Never Bet the Devil Your Head

Part one: the room

Holy shit, my head hurts.

I groan aloud as I slowly gain consciousness, a rough surface pressing hard against my cheek as my head throbs. I think I've been drooling. I flicker my eyes open and a blurry form looms before me, but refuses to come into focus. It is insanely bright. Grunting, I roll onto my stomach and attempt to push myself into a kneeling position, but I am instantly overcome by blinding, painful light that sears through my brain. Immediately, I lay back down and remain still. Darkness resumes.

A few minutes (hours?) pass before I come to again. The intense pounding of my head is still there although dimmed now to merely agonizing pain. Wary of the light I try squinting, letting my eyes adjust slowly. The form in front of me comes into focus, and I realize I'm staring at a dark wooden chair leg inches from my face. The rough surface rubbing against my cheek is actually a carpet. I gaze at it and at the chair leg for a little, thinking.

Tentatively I maneuver myself into a sitting position, although my body seems made of lead, my arms suddenly unable to lift a feather. It takes all my strength but I finally pull myself into a sitting position. My brain sloshes painfully within my skull. I'm momentarily nauseas, and I rest against the side of chair while I let it pass. My head still feels split in two, and I gingerly lift a hand to it. There's something wet in my hair. I bring my hand to my face, and am confused that it has suddenly changed colors. It's slick and red. My brain struggles to make sense of it. Paint?

Blood. I belatedly realize. It's soaked in blood, you idiot.

I need to find a mirror.

I try to stand, but the pain has been replaced by vertigo. When I shift onto my legs, the floor extends out beneath me. Suddenly I am miles away from the ground, walking on stilts. I am standing on the edge of a building. My focus narrows and widens repeatedly. For some reason the chair flies off the floor and the arm zooms towards my face.

I catch myself just before I fall, gravity sickenly reverting itself. I can barely keep myself upright as my stomach lurches into my throat. Instantly I close my eyes, blindly feeling my way into the chair, which turns out to be a couch. I take long, deep breaths as the world revolves behind my closed eyes. I'm spinning continuously, a jarring loop that repeats every few seconds so that I can't figure out which way is up. I lean my head back and wait out the nausea and try not to pass out again.

In. Out. In. Out. Breathing becomes my world. My thoughts feel like cobwebs and stick to the inside of my skull. All I want to do is stretch out and lie down right here, close my eyes and sleep forever. This is obviously hell. What the fuck did I drink last night?

This cycle continues for a while. Pain, vertigo, nausea, breathing. Time passes.

Eventually the worst of the pain recedes and I force myself to continue to breathe. My brain is still dusting out, but beginning to work again. Obviously attempting movement was too much to start with, so I decide to start with the basics. How did I get here? I try to think about the last thing I can remember before waking up here. Flashing lights. A pay phone. A woman laughing. Two black body bags outlined in a sunrise. A shadow in the glass behind me. It feels jumbled, and sends electric sparks through my mind. I clutch my head, groaning aloud. Breathe, I tell myself. In. Out. In. Out.

Alright, not basic enough. How about where am I? I can manage to open my eyes without being overwhelmed by pain, and turn my head side to side without vomiting. Improvement. I take advantage of my momentary stability to investigate my surroundings.

And instantly regret it.

The room I'm in is small, but with high ceilings; only barely large enough to accommodate it's incredibly sparse furniture. To my right , a slight partition probably only six inches in width and extending from the floor to the ceiling separates a double bed from the rest of the room. The head of the bed is obscured by this partition, but by gently leaning myself forward I can see the wall it rests against. The bedspread is clean looking but old and out of fashion, with faint impressions of flowers or vines tracing across and up to where the pillows would be. The narrowness of the room means the bed extends almost all the way to the wall opposite which contains a sliding door, probably a closet. This leaves barely enough space to walk around the foot of the bed and to the room's only window. The curtains match the bedspread and are drawn tightly closed but I can see a hint of light protruding from beyond them. Daylight! I think. Maybe the view can give me an idea of where I am. I attempt to stand, but the vertigo returns. I grit my teeth. Soon, I think, just not yet.

My eyes travel the rest of the odd room. The couch I'm sitting on is on the other side of the small partition, up against a wall. Small divots in the carpet speak of where end tables and a coffee table would have once stood, but they're long gone. The only other piece of furniture is a stiff looking, ugly, striped arm chair sitting in the middle of the room, perpendicular to me on the left.

The wall paper is a mostly faded olive green that sort of goes with the drapes and bed spread. The walls themselves are mostly unadorned. On the door to the closet at the foot of the bed something large has been removed, leaving a square that is a slight shade lighter: an area close to three feet wide and six feet tall, extending up from the floor. A mirror, perhaps, I think. Two other light patches, above the couch and above the head of the bed, probably once held picture frames. An old fashioned (but probably never-working) fireplace dominates most of the wall directly across from me.

There are no tables, no other artwork, no knick-knacks except for a large black marble bust of a man (with strangely familiar round-framed glasses) on the mantle of the fireplace. I tilt my head slowly upwards, examining a fake crystal chandelier that hangs from the ceiling. It looms above me and has obviously been poorly wired. The bulbs burn white hot and bright, but randomly flicker on and off. The effect is jarring and casts odd shadows, but it never causes the overall light in the room to dim.

A strange but mostly bland room, with three exceptions that cause me to pause. The first is a large area of wall between the closet and the fireplace. It is entirely brick, doesn't match the décor, and is about the size of a doorway. It looks new; the bricks are fresh and clean.

The second is a large ornate frame on the wall above the fireplace, containing nothing but black canvas.

The third is a large sliding door that takes up half the fourth wall, behind the armchair. It is made of heavy, reinforced steel and looks as if it would be more at home in a warehouse. I study the wide reinforced iron bars bolted across it, and decide it's probably also very, very thick.

Confused, with my head still pounding, I consider the room. It doesn't it look like a studio apartment, since it doesn't have a kitchen or a bathroom. Nor does it seem to be part of a home. The décor is just too strange, the walls too bland, the furniture looks like something out of a cheap hotel. A hotel room! I realize. But I can't imagine why a hotel would design a room this way.

Or maybe I just don't want to imagine the need to design one.

Nothing moves in the room but dust, and I'm still not up to standing yet. So instead I tentatively poke in my mind again. It seems that whatever caused me to lose consciousness has temporarily knocked out my short term memory. But is the damage deeper than that? I begin with some mental exercises. I run through a quick checklist of what I know; little things like who I am, what year it is, where I was born, my mother's maiden name; everything is as it should be. At least I haven't completely lost my mind.

Alright, I think, good warm up. Now for the heavy lifting. Let's start with what you can remember last and work forward from there.

Before I can start, the lights suddenly go out, plunging the room into total darkness. It takes me by surprise and I hold my breath, listening carefully, but it's hard to hear over the pounding in my head. The silence and darkness stretches on. I try to measure time by counting, but lose track. My heartbeat increases, along with my headache. I begin to feel anxious and wonder if maybe I've gone suddenly blind. I attempt to move myself, try to put a hand in front of my eyes, but I can't seem to even find my face. The pitch black is incredibly disorienting. I start to panic. My breathing becomes shallow and quick as I dart my eyes back and forth, seeing nothing. Straining, I barely make out a sound: a small, metal squeak. It's followed by a slight shuffling sound, which could be several feet moving across the room or just my imagination.

After what could be minutes or hours for all I can tell the lights abruptly turn back on. The brightness blinds me, and once again I'm forced to tightly shut my eyes. I may be having the headache from hell, but at least my thoughts are coming to me faster and faster. Although I still feel a little as if I'm trying to swim through pudding. As the lightning storm in my brain simmers I risk opening one eye to a slit, then the other, blinking them rapidly as they adjust.

In front of me, propped up uncomfortably in the red chair, is a woman.

And suddenly, with a flash of inspiration like a punch in the gut, I know where I am.