My eyes blinked to the sharp pain of early morning sunlight beaming through my fluttering eyelashes. My face hurts, at least the right side of it does. My hair is wet and my clothes are twisted around my body like some piece of violent licorice. I cannot move my arms as one is smashed beneath my body between my skin and whatever lies below it. First thing my eyes can decipher is a very large spider web, with a very large spider in it. I would move out of the way if it weren't for the defiance of my arms. I groan very loudly and here an echo. I thought it was an echo, it turns out to be my brother Joe on the other side of me waking up at approximately the same time to the very same dreadful truth that I did. We had fallen asleep on the pier. Somehow.
I cannot tell you how many spiders we ate during our slumber, but I can tell you I did not awake hungry. I sat up finally and wondered how we got here. What had happened. We must have been assaulted and thrown into the back of a truck and brought here to die. We survived. Except my face didn't feel alive, at least the right side didn't. It was creased twice from being smashed into the spaces between the flooring of the boardwalk. The bones seemed to have shifted to compensate and I woke up very ugly...inside and out.
"Give me a cigarette," I say. We leaned against the spiders for a smoke. Joe's face was ugly too, his left side had been made to match my right. Pieces of the night begin coming back with the vaguidity of a vampire seducing it's prey. I had some blood on my left arm running down the side. I followed it to the small, clotted spot that seemed to be the leak in my skin. I remembered a blow dart puncture. We remembered sirens and police sternly warming us never to return again. I could think of running several times for unclear reasons throughout the night. I remember standing on the pier with my shirt off, walking the railing between solid ground and the Detroit River. I remember punching Joe in the neck for reasons I would find out later. His neck looked pretty bad. We walked the wall with our backs until we reached our feet, recovering from the shock of the morning elements. It was cold outside and I wondered to myself how we were able to sleep through the night in this cold. I woke up shirtless. We looked at each other with bewilderment and I went to work. "Hey Joe...I'll see you this evening." "Happy Thanksgiving."
Photo credit to: http://gilad.deviantart.com
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
