1 Chapter 1

5/21/18

When the man sits up, the pain is the first thing he feels. It is a familiar pain, the kind that is both deadly, yet oddly satisfying. His stomach is protruding out—like a sumo wrestler's belly—and it surprises him. The fact that his stomach can even extend this far, despite his extensive workout regimen for the past fifteen years, is what horrifies him. It feels as if he drank too many cheat-day beers, ate too much bacon on his cheat-day pizza, or perhaps ate too much in general. He feels the urge to vomit—not that he actually does vomit, however, because he gulps down the acid whenever it arrives, despite the painful sting it causes on the way back down—and he grabs at his pulsing stomach with a firm hand to try and ease the pain.

That's when his mind flashes.

He's in his childhood home, with the silk patterns of red and grey on his bed, and he lies there amidst the covers, trying his best not to drown in his own vomit. The vision is detailed, right down to the stain on the carpet that looks like Texas, which is a complimentary piece given by his best friend, Doug.

That day was scary to him, and in that moment he felt he would die. It's the same feeling he feels right now.

That's why he decided to quit that day, after his binge on cake and burgers on the Fourth of July, because he didn't want to wind-up dead. Though he had been depressed and binged that summer before junior year—and actually felt quite happy about it—he envisioned the day in which he wouldn't be able to purge anymore. By that time, he'd be gone, and it'd be too late.

He started with a high-protein diet, cutting all sugar, dairy, and carbs, and then slowly started to workout everyday. Six months later, when he returned to school after Christmas break, he had dropped a hundred pounds, and was nearing a pair of chiseled abs.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing is how picture perfect it is: the vomit; the pulses; the feeling; and the fact that he can't remember the events leading here. It's exactly how it was when he purged, and though he doesn't know why he's feeling it—he gave up that lifestyle a long time ago—he knows the answer must be worse than the unknown.

There's a liquid oozing from his mouth, and he reaches up to his lips with two fingers to investigate it. For some odd reason, he can feel something wrong with it, though he can't quite place why it feels weird to him at all.

Until he lowers his fingers into the light, that is.

What he sees—or perhaps, what he can't see, in this dark, flickering room—causes him to stumble to his feet in a matter of urgency. The liquid is red, and it's warm. It's hard for him to see, and it's apparent to him that it's nighttime, but there's a slight light behind him that shines upon his fingers. His glance strays from his hand and looks across the room.

That's when he notices the body.

It's an elderly woman dressed in a red flowery dress—at least, the man assumes it is a red dress—stationed in the corner near the bathroom, with the same red liquid surrounding her. He rushes over to the woman, kneeling beside her, and his eyes produce water because he can't remember!

How did this woman get here?! Why am I here? Did I kill her?

He notices a piece of her dress that stands out from the rest—the strand by her shoulder.

It is pure white.

He realizes the dress isn't red at all, but instead stained that color, like the pee-stain of Texas on the carpet, a stain that would never leave that innocent, white dress. In a state of panic, he matches the liquid from his mouth to the woman, realizing that it's her blood that soaks the inner-lining of his mouth, and that's when he actually does vomit, spilling blood and chunks of red meat from the depths of his gut. Unsure of the horrors within him, he stands and runs toward the light (Hoping he'll find answers).

Reaching for the door, he opens it wide, letting light fill the room and causing his eyes to blink rapidly in order to adjust. He comes upon a hotel hallway, with a bright red carpet on the floor. However, the longer he stares at it, it becomes increasingly drenched in dark blood, and the image of the woman flashes over it.

The man starts to run. He doesn't know where he's going, he just knows that somehow, someway, he's responsible for the death of that woman, and he shouldn't be anywhere near here when the cops arrive.

He runs down the hall (with hotel rooms on either side) and his vision grows blurry. He believes it must be the same as when people take off their glasses. He wouldn't know though—he's had 20/20 vision his whole life—but the blurriness is still frightening. As he runs, the blur changes the numbers above one of the hotel doors. In the tiny rectangle above the door that typically holds three numbers, he watches it warp to say the word "KILL". Initially, the man believes it is just coincidence, until he keeps peering to the sides of himself and seeing the word "KILL" in the other tiny rectangles.

At the end of the hall, he pushes open the grey door, coming upon the staircase leading to the roof. Continuing onward in a frenzy, he stumbles up the stairs, and cuts his elbow off bits of the flooring that are rusted. The blur returns, and he watches the ground change into a black void, with the word "KILL" continuously moving through it, like he's running through a disturbed ending credits of a movie.

He runs for what feels like eternity, before reaching the door leading to the roof. Stumbling through it, he's met with the dark night sky, and the roaring sound of police sirens. Everywhere he turns, he sees his reality shift into the word "KILL". The stars spin and twirl into the word "KILL", the little pebbles of rock that cover the roof shift to spell "KILL", and the shards of glass on the rooftop have "KILL" written on them in blood.

In fear, the man brings his hands to his face and closes his eyes, concealing himself in complete darkness. There's the pounding sound of the sirens, the pounding of his heart against his chest, and the pounding of his stomach filled with excess. To his surprise, in the complete darkness of his mind, a dirty finger appears within its midst to draw "KILL".

Screaming in frustration, the man opens his eyes and reaches with his right arm to grab a shard of glass from the floor, before swinging it up quickly towards his neck. However, his left arm grabs his right by the wrist, preventing the man from off-ing himself. Though he doesn't know where, he believes that he's being watched, and that someone is preventing him from ending the pain. The man, looking towards the rooftop cliff, conjures a plan within his head. He chooses not to dwell too much on the plan though, as to not let the people watching him notice.

Then, he pushes his right arm down before bringing it back up to stab his left arm, puncturing a vein and causing a stream of blood to squirt into the air. Running forward, the man jumps off the edge, and slices his throat mid-air. As his lifeless body falls down, the blood flows from his neck and into the air, only to eventually fall back down with the rest of him. His body comes to a splat on top of a police car, and luckily no cops are within it at this time. Blood pours out of his body, and drops onto the cold gravel below.