Catharsis [Novel]

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

            Quickly deciding it's time for another round of strategic self-distraction, I shut my eyes as tightly as I can and do my best to ignore what I just saw.  I think of rainbows.  Butterflies.  Ponies.  Unicorns.  Llamacorns (A weird llama/unicorn crossbreed my sister dreamed up.).  Anything that isn't what I just saw.  Anything that isn't a creepy old man mouth filled with brilliant white teeth spattered with brownish-red blood.

            No good.  His demonic visage overwhelms whatever vision I dream up (Do anything aside from mythological demons have dark black eyes, skin that resists aging and mouths full of blood?).  Abandoning my avoidance of him, I slowly open my eyes again.

            Still there.  Still creepy.  Still staring at me.  Still grinning at me.  Giving in to what I know must eventually happen, I resign myself to bending down for a better look.

            The light in the alley has grown strong enough that I now see him perfectly.  Well, as perfectly as you'd want to see something like this.  In an empty alley.  At night.  By yourself.

            His mouth is bathed in red.  He either bit somebody or somebody hit him in the mouth.  Hard.  With like a bowling ball or something.  I can't tell which it is with his mouth mostly closed. 

            Reaching out a finger, I pry back his upper lip enough for me to see that his teeth are red...well, the teeth are white, but they are caked in red gore.  I assume it’s blood (a safe enough bet at this point).  His gums are also red.  Ok, pink covered in red, but I think the point is understood.  Moving his upper lip back and forth and checking out his teeth (I guess I got over that touching-a-dead-guy ickiness quickly enough.), I see nothing unusual aside from the copious amount of blood.  

            Moving his bottom lip down, I check his other teeth.  Covered in blood, but relatively normal.  All his teeth look relatively unscathed.  I don't see any obvious reason for the blood in his mouth. 

            But what was I expecting to find?  An open wound?  A large hole in his mouth (aside from the throat, I mean)?  Missing teeth?  Well...ok.  Yeah, that last one would have made sense.

            But his mouth is fine as far as I can tell.  I doubt the blood came from his own mouth.  Which means...

            ...the blood came from someone else.  That doesn't make me feel much better.  I'm guessing he went all crazy-brain-eating-zombie on somebody and got himself beaten down for the effort (just my first guess as to a feasible explanation).  It makes sense at least.

            Except the “who did it” part still bothers me?  Is a theoretical beating enough to kill a man with no obvious marks on him?  More importantly than that, though, is why was I lying next to him?

            Slowly another piece of the puzzle clicks into place for me.  A piece that connects the "why" of “why am I here” with the "what" of “what happened to him”.  And it's a piece I don't like.  One I don't like at all.

            What if I was the person he bit with his monster-movie reject teeth?  And what if I'm the person who gave him the life-ending beat down?  That would certainly explain why I woke up here in a sticky puddle of blood.  And why I can't  remember what happened tonight (Or I just don't want to.).