Constructive Thoughts

Arthur tossed in his bed as his bladder couldn’t handle the urinary pressure any longer. It’s been a while since he had felt the organic dams about to collapse under the pressure before doing so beyond his awareness. His twisting and turning woke his wife up. She turned to face him and asked, “What’s wrong, honey?”

Arthur shot up and slid his feet into his slippers, “gotta take a leak.”

The elderly woman groaned, “Be careful…” as she tossed herself onto her stomach and returned to sleep.

Arthur got up and made his way towards the bathroom. In no time he had relieved himself. The elderly man found pleasure in being able to empty his urinal sack on his own. For too long, he’s been confined to the prison known as adult diapers. He had felt like a whole man once more, even if it was just for a moment. The helplessness didn’t do him any favors. He felt like a newborn babe most days and he hated the feeling. The sensation of a fulfilled existence vanished quickly, however. The old man’s skull pounded from within and the apparition of a human-sized monkey corpse doll pounding on cymbals flashed in front of him before turning to nothing but unforgiving darkness once more.

The old man let out a pained moan as he forced himself to waddle back to his bedroom. The curse of his existence was toying with him, making him feel fully alive for a moment only to crush him with untold amounts of pain all over again. A feeling so familiar and yet so foreign.

The halls between the rooms seemed way longer than they should be to Arthur as he crawled out of the bathroom. There were way more rooms than the geezer could remember.

Then again, his memory wasn’t what it used to be. The realization of how little he remembered of his own house made him shake his head in disappointment in himself. The pounding in his head got worse, and he leaned against the wall as he slowly inched his way towards his bedroom.

Arthur took a deep breath and pressed onward, trying his hardest to ignore his headache. As he walked by a room with a door tagged with an erased word, he couldn’t recognize, Arthur noticed a shadow dash in front of him in the hall. A shadow, it looked like it belonged to a small kid. He had no young children. Both of his sons had grown up, and he had an army of grandchildren and grandnephews.

“Hey,” he called out.

No response came. The shadow merely kept on dashing from one side of the hall to the other, even though it made no physical sense. The hall was far longer than it was wider. The figure seemed to grow closer and closer as the elderly man stared at it, confused and somewhat concerned. One of the doors was thrown open, and the shadow dashed into it, a bright light emanated from the door shocking the old man – there shouldn’t have been any bright lights in this house. Not as far as Arthur could remember, but then again, he didn’t remember much these days.

A familiar voice called out from the strange room. It was familiar but the senex didn’t know why. Soon enough a bulky man, dressed in plain work clothes and a bloody apron came out behind him two other men dressed in plain clothes. The trio looked awfully familiar, but Arthur couldn’t put his finger on it. He knew he was supposed to know these men, but he doesn’t know from where or what their identities are. The bulky apron man walked up to Arthur and told him excitedly, “Hey chief, we caught the pig that tried to run away. I’d hug you, but as you can see, I’m a little dirty right now.” The trio led the elderly man into the room.

The insides of the room were covered in tiles all over, bright lights shone showered the room from above and naked corpses hung up from the ceiling. The disemboweled corpses of what were supposed to be swine, but there was an odd quality to them – the swine seemed awfully human-like. The entire setting confused Arthur to no end. He simply stood and stared at the events unfolding before him. Arthur felt his face contort in discomfort as the group of men poked and prodded at a fat naked man seated on the cold tiles. The thing was tied up and squealed like a pig. In fact, even its head was more reminiscent to that of a pig than the one of a man.

The apron man stood over the swine chimera, now holding a massive knife, one that Arthur could not remember him holding just a moment ago. He raised the knife and started slicing the creature’s head with it while cursing it as loud as he could. He was cursing the pitiful abomination for disrespecting him and the boss. Arthur felt his stomach turning at the sight as the rest of the men started laughing and cursing along. The creature leaked liquid gold from its cracked skull. The old man’s head started pounding ferociously again as a foul smell not dissimilar to feces rose all around him. The apron man was done butchering the pure creature by that point and was caked in blood and golden liquid. He turned to one of the men and said, “Hey Ken, escort our boss out of here please. He’s a busy man. The rest of you clean this up.”

A tall, lanky man from the group approached Arthur and wrapped his arm around him. The senex looked at him, confused, he couldn’t recognize the face. It seemed like a smeared blur on top of his face.

“Let’s go, boss, you've got better things to do.”

Arthur nodded, and they both left the bright room.

Once out, the man disappeared, sending a wave of panic across the aging patriarch’s body. The door to the luminescent room locked itself and sank into the wall like it was a sponge before disappearing in it. Arthur was left alone, staring at the wall, while his head and heart were pounding.

The old man didn’t have much time to be perplexed as the childlike shadow darted around him again. He called out to it and opted to try to catch up to it. He followed the shadow for a while, and the hall seemed to turn to rubber all around him. Each of his steps sunk into the floor, forcing the whole structure to dance like the waves of the ocean. By the time Arthur caught up to the shadow, he realized it wasn’t the shadow of a child. It was a bear cup with a collar to which a balloon was tied.

“What the…” Arthur called out, but the bear noticed his proximity and darted over the corner in the hall. There weren’t meant to be any corners in that hall. Arthur turned to chase after the bear, but the sudden sound of jazz playing behind him caught his attention. The old man slowly turned his aching body 360 degrees to face a door that wasn’t there before. The music grew louder and closer. He placed his hand on the ornately decorated handle and could feel the vibrations of the music coursing through it.

Twisting the door handle, he pushed the door ajar and found himself standing at the entrance to a lavish ball. At the center stood a stage with a singer he could recognize, albeit only barely. He knew the face but couldn’t attach a name to it. There were many guests dressed in lavish dresses and suits. At the foot of the stage stood that darned bear, but now it was fully grown. The beast was drinking a cocktail and for some reason, the sight was infuriating to the patriarch. He was adamant about catching the mega omnivore. He didn’t even know why he was so angry at it, but the lack of understanding infuriated him even more. He made his way towards the beast. What seemed to the man like determined marching was a slow crawl to the guests all around him. Many-a-guest came to interact with the respected patriarch, but he couldn’t recognize them even though he knew their faces.

Every time one of the guests touched Arthur they would inflate like a balloon and explode, leaving behind only a pile of glittering confetti. Each time it happened, it jolted the old man, forcing his lips to crook at one of the edges.

Finally, the beast had noticed him. It dropped its drink and roared. Its mighty call echoed throughout the whole hall, forcing the guests to shake like paper figurines. The Ursidae cry slammed like a hammer into Arthur’s forehead, causing him to stumble and cry in pain. The beast ran away from the senex as a sea of black and white balloons fell from the ceiling, disrupting Arthur’s path even more than before.

The elderly man cried hoarsely in sheer annoyance, popping as many guests as he could like discarded balloons in spite on his way to catch the bear. Eventually, after an arduous crawl, Arthur managed to make it through to the end ballroom. He could hear his name being called dimly somewhere in the distance, but couldn’t make it out. Lost in an attempt to conjure up his thoughts, the geezer didn’t notice the walls of the building collapsing all around him when a band of horse riders steamrolled through the whole thing. The walls came down as dramatically as a toy building blocks would in a fit of a child’s destructive infantile rage.

Time seemed to slow to a grinding halt when the riders arrived. Nonetheless, in the blink of an eye, Arthur’s neck was enveloped by the lasso of one of the riders and she drugged him across the rugged steppe ground. The geezer didn’t even have the chance to reflect on the change in environment. He grabbed at the rope to avoid suffocation but could do little to escape its grip. As the rider dragged him along, Arthur could feel his bones and tendons crack and pop below him. His neck already constricted, he couldn’t even muster the resources to scream in pain.

In time the horse riders turned to life-sized sand figurines and then to dust, Arthur’s body came to a halt. He gasped for air and tried adjusting to the newly acquired pain, even if slightly. He rolled onto his back and stared all around him. The old man was now in the middle of the desert. His thoughts were a soup of pictures and words he couldn’t understand. The only coherent constant was the sound of his voice. A dim feminine call coming from somewhere far away.

Arthur closed his eyes for just a moment and found himself being brushed on the face with something wet and rough. He groaned and tried moving away, but the feeling persisted. It was following him. Arthur opened his eyes, only to recoil in disgust. It was the bear, and it was licking his face. He crawled back and screamed profanities at the perplexed animal who stood up and cut the balloon away from its collar.

The senex tried, found himself unable to form any more words as they became slurred and incoherent.

The bear grabbed at its head and pulled.

A loud wet tearing sound echoed through the desert, unsettling the mumbling elder as he watched the beast unclothe itself from its fur. Beneath the fur stood a man made up of light. Its luminescence became brighter and brighter with each passing moment to the point Arthur was forced to close his eyes. Even that didn’t help as the light burned through his eyelids and straight into his sockets.

The calls of his name grew louder and closer, yet still somewhat muffled and not exactly familiar. The elder’s eyes shot up without his volition and he was forced to watch as the blindly bright man spoke in a tongue he could not understand.

“Htrae siht nopu dog gniremmihs a tra uoht rof namuhhcra fles eniht enorhtne'' was chanted over and over in an ear-piercing multi-voiced pitch. The chanting only stopped when the luminescent man started melting away with an obnoxious hiss before turning into a brightly glistening puddle of silver-like substance.

Arthur stared, dazed, blinded, confused, deafened, hurt, and lost. He simply stared with his eyes transfixed on the horizon, and his mouth opened ajar, saliva dripping out of his mouth.

A balloon descended next to Arthur’s visage. A black balloon with white skulls spelling the word “Srom.” It touched his head and popped, shaking the old man out of his stupor. His head started pounding again, and the elderly man grabbed at his skull this time. To his shock, his head started expanding. It grew bigger and bigger as the pain slowly turned agonizing. The old man screamed as if he was being burned alive as his brain matter tore through his skull.

The patriarch collapsed, a spongiform substance flowing into his mouth with ghastly cries bombarding his ears all around him.

Through the ever-invasive mourning screeching, the fallen elder could hear in the distance voices he could no longer recognize speaking. Just barely. The words were meek and distant. The speech sounded like an alien barking to him, “Mrs. Coughlin, I doubt he’ll make it out this time.”