1 Death

"Hehehe! Think you're all that? Think you're the man? What ya think, old man. Is he a bad ass or is he a bad ass! Hehehe!"

The voices in his head were starting up again.

Blake Johnston squeezed his eyes shut as he swallowed the last of his beer and threw the empty can into the trash pail wedged between the sink and the toilet.

The voices had started several weeks ago and he had now reached the end of his endurance.

He could recognized the deep haunting male voice named Marvin who spoke with a Cajun-French accent like a native from New Orleans. His voice was that deep baritone sing-song sound that spoke of dark haunted bayous and the sweltering heat of the boggy swamps.

Blake took a deep breath and told himself in his firmest no-nonsense voice. "None of this is real, Blake. You're not crazy. You're just hallucinating and hearing voices because of one bad trip."

Marvin's voice interjected again into his consciousness, as if taunting him. "Yep that's right. You ain't crazy, so don't even try to think that, Blakey-boy. You just gotta find a way to live with us till you become one of us. Comprenez vous? Hehehe."

Blake's hands shook. The voices were not just inside his head. They sounded as if they were standing in the same room with him.

"You guys lay off the kid!" A female voice sounded. She was so close to Blake that he could smell a whiff of sweet magnolia perfume permeating through the air. "It's bad enough we have to be doing this to him, but I don't want to have to hear you two messing with him either!"

"Shut up, stupid hoe!" The voice named Marvin shouted back at her. "We're just doing our job. You sit back and relax yourself, 'cause daddy's gonna have a kick-butt time with this boy. Hehehe! I'll be making history!"

Blake gripped his head with shaking hands. Oh man, this was some trip he was riding! It was starting to drive him insane even though Blake Johnston knew he was not insane. His cognitive awareness was keener than ever.

He massaged his head and opened his eyes. He was alone still. The white tiles of the bathroom were spotless. The mirror was spotless. The toilet was spotless. The only thing in this bathroom that was not spotless was Blake himself.

He swallowed down his bile as he gazed into the large clear mirror above the bathroom sink.

Shit.

That was what he looked like. Shit melting on a busy highway in mid July.

Blake scrunched up his face, feeling sick to his stomach.

He could smell the stink of his flesh rotting away in clumps of bubbling black froth, devoured by millions of tiny white maggots.

He could see his face melting into his neck until all that was left were two blood-clogged eyeholes, staring at him as if pleading and begging for some release from the voices bouncing around in his inner ear chambers.

The maniacal laughter and babbling voices banged on his ear-drums with frantic insistence. He stopped trying to make sense out of the cacophony. It was just a huge noisy crazed chaos of sounds that shrieked and howl within his mind.

Blake touched his cheeks, feeling the smooth expanse of taut young skin. His fingers touched a face that was healthy and alive, belying the vision of dark decay that stared back at him.

Dropping his gaze, Blake concentrated on his hands to escape looking at his grotesque and distorted face.

Everyone always said he had beautiful hands—the hands of a musician.

The nails on his left hand were short and meticulously manicured to maneuver, with lighting speed, up and down the dotted stretch of black frets on his five-string Ovation.

The nails on his right hand, long and pointed to pluck on the strings with ease, were painted a deep shinny black to show off against the bright metallic lime green of his bass' polished body.

His hands were still beautiful. The long black nails were still long.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but before he could hold that relief within his tortured soul, the nails began to morph into twisted licorice sticks of black fungus right before his eyes!

Horrified, he looked at his other hand.

The short nails that he kept trimmed to perfection had begun to recede into his flesh, revealing bloody stumps of fingers that were no longer capable of handling his beloved guitar.

He could live without the face that his adoring fans loved so much. But his hands! How could he live without his hands??

The voices in his head were shouting at him in a cacophony of madness, prattling in unintelligible chatter.

It was unbearable.

Above all this commotion, he could hear his roomie talking to some chick on the phone in the other room while the blessed sound of Deep Purple screamed on in the background.

He desperately needed some peace and quiet.

Blake turned away from the mirror and sat himself on the toilet seat in the bathroom.

He took a deep breath. He had to do this before he lost his nerve again, like the previous attempts.

Blake narrowed his eyes and quickly stuck the large needles into the crook of his arms. Then he taped them on him with black electric tape that he used for his music gear.

Reaching over to the bathtub, he arranged the two plastic tubes that connected to the two large needles so that they hung down, draping over into the bathtub next to the commode.

All he had to do was release the clamps and then sit back and wait. Gravity would do the work, nice and slow. He would be draining the life force that had been pumping around inside of him for twenty-two years down the drain.

Blake released the clamps and lowered his head into his hands, trying not to vomit. The white tiles of the bathroom wavered as his eyes began to lose focus. He leaned back and rested his head on the tank.

He didn't know how long this was going to take, but he was so tired. So very tired…