The Permutation

Breakthrough (Part 9) Paul

Friday, November 4th, 10:30 a.m.

Paul woke to the feeling of sticky, dried sweat rubbing the voluminous folds of his skin raw.

    After his encounter with the Beings, Paul expected to fall into a deep slumber. Paul was notorious for his ability to succumb to a deep, peaceful sleep that resembled a coma in its intensity. In fact, he had once slept through the worst storm Lancet Falls had in fifty years, but last night previous, sleep eluded him.

    The second he closed his eyes, his mind was plagued by the perfectly ordinary faces of the Beings, and the soundless Jeach undulating towards him like an implacable bloodhound, Paul's odious scent fixed in its nostrils. Whenever he did manage to lapse into an uneasy, feverish state of unconsciousness, he imagined a wet squelching sound of suction on his window. At each occurrence, he probed the property with his tendrils and found nothing, but this did little to put his mind at ease. He remembered how the Beings were immune to his extra-sensory perception, and he had a sneaking suspicion the Jeach had a similar immunity. It was lying in wait for Paul to leave the confines of his sanctuary.

   

The smell of burnt sausage drifted into Paul's bedroom, his favorite. Since his mother had started taking care of him, she had been meticulous in following the doctor's every order, Paul's well-being always being in the forefront of her mind.Food was the one notable exception. To the chagrin of the nurse and doctor, Joyce was persistent in satisfying Paul's prodigious culinary appetites. Paul's sedentary lifestyle put him at risk for deep vein thrombosis, which was just a ten dollar word for blood clot, and Joyce's grease-lathered food wasn't doing Paul's arteries any favors.

Is there any greater way to die than doing what you love? Being carried to an all you can buffet version of Valhalla wouldn't be half bad.

Paul had become attuned to the sound of Joyce's soft footfalls down the hallway to his bedroom. To the untrained ear, her approach was nearly undetectable. Years of being punished for having an opinion and displaying any sense of self had trained her to fade into the background and make as little impact on her surroundings as possible. Even after the liver failure and subsequent death of Frank Curts, Joyce still tiptoed around as if she were worried his ghost would phase through a wall and beat the living shit out of her for making too much noise while he was trying to watch the damn game.

His mother inched the door open as to not wake him if he were still sleeping, but Paul was never asleep by the time she came into his room. The smell of crisp sausage and bacon acted as smelling salts and were the only reliable means to rouse Paul from a deep slumber.

Joyce had a sixth sense for when the people around her were in a dark mood; it was a survival mechanism. She'd sensed how on edge Paul was and had pulled out all the stops to cheer him up. Twelve sausage links and twelve strips of bacon, six of which were greasy with white pockets of fat and the other six being a pleasant rust colored red. Three plate sized pancakes were stacked on top of each other stuck together by a combination of peanut butter and Nutella. To top of it, Paul could see steam wafting off a coffee mug that could only contain Paul's standard coffee order of half coffee, half cream, and a tablespoon of sugar.

The years hadn't been kind to his mother, but he still found her the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. As a byproduct of their evolutionary code, women were built more frail than men. they needed to compensate by being twice as devious. Being manipulative is as fundamental to a woman as breathing, but Paul's mother had been spared that curse. She'd remained untainted by the years no matter how many men stomped her underfoot like a discarded piece of gum, and that made her a rose in a field of weeds.

Paul felt it a shame that no one else could see what he did. While others couldn't look past the pale bat wings of flesh adorning her underarms, Paul saw them for what they were, visible reminders of the woman she'd once been before the world had shrunk her down to a nub. She wore her hair in a tight bun, tired of trying to make herself beautiful, because male insecurity equated self-care with sleeping around behind their backs. Although her eyes were perpetually downcast, whenever Paul caught a glimpse of them, he was struck with admiration. To the mere passerby, Joyce's faded green eyes were dull lifeless marbles, but Paul saw a faint glimmer of hope and joy like a bird trapped in a cage.