Bodies Are Disgusting Read Online Free

face, knocking your glasses askew, before adjusting them so
they sit straight again. "I have been in this hospital for way too
long."
    "Pfft, you haven't even been conscious most of
your stay here, which, by the way, why the fuck have you not
updated your emergency contacts in your wallet?" Simon is scowling,
though you can tell his heart isn't really in it. "You still have
Amanda listed above me, and you've been broken up for how long?"
    "I don't know if you passed the first grade,
Simon, but I'm pretty sure that 'Ebonlee, Amanda' comes before
'Glyndon, Simon' when arranged alphabetically. And if, for some
reason, we were going purely on a first-name basis, Amanda still
comes before Simon in most English alphabets." You cross your arms
across your chest, regret it when you brush against the gigantic
bruise there, and move your hands to your hips. "And by 'most,' I
mean 'all.' So relax. You're still my best friend. But she's also a
friend I'd count on to be there for me if I get plowed into by a
drunk fuckwit, all right?"
    This seems to mollify your roommate, and his
body language loosens. "I'm just fucking with you," he says. You
know he's lying, but choose not to say anything. It's not like it's
any skin off your nose to change the order of your emergency
contacts in your wallet when you get home and have access to a
pencil.
    "C'mon," you say, shoving your binder, the
empty plastic jewelry bag, and your glasses case back into the
canvas bag. "I want to go home."
    Simon nods. "Of course."
    * * *
    It takes forever to check yourself out of the
hospital, but you finally get it done before the sun sets, and
Simon drives you home in his VW Bug. By the time that the local
news is airing, you're settled on your couch with a nice TV dinner
that Simon microwaved for you himself, and your roommate has
disappeared into the nebulous never-never that constitutes his job
at the strange used-bookstore-slash-coffee-shop downtown (the one
that inexplicably stays open until four in the morning).
    You eat the TV dinner, grateful that it isn't
hospital food, and start surfing through the items Simon recorded
on the DVR while you were away. It's still early, and you've been
spending a lot of time sleeping or unconscious lately, but the pain
pills you picked up from the pharmacy on the way home have a
not-inconsequential kick to them. Which figures. You've always been
susceptible to the cottony dreamlike quality of codeine.
    By the time prime-time programming is gearing
up, you're drowsy and fuzzy and sprawled on the over-stuffed sofa
with your limbs at awkward angles, too opiate-drunk to
mind.
    It's been a while since you thought about your
past with Amanda Ebonlee, about how the accident seems to have
robbed you of your knowledge of your first date with her. As you
float on the couch in a sea of co-codamol-fueled good-will, your
mind reaches back through time and gropes for those lost straws.
The opening strains of some prime-time drama impel it away from the
present, but you still find nothing. There's just a ragged hole in
your awareness where those memories should have been that you can't
help but probe like tonguing a hole where a missing tooth should
be.
    A wet plopping sound drags you back to the
present.
    You don't recall falling asleep, but that's
the only explanation your brain can provide for what's happening.
Your trusty old CRT television still casts flickering light into
the room, but it's subtly changed, as if the pane of glass in front
of the screen had melted and rippled to distort the light that
shows through it. The cause of the noise is not immediately
apparent, your eyes having a difficult time adjusting to the room's
dimness. The lamp that you recall Simon leaving on for you has been
turned off, leaving the TV as the only source of
illumination.
    The fact that you don't scream when your eyes
finally adjust to the eerie wavering glow only serves as a
testament to the codeine's fingers still in your system. You think
to