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1DeLuca/At Bully Hills
Chapter Three
-
Hurricane in the Bathroom
Just like
 Rip Van Winkle
1
from a childhood story book, I awoke from my nap to a verydifferent world; a world that I did not fully recognize. Although the furniture in my room was thesame, the surroundings were unfamiliar.“
Where
was I?” I wondered.“Uh, a place called Bully Hills,” I thought, “somewhere in the bush of Upstate New York, perhaps.”
“Where
was I?”I tried to reason.I had a feeling that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.As I got out of bed I searched for my bearings and found them absent. I recognized the door to the bathroom and urgently needed to go in there. I had spent many hours locked in the bathroom just off my master bedroom at home—snorting
the-Big-“O”
 —so I headed for a Safe-Place, to use the toilet. I found my mind wandering as I sat on
the Throne
. I was somewhere between consciousness and a dream when it occurred to me:“
What 
was I dreaming about…just 10 minutes ago?”I couldn’t remember.“
Where
was this bathroom, anyway?”I couldn’t be sure.So, I finished my business and stood-up, buckled the belt around my Levi’s
,
then began towash my hands. While looking at the water from the faucet as it ran through my fingers, my
1 Rip Van Winkle; short story by Washington Irving—1819, Operetta in three acts, based on
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle
 —1882
 
hands looked strangely different—all wet, but they didn’t look like my hands—it looked likesomeone else’s hands were attached to my wrists.I looked into the mirror and the Little-Voice-in-My-Head asked,
“What have yougotten yourself into this time?”
 My eyes looked like a pair of small sunflowers. My dilated pupils were like large dark wildseed pods. The irises were like sunflower petals, shooting color in every direction. I was beginning to hallucinate intensely. Reality was slipping away, like vaporous cigarette smokedissipating in the air. My mind was swimming in a sea of random thoughts. I was grasping atsingle thoughts like grabbing at bubbles in a foamy sea, only to have them pop as I touchedthem. Then it occurred to me, I was still in a dream—a dream from which I could
not 
awaken.As I grasped the situation, the evidence was all around me, the walls began to bend inward, themirror looked crooked on the wall in front of me and shifted to the left. I became intenselyfrightened; a great fear gripped me by the throat. Perspective had lost its meaning; in an instantmy knees buckled and I began to go down. I reached for the porcelain sink; I dropped like a rock.I missed the sink beneath me, and my knees hit the concrete floor. I lied on my stomach with myhead between the toilet and the shower stall. Suddenly my body shook violently and my legs jerked uncontrollably. My arms thrashed at the open air and my torso was cut in half withspasm. I thought I was having a seizure, or perhaps it was more like a pony being broken for thefirst time, I was a broncin’ buck, trying to throw a rider that wasn’t there. Or maybe it was thatfucking monkey on my back, trying to hold on, gripping me with all four hands. He had beensecurely seated on my back for the last 10 years and was not about to get off without a fight. Hehad grown from a small chimp into a very large silverback gorilla in these last six years of intensely heavy narcotics abuse. Just like Ko-Ko, the gorilla who had learned sign language, this
 
3DeLuca/At Bully Hillssilverback was giving me
the finger 
 — 
digitus infamis
,
digitis peculiars
or 
digtus impudicus— 
inLatin.“I ain’t leavin’ without a fight!” the silverback demanded as he gave me his
digitusimpudicus.
“Well if it’s a fight he wants…it’s a fight he’ll get,” I reassured myself.With that thought my body temperature began to soar. It was as if my skin were 1,000degrees
 Hot!
Extremely
 Hot!
 
I was getting
 Hotter 
by the moment. Lying on the floor, my headwas between the porcelain toilet and the shower fixture, which was slanted at a 45 degree angle.I looked up and spied the Nurse’s Call Button mounted on the wall. There was a string hangingdown from the Nurse’s Call Button: Emergency-Help-Pull-String. This had to be an emergency.My body was no longer mine. Thrashing, jerking, kicking, and bucking uncontrollably; Ireached-up and pulled the Emergency-Call string off the wall and the light went
RED!
 “Oh, this must be what the pharmacist at Ryan’s was talking about,” I realized in thatmoment. So this was it—narcotics withdrawal—a full force gale wind, a Category 5 Hurricaneon the bathroom floor at Bully Hills and a Twister too!My mind could hardly grasp the severity of the situation. I knew deep down inside thatsomething had gone terribly, terribly wrong; this couldn’t possibly be right. Wake-up Man!Wake-Up! Maybe this was just a dream?I clicked my heels three times and said, “I want to go home…I want to go home,” but I wasstill in that goddamn bathroom, kicking and thrashing. I was now screaming at the top of mylungs,
“HELP! SOMEONE FUCKING HELP ME OUT OF THIS DREAM…I WANT TOWAKE-UP! FUCKING HELP MEEEE!”
It was apparent that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.
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AmericanSappho

engrossing and very sensory

reply03 / 16 / 2011
duponthumanite

And Trooper McMahon is even scarier!

reply08 / 22 / 2010
duponthumanite

Really enjoyed the title of the chapter "Hurricane in the Bathroom". I see Thad is in the rehab centre. And it is an unwaking dream! Kilgore Trout is always a good one to quote. This Little Voice is very active, isn't it? Hope your paranoia didn't break out too much at this point (meeting Ned).

reply08 / 22 / 2010
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