussing how things with him and my sister were going and maybe, just maybe, I could’ve got him to leave the two of us alone.

On the other hand, the guy was a dick. I’m glad I shot his cranial contents all over the damn place.

“I stink.”
“I wonder,” I can’t help but mutter as the red goo begins to burn my skin. “If we’ve still got that box of Lucky Charms at the house…”

[Hemoglobin – October]