Crossed

Chapter 1, Part 4

That was hell, he thought.

He stood up shivering, the rank smell of the throw up made him miss the dank smell of the apartment. He longed to be laying back down, ached for his own toilet to regurgitate into.

The throw up brought closure to the mini-aneurysm and motivation to climb the wall in front of him. It was the quickest way back to the apartment. He would have to walk around the wall.

Definitely hell, he thought.

His brain just tore off some of itself as repercussions to when he stepped on the ant as a child. That was God's punishment. Pouring acid and burning holes into the outer shell of his brain. Stinging, malicious, microwaved destruction. Something like a schizophrenic psychotic attack.

Schizophrenia fries your brain, does as much damage to your brain as being an alcoholic, just for comparison, alcohol is so bad that it's like having a mental illness. So you can imagine what our main character is going through right now, a complete confusion of reality, a backwards interpretation of events, surprised, completely novel information spewing in that he never before imagined, the complete unknown. All of this happening within the span of fifteen seconds. Receives God's punishment, then throws up.

Still in a dazed shock, he immediately fights through the lightheadedness and goes to climb the wall that he was standing in front of. It's the quickest way back. One foot up, both hands grab, second foot up. He placed his forearm down at the top of the wall while the rest of his body caught up. Something trickled the back of his mind though, the sandiness of the surface where he had put his arm was bothering him in a way he couldn't quite understand. The sandiness then started shifting under his arm, swirling and tickling. He got all the way up the wall and stood up, some of the moving sand was stuck to his forearm still. Wait a minute, moving sand?

The concussion-like brainblast from moments before was a shift into a dimension that God could provide, creating the ant pile exactly where I was about to climb, manifesting synchronicity, shedding an outer layer of his brain, deforming in a direction, tearing the muscle of the fleshy organ, tearing them so that they would rebuild stronger, it was his brain going to the divine gym, prestiging his own self through this karmetic intervention.

They were ants. Hundreds. Climbing around his flesh. Stinging. Burning.

The inflammation of the stings came at the same time as the shock and frightful spazzing of every muscle in his body, him flailing, repeatedly swiping his skin where the critters were frolicking, breaching, poisoning.

He began to sprint at the same time as he was obsessively and obnoxiously shaking his arms and shucking his forearm to get all the ants off. He sprinted back towards his apartment full force, needing water, needing the cool rush that the liquid would provide, his senses inflaming with each pent-up breath of agitation.

This was the opposite of Deja vou. It was a warning. The throbbing headache that made him throw up wasn't the karma, it was the warning for the karma. He couldn't figure out which one was worse, entry into hell, or the punishment. His brain knew that he was going to be punished. And how ironic that it was ants that had been the punishment when ants were part of the crime. He knew this was God's payback for his murderous tendencies as a child, he just knew it. He also knew that the next time he would have a debilitatingly destructive headache, it was before a powerfully influenced event that he was to suffer in order to set back into balance in the world.

He cut through the grass with these ideas in mind, cutting up toward the stairs to his doorknob he leapt, careening around parked cars and sidewalk curbs. He was punished, and now he was okay. That was it. Right?

He ran up the stairs to his door. Jiggling the lock frantically he stood, jumping up and down, sweating pints of salt water onto his shirt and into the crevices of his body. He felt disgustingly violated in this moment, just threw up, covered in the fire of ant bites, and a layer of sweaty stench sedenting into his pores. The key hit the back of the lock and he turned it. That's when the slight feminine voice resounded through his ear drums like a bass guitar strumming chords of orchestral reverberation.

Hey!