n o i t n e v e r P r e v e n t i o n

Red Lobster Christine Party SHIT

Day (Nergative) Two

It felt like falling, but faster. One moment I'm standing, drunk, post coitus, on the street and the next I'm on my back, in bed. It's 1:03 am.

Dave should have never left me. He could have just waited outside of Christine's place; but that would be a little bit creepy.

Maybe he walked Maddie to her place, maybe he just accepted my fate and went home. I guess maybe that's something he'll live with the rest of his life.

That sucks.

I can't imagine him going to bed that night, knowing I was going to die. I doubt knowing he had won the lottery helped him stomach that guilt.

Crap, can I even remember the number? If I don't remember it, then everything I remember happening tomorrow won't happen. But of course I can remember the number. two, six, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, twenty two, forty nine, but my head is spinning.

After my head settles, I find I can't get back to sleep. The physical discomfort leaves, but my mind is still swirling. I can see my room is pretty messy in the darkness. There's a book next to my bed. 'Catcher in the Rye' I open the cover and there's a message written in pencil on the first page.

"Decent book, kinda depressing. Not as good as 'Coocoo's Nest, but Adam really liked it.."

Who wrote this message?

It was me!

There's a mechanical pencil on the table next to my bed. I write 2, 6, 12, 15, 16, 22, 49 on the first page. I decide to read the first chapter. It takes a ton of concentration. To get my mind to focus on absorbing the written word.

How do I know how to read? My memory only spans two days into the future. I know people I haven't met yet, and yet I know skills I learned in a past I have yet to experience. Perhaps it is the same way I know how to walk and talk. General things I should know are absorbed when I was younger and stay in a part of my mind that isn't affected by this 'condition'.

I manage to finish the first chapter after multiple re-reading of countless lines. Some jerk named Holden visits his teacher who is in a bath robe. There is something written in pencil on the page I've reached.

Erace this, Always erase this.

What? I grab the mechanical pencil next to the bed and start erasing and realize there's something much small written on the page.

Dave has to know who was driving.

I erase it, too. I don't know who was driving. I must have wrote that, knowing I would read it, so I think I'm going to learn who was driving, today. I know what the guy looks like, he looks like a guy, an oldder guy. It wasn't that guy I met at Christine's, it wasn't that jerk doctor, I don't know who it is.

It's 1:54am and I realize I'm actually tired despite my head spinning.

9:00 am the phone rings. I manage to get it before anyone else in the house picks up. It's Dave.

"Hey Man, it's Dave, do you have any idea what's going on?"

"Yeah, you do a good job explaining it tomorrow."

"Alright, lay it on me."

"Wait, what?" Oh, he wants the number.

He cuts me off before I can tell him.

"Every morning, when it's still fresh in your mind, you've got to tell me what you do tomorrow, so I can call you tomorrow and give you a little heads up. Our daily Pow-Wow. What do I tell you tomorrow morning?"