Tomorrow Me

by Eli Ryder

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

We all make mistakes. I’ve known that a long time. Some mistakes are little—you grab a broom and sweep up the broken glass, and everything is fine. And maybe down the road you step on a sliver and it stings a little, bleeds a little, just enough to remind you that it happened, but no more than that. Take out the sliver, move on.

Evan Brody was a small boy. Wasn’t a small mistake. I’ve been trying to sweep that broken glass up for years, but I can still see his wide face lit and frozen in my headlights and feel the shudder in the steering wheel and then the sour panic crystalizing my nerves. I can hear someone screaming and the cold whump of metal hitting the flesh just above his left eyebrow. Worst of all, I remember wondering for the briefest moment what a kid was doing out so late so close to a bar—didn’t he know about drunk drivers?—like it was his fault, not mine.

Those aren’t slivers you can just pick out of your foot and forget. They’re the kind that drive deep and fester, and they should. They spread blood poisoning that whispers dark guilt, and they should. I know they should, and I know I should listen. I deserve it.

I don’t know why the cops didn’t test me—no breathalyzer, no touch-your-nose, no reverse alphabet. I remember thinking I should say something, tell them it was my fault, that I should have called a cab or something, but I didn’t.

Evan Brody. No matter how much I drink, I can’t forget his name. I only keep drinking because maybe at the bottom of some bottle, there’s a path back to that old Me, and I can do something different. There never is, and I keep trying. All the while, his name stays tattooed on the center of my brain.

I can forget all kinds of other things, though. Like last night. There are vague shadows in shapes that might be familiar, but not enough to say I remember anything. Suggestions of memories, maybe. But nothing is as clear as the frightened blue in Evan’s eyes, even years later.

My head hurts. I don’t dare move yet, don’t dare to open my eyes. I feel too fragile for any of that, as though Yesterday Me got a head start on today’s punishment by damn near killing me with booze last night. I have to tip my hat. If that was the goal, it’s working. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do anything at all today.

Right now, I just breathe and try to connect to the rest of my senses. Feel the temperature of my skin and the thump of my heart. Hear the rush of blood in my ears and the soft sounds of an easy morning outside crushed by passing cars. They cut the air smooth and fast, no jarring in the wheels and no screeching halts.

I smell myself, sweaty and sharp, but under that something in the room is softer. Something familiar enough to tell me I’m home, and that softens the beat of my heart. I haven’t always woken up at home.

My mouth tastes dark, of second-hand booze and stomach acid, and my tongue feels furry. It’s the morning-after taste, the one telling me I’d better wait a little longer to open my eyes. Not just to stop the morning’s light from squeezing my eyeballs to raisins and kneading at my brain, but to put off seeing what kind of damage I did last night.

I’m never in any hurry for that. There’s nothing Today Me can do about last night, about yesterday, about Evan Brody.

So, I take my time. I move my toes, my ankles and knees, my hips. Sore, but everything works. Fingers and wrists and arms too. Feels like I took a tumble but didn’t break anything. My jaw grinds in front of my ear, though, and that doesn’t feel right. I try to turn my neck, and my head feels like it’s been crushed by a Buick. It feels heavy and precarious, a bowling ball balanced on a spaghetti noodle.

And the pain. Maybe nothing like Evan’s, but too much for me.

The general thud of overindulgence crashes behind my eyes, but something else more acute and dangerous lurks there, too. I touch my forehead above my left eye and yelp. It’s swollen, big as an egg, and my skin is split wide. It burns when I touch it. My yelp crumbles to a whimper. My fingertips are wet. Maybe I did break something last night. Maybe I finally got what I deserved. I open my eyes.

Blood. My fingertips glisten with it, my shirt is stained with broad strokes that have dried and stiffened the fabric. Is this what Evan would have woken up to, if he hadn’t died? Pain and stained clothes and wondering what the hell had happened to him?

“Oh, shit.”

Just making the words with my mouth is enough to send a whiteout of pain through my head and neck. It takes a moment to let go of me, and when it does the room still spins, and I am nauseated. It always pays to wait to open my eyes, because the room isn’t spinning until you see it spinning, but then you can’t unsee it.

I deserve this. Yesterday Me knew it. I know it now, and I will know it for Tomorrow Me, too.

I need to vomit.

I’m stiff coming off the bed, like my joints are full of powder and muscles are still asleep. Blood soaks my sheets, and it sticks my pillow to my face for a moment before peeling away. My stomach clenches, and I feel the flood in my throat—but it catches, and I’ve still got a few seconds to get to the bathroom before it all comes rushing out.

In these moments, I think most people want to go back and tell themselves to quit at the third drink, that every drink after that racks up a heavy bill the next morning. I don’t, though. Going back to yesterday to tell myself to keep going until there was no Tomorrow Me sounds better, but even that would be a waste. Going back to shove Evan out of the road and stand in his place wouldn’t.

I fall on the way to the bathroom, too dizzy to keep upright, too slow to stay moving with the spin of the room. I retch, my throat opening wide, abdominal muscles straining hard and head throbbing. A few fresh drops of blood patter on the carpet. I choke—

And then it stops. Something is in my throat, but the initial expulsion passes, and I stand, stagger, and lean the rest of the way to the bathroom and strip off my shirt. My knees hit the ground in front of the toilet before my shirt falls next to me. I retch again, but whatever’s in my throat is still caught and feels like it’s hanging on tight.

This is what it feels like to pay penance. To drink until the wounds are just scars. I’ve opened more wounds in the process, my still-bleeding forehead tells me, but those heal on their own. Those deeper ones, they need help.

My gag reflex triggers, and my body stiffens again. I don’t resist, no reason to, but I still can’t expel what’s in me. My throat stretches and contracts, as though gearing up to unhinge my jaw like a snake about to sick up something too big for it to digest. Whatever’s in my throat is stuck. I wheeze and choke, but it doesn’t budge. The whiteout of pain comes again, and I sweat. I don’t know how long it lasts, but when it’s over, I lift my head off the rim of the toilet and am disgusted enough by the film it leaves on my skin to forget the pain. I sneer, and that changes the shape of my face enough to stretch the cut on my forehead. The pain is back.

And so is another stabbing retch squeezing me from my belly to my eyes. Blood drips from my forehead to the toilet bowl. A few drops hit the water and thin out, keeping their shape but swelling and fading. A few others hit the bowl and drip thick and dark against the porcelain. The toilet smells wet and a little like bleach, but not enough to hide the smell of what normally happens there. That smell helps a little—I can feel what I’m trying to sick up get closer to daylight, the retching stronger with every foul breath I draw. What’s in my throat isn’t quite stuck anymore, and I’m able to spit a glob of bile into the toilet after a particularly strong push.

A dark hair sits in that glob, floating and waving in the water. I’ve puked up a hair.

I gasp, choke on the swift inhalation, and stagger away from the toilet. Something tickles at the back of my throat, above what feels like the wrath of wronged gods I’m trying to purge, and I can’t stop coughing. My head pounds. I cough and swoon and fall to my side and cough again and a hair is now in my mouth. I grab it with my thumb and forefinger and pull, and I can feel it slide up my throat, and I choke and it’s out—six inches long, slick with mucous.

This isn’t something I ate.

Yesterday’s shadow comes back. Just a foggy blur, but it’s there. I didn’t get this cut on my forehead last night.

Saliva pools in my mouth, and I spit into the toilet. It’s tinged with pink. I taste blood. My forehead drips, the darker red from that wound overshadowing the misty pink I spit. I heave again and something in my abdomen pulls. I moan, but the sound is muffled by the pressure in my throat. I wheeze and can’t take a full breath. I’ve got to get whatever this is out of me.

My shadowy memory sharpens: I’m home, dressed and ready to go out, looking for a bandage to cover the lump and cut on my forehead. Nothing in the box is big enough, but I’ve got some tape and fashion something crude out of toilet paper. Blood weeps through it almost immediately. I don’t know why it won’t stop bleeding.

Maybe because Evan bled until he was done. Maybe it’s my turn.

Then, I wondered if I should go out. I looked in the mirror at the wound and caught a glimpse of the bathtub behind me. The cut throbbed. Maybe I should’ve stayed in, taken a night off and let this thing heal up. But my phone chirped at me; one of several “don’t be a flake!” texts prodded me on, and I thought I could drink until I felt better.

That was then. Now, a twinge of regret underlines the pain in my belly, my throat, my head. Would I feel better today if I hadn’t run from everything yesterday? I don’t know.

Another heave comes, and this one squeezes so hard my bowels let go, and now embarrassment sits hot and fresh on top of everything else. No one’s here to see me, and I certainly don’t have to tell anyone, but shame floods in anyway. So I shower.

The cool water helps calm the nausea, but I still need to puke. This won’t be over until I do. I clean myself, heaving several times in the process, but all I get from the clenching and growling is a few more stray hairs. I welcome even that, because for a brief moment the rest of my existence disappears beneath the near agonizing thrum of effort in my throat.

The shower helps clear my head, too. I spent the late morning yesterday nursing this wound and fending off a hangover, with marginal success on both fronts. I looked around my apartment, noting the mess as something Tomorrow Me would have to take care of. That’s me, now, and the only cleaning I’ve done happened because the alternative was letting my feces dry into a foul glue adhering my pants to my ass.

I spent the late afternoon debating whether I should head out again, and now that twinge of regret comes back. It’s easy to beat the hangover by drinking again, easier still when friends keep reassuring me that’s the best cure.

“That’s what a Bloody Mary is for,” they said.

“Tomatoes are for spaghetti,” I said.

“Come on, man. The spicy will get you sweating out the old booze, the vodka giving you the new. Can’t lose.”

Not a cure, though. Just procrastination. And none of it touches the grief I’m always carrying anyway. I’m putting that off, too. Just one more thing for Tomorrow Me.

I remember those things now. I don’t remember where the cut came from. A normal drunk would chalk it up to whiskey-legged wobbling. No mystery. But I had it before I went out, had it before I got ready for the day, even remember rubbing it when I delegated the apartment cleaning to Tomorrow Me. It happened sometime before then, and all of that is still lost in the fog.

Another heave hits me, so strong it stands me up and bends me over. My bowels loosen again, the shit this time rinsing right off and draining away, thin as poor excuses. The blood from my forehead quickens to a steady stream, and I feel something pop in my right eye. My pulled abdominal muscle burns and cramps. I scream. My throat widens with it, the sound splashing off the wet tile in the shower. I tense and heave again, swiping at the shower curtain for balance and flinging it to one side. The mirror faces the tub, and I catch my reflection, a mess of blood and tension, muscles corded tight with effort. My right eye is deep red. It matches the blood streaming down my face. Another heave, some choking, and I feel it rush up my throat—

And stick there, just before my mouth. It’s solid, wedged by the curve at the top of my esophagus. I can’t breathe. My vision wavers, tunnels tight, then widens in a rhythm locked to my heartbeat. I claw at my throat. In my reflection, my hands spider at the base of my neck until they find my mouth. I pull at my lips and cheeks, trying to create more space or change the shape of my throat so whatever’s there can finally force its way out. I put my fingers in my mouth to try to dislodge the blockage.

But in the mirror, something is off. A few of my fingers are turned the wrong way, as though they’d been twisted and broken backwards. I try to move them. They don’t respond. They curl around the sides of my mouth like they’re spreading open a pair of sliding doors.

Too many fingers, facing outward instead of in. I drop my hands to my throat. Those other fingers stay. Not my fingers. They’re gray, with soft white nails too short to cover purple fingertips. They glisten with a slime that tastes like the inside of some soft tissue that shouldn’t be open. They push my mouth wide, stretching the fragile skin at the corners excruciatingly thin. I try to pry them away, thrashing around the wet tub with the effort, but they are too strong. I am weak. I cannot breathe.

From the wider opening they’ve made of my mouth, the fingers creep out. Hands follow, wet-wrinkled gray hands that turn and grip my top and bottom jaws and push them open. I try to bite down but can’t work through my pain and lack of oxygen. The hands push against my bite, and we’re locked in place. My head pounds from the effort.

Their strength overpowers me. My jaw cracks, and pain blooms through my face and neck. My vision tunnels, widens, tunnels with the slam of my heart. I choke and feel the thing in me wriggle toward the open air, tearing my insides in the process. I choke again, and blood flows from the back of my throat to my nose. Adrenaline floods my synapses, and I see it all now with crystal clarity—

The hands pry my broken jaw wider and shove downward, wrenching their slimed forearms and elbows through my gaping mouth.  The pressure crushes several of my front teeth. I buck against the pain, thrashing around my shower and tearing down the curtain. The thing snakes out of me, a contortionist stuck in a barrel just small enough to make escape uncertain. Except this barrel is flexible. It’s my flesh and bone bent and torn to create space for passage. I keep fighting, trying simultaneously to shove it out and swallow it down.

Hot fluid sprays from my mouth to the mirror and blurs my reflection, but I can still see the crown of its head emerge, a swirl of pinkish gore and dark hair wedged between the thing’s pallid hands. It shoves, twists, shoves again, and deep in my belly the thing kicks against my organs, sending a cold cramp through my midsection. It tries to force what feels like its shoulders through my mouth, but the opening is too small.

We’re still long enough time for the fluid on the mirror to drip a few inches and for me to register the magnitude of splattered blood and bile and shit defacing my bathroom. Tomorrow Me has a lot to clean.

In the mirror, my eyes are as wide as Evan’s were, the right marred by an angry web of broken blood vessels. Maybe Tomorrow Me can atone for you, Evan. Maybe he won’t keep putting it off.

The thing in my mouth takes the stretched-taut corner of my lips between its spongy thumb and forefinger and pinches. Hard. Its grip is strong, and though its flesh is soft and wet, the bones beneath it crush the skin joining my lip to my cheek thin enough that it tears a few inches, leaving a gory half-smile of gleaming fat and muscle reaching jaggedly for my cheekbone. It kicks and squirms, and something large dislodges in my belly.

I’d scream, but something is in my throat.

The tear in my cheek makes enough space for the thing’s shoulders to squeeze through. I heave one more time. It’s smooth from there—too smooth because the thing slides out of my mouth on an arc from the tub to the edge of the toilet, where it smacks its forehead above the left eye and opens a terrific gash.

I collapse. I can’t feel my legs, but they look whole. I can feel my abdomen, though, my throat and mouth and head, and I wish I couldn’t. I heave again, tossing up a glut of gelatinous purple-black fluid onto my chest and into the tub.

It turns to face me, rubbing the cut above its eye with a rubbery hand. Same cut, same place as mine. I lift my arm to double-check and almost can’t reach. But it’s there. Same spot, above my left eye. Same as yesterday morning, I know now, and the day before and the day before, I see it all unwinding at the corners of my vision, starting the day after Evan Brody. The cut sits in the same place my bumper first hit Evan’s small skull before I smeared his life under my tires and across the road.

Its face—my face—is fresh and eager, despite the wound on his forehead. He stands next to the tub, looks down at me with wide eyes, and sighs.

I remember something else now. Yesterday, I thought that decimated mess in the tub looked worn and helpless. That’s the look on his face. I remember thinking it needed safe-keeping, protection.

So I’m not surprised when he kneels down and picks the gelatinous mass up from my chest and swallows it down in big, desperate gulps. I cringe but am not surprised when he takes my feet to his mouth and bites down, chewing through skin and bone and sinew and swallowing, then feeding more of me slowly into his mouth, both feet at once. There’s no pain now, I’m finally numb. I remember my own iron and salt taste being new, then delicious, then the only thing that mattered. I remember the satisfaction of internalizing that poor, helpless creature and sheltering him from further harm. I remember feeling the love I see in his eyes now.

My shins disappear, then my knees and thighs. I remember something from before Evan now, a quick flash: a praying mantis perched above my front door, devouring a caterpillar and staring at me.

It’s going to be over soon. I can already feel the weight of guilt evaporating, the drive to destroy myself being eaten away. Soon, I won’t feel any of it anymore.

That’ll be a problem for Tomorrow Me.