Droplets of blood hit the tightly knit carpeted floor as a ball until they slowly absorb and become forever a fixture in the pattern that blends into one beige color when seen from far above. The red Rorschach test grows larger as come to. I am on my knees with the taste of iron in my mouth and the light-headed feeling of being awoken in the middle of the night. I feel like falling down and laying on this hard unforgiving surface. “What happened? How did I get here?” I say to myself as I peer around the small bedroom that’s dark with little bits of daylight dancing in through the dirty window. I see splattered blood that looks black on the white almost cream walls to the right. I inspect my body and head for wounds. My head is screaming in agony. The blood on the wall and floor must be mine. I must have taken a blow to the head that spit all over that wall next to me and covered the floor.
As I stand on my weak shaky legs I realize my white t-shirt and navy blue basketball shorts are covered in blood. No one is in the room with me. “Did I fall and hit my head”? I ponder as I make my way around the foot of the bed that brushes my upper right thigh as I pass. “Wait for a second! Where am I”? I say this to myself as something trips up my left foot and I proceed to fall into the darkness in front of the plain white door. My right palm hitting the floor with a thud proceeded by my left palm and then my knees that hit with a painful force against the almost concrete ground. I quickly stand back up my legs are more sturdy now. I look at what tripped me and I’m grappled with horror and stunned. It is a body of a young girl wearing a floral nightgown covered in blood. I start to search for the wound on my head. I rub my fingers through the clotted bloody mess of my 2-inch hair. Nothing!!! There isn’t a wound anywhere to be found. I can’t recall the last few hours.
“Stay calm, breath deep,” I tell myself. “There is no way you had anything to do with this” I reassure myself. The last thing I remember was eating a corn beef sandwich on rye in the park during the day. I sat on a bench as I watched the children play and the nannies gossiped and peered over at me. I took a sip my Arnold Palmer in a generic blue-green swirled cup and then nothing until I woke up covered in blood with a young girl’s body lying at the foot of a bed in a bedroom with blank walls. As if someone moved in just a bed and nothing more. I couldn’t even tell where I was.
My head starts to spin with thoughts of what could have possibly happened. This didn’t make sense. How did someone make me forget a large part of my afternoon, killed a little girl and covered me with her blood? Memories start to flash in my mind, but they are blurred and indiscernible. I’ve blacked out in the past, but this time was different. I had never done anything but zoned out and stared at a wall in the past. My breath grows heavy and a pressure builds in my chest. “Could I have done this?” I ask myself. As I do a flash of blood splattering my face comes to mind. Sitting here isn’t going to help me figure this out but what was I going to do and where would I go. I was covered in blood without a change of clothes and what about the little girl. Anyone that I told would assume I killed her.
As thoughts rattle through my mind I start to reconstruct my day. At the park, I saw a Mother screaming and strong-arming her child. I felt a splitting headache and began to see in tunnel vision. My left check started stinging as if I had been slapped. I must have blacked out after that. Was it possible that in my fugue state I kidnapped a little girl and murdered her? Another flashback, this time of blood splattering the wall and accompanied by screams.
I sat in silence with my thoughts and analytics of the situation. “It must have been me” I heard a voice say in my head. I started to cry uncontrollably, the tears falling off my cheeks splashing down and causing the blood on my shirt to smear into a beautiful symbol of a red flower. The only reasonable explanation was that I blacked out and murdered this girl. Why? I don’t know. I didn’t even know who this little girl was. Fuck!!! I scream filling the empty room in echoes of my desperation.
I must face this and take accountability. If it turns out untrue officials will help me piece it together. I reach for the door with hesitation and breathe deep as I turn the silver noob. I enter into a small living room and kitchen both as empty as the bedroom. No one is here. I hear a voice “Run”. I follow and rush out the door and into a long bright hallway red from the setting of the sun outside. As if I know where to go I enter a door to the staircase I quickly take the steps two at a time while I’m rushing down. After about six flights of stairs, I find myself in an empty dark dilapidated lobby with nothing but a tattered couch from the sixties. I enter the office adjacent from the lobby. I squeeze out of this dark dusty building through the plywood window at the back of the office. I’m standing in an alleyway with towering brick buildings on both sides. I walk toward the street and come face to face with a husky officer in fresh blue uniform and a look of shock on his boyish face. “I need your help,” I say as I begin to cry again.
“Good morning Mr. Johnson,” He says. The officer knows my name? “Breath deep and take a set,” He says in a calm and reassuring voice. “I killed a little girl” I whisper to him. “I know, I know,” he says as he nods his head in agreeance. “No!!! you don’t understand” I scream at him. “Mr. Johnson you know yelling at me will get you nowhere,” He says firmly. “Now take your medication and you’ll understand shortly,” he says as he hands me a handful of pills. I’m confused. What the hell is happening? Why hasn’t this officer put me in handcuffs? Doesn’t he see the blood all over me? “Mr. Johnson we go over this every day. You are in the hospital and you are safe. You haven’t killed anyone”. I’m relieved but scared at the same time. “What is going on,” I say as I collapse and begin crying again. I place the half dozen pills in my mouth and the officer hands me a cup of water to wash it down. After swallowing hard I fall to the floor curl up into a fetal position and rock myself as I wait for the drugs to take effect.
