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Don
’
tEatMy face
…
A short story by Briane f. pagel, jr.
1
 
It would have been nice to have an excuse for how he ended up there.It would have been better, he felt, as he hung there upside down,to be able to curse himself. To say
Why was I going so fast?
Or
Why did I have that last drink?
Or even
Maybe I should have just pulled over and napped for a while.
Any of those would have helped him deal with this, he felt,because he could have placed some blame for this, or felt that whatwas going on was punishment for his stupidity or cruelty.Maybe it would have been enough if he had been coming fromsomeplace wrong, or going to someplace wrong.
Why didn’t I end theaffair earlier 
, he could have berated himself, as his head felt like itwould explode from the blood slowly pooling in it.
Why was I going off to buy drugs
he could moan silently, quietly, while he tried to swallowand wet his throat but could not do so because as it turns out, gravityplays quite an important role in swallowing, or plays an important rolein preventing one from swallowing when one is hanging upside down ina twisted car wreck, held in place and pinned back by a seatbelt thathas locked, with one’s right arm pinned awkwardly and probablybroken, certainly numb, and long past the part of numbness or injurywhere it hurt, having gone through the flaring searing bolts-of-agony-shooting through one’s mind hours (days? Certainly not days? Days?)earlier.
Was it days?
He squinted in the dark. He watched where he knew thecellphone was, on the ceiling of the car, to his right. If his right armwas free, had movement and was free, he could have picked up thecellphone and called. It was laying on its side, in the dark, and unlesssomeone called and caused the panel to light up, he would not see thetime and date display that would tell him whether it was hours or daysthat he’d hung here.
If it was days, they probably would have eaten him by now.
But he had not been at fault. He was not coming from awhorehouse, or even a night so late at work that his wife and childrenwould be honestly and justifiably irate. He was not heading to or fromany place where he’d used illicit drugs. He was not engaged in anypursuit more dangerous or unwholesome than his trip to the grocerystore to get some milk, and, as it turned out, some doughnuts. They’dbeen out of milk, and it had been just past seven, and Jana had askedif he would mind going to get some milk, and he’d said of course not,
2
 
and he’d driven to the store to get the milk, and had decided to getsome doughnuts as well, a treat for the girls when they woke up in themorning. He’d even picked out a selection so that no matter whattheir tastes had become – 11 and 13 year-olds who overnight coulddevelop an aversion to powdered sugar or jelly or to a doughnutwithout both – they could have gotten a doughnut they liked in themorning.
That was it, of course! It wasn’t days after all, it wasn’t evenhours, it was probably not long at all because Jana would have missed him and notified someone and they were looking for him and they’d find him on this road because even though not many people lived down it, this road was the most likely way to take to the most likely grocery store to go to and so they’d find him because they’d see thewreck, he must be hallucinating or disoriented from the blood in hishead, maybe he hit his head in the accident, maybe it was all just some sort of nightmare.
 The cellphone buzzed. It was on vibrate, he always left it onvibrate so that it did not annoy people if he were to forget to turn it off in movies or restaurants. The cellphone buzzed and he spun his headto look at it, winced and his vision blurred. Hanging upside downmeant that blood was not getting to the rest of his body, it was slowlyfilling up the inside of his head, draining from his feet and legs andhands and chest down to his head where his heart could not musterenough pressure to push it back out. His head was filling with bloodthat had no oxygen in it, and the new blood joining it with oxygen wasquickly depleted and made the situation worse. When he turned hishead so rapidly, it hurt. It more than hurt. It pummeled his mind. Buthe turned to look at the cellphone, which had rung – buzzed – at leastfour times before. It was buzzing and slowly turning on its axis.As his vision cleared he realized that he could see the panel thatwould show time and date, but it showed now the number that wascalling.
Home
.
 Jana was calling him.
“Jana,” he croaked. It was all he could do. The cellphone buzzedmore, its panel slowly turning. The light it cast was bright, a miniaturespotlight aiming out from the silver flipphone. As it buzzed again, itspun a little more, and the light silhouetted something.He turned his head to see what was outlined in the light, but tooquickly and his vision blurred again. All he saw was all he’d seen sofar. It looked like a foot-tall silhouette of a manlike creature, standingthere. It was pitchblack, had arms and legs and a body and a head but
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