Story a Day #11 - Sunday Religious Story

"The scream of the ambulance is sounding in my ears,
Tell me, sister morphine, how long have I been lying here?
What am I doing in this place?
Why does the doctor have no face?"
Marianne Faithfull - Sister Morphine

Jesus is standing by my bedside. He has a rubber band around his arm and the blood from his eyes drips down his cheeks. I keep asking him if he'll pray for me but all he does is scream and he won't let me sleep.
My head is full of incests with legs covered in broken glass. They crawl around and eat my brain, digging tunnels and dragging up memories I'd like to forget. People I've hurt, girls I fucked and left. Every horrible thing I've ever seen or done plays out on the tiled ceiling. Jesus won't turn and look. I wish I could get up and push him over, I'm sick of looking at him. I can't move. Sometimes it panics me, the fact that I can't move my arms or legs, but you can only panic so much before you just go numb.
On TV is some game show where happy people spin a wheel for money and prizes. I can't hear what they're saying over the screaming and the constant noise from the ceiling but it looks like they're happy. I hope they're happy. I didn't ask for this. They don't realize that it could happen to them too. They're living on borrowed time.
There are house flies on the window. There's thousands of them, all buzzing in unison, trying to get back out. They don't realize there's a pane of glass separating them from the outside world. One of them lands on my foot and crawls around, spitting up stomach acid, looking for food. I can't feel it. Suddenly Jesus is gone, in his place is an angel with a flaming sword. I don't know if this is good or bad. Hopefully it means that I'll be dead soon and I can end this. On the ceiling I am five years old, standing on a freeway overpass, throwing rocks at the cars below....
Sleep. Am I asleep? Sometimes I drift out into other planes of existence. Most of the time I'm standing on a beach by a blood red sea, the sky pulsating in shades of black and rotted green. Other times I wander through dusty old houses, going from room to room, floating over the rotted boards. I think this is sleep, or maybe I actually go to these places. One time I opened a door and there was a room full of cats, all nailed to the walls, but still alive. When I came back the doctor was standing over me and I could hear his thoughts as they poured through a hole in my head. He was wondering if he still had time to make his golf game. I want to kill him and take his soul with me to the beach. I want to show him the bodies floating in the water. Maybe he'd understand then. But I can't move.
When I was fifteen my dog got hit by a car right outside our house. My dad wasn't home and I had to put it down myself. I keep seeing this playing out over and over on the ceiling. Sometimes I can feel the dog's pain as it lies there dying in the roadway. Then I can feel the bullet entering it's brain, the sweet release of pain as my life ebbs away. Other times I can feel the gun in my hands again and the pain as it kicks into my shoulder. It's always pain. What have I done to deserve this?
The angel is looking at the drip in my arm. Sometimes I think he's going to pull it out but he just stands looking at it. He came with me to the beach last time I went. He showed me a trail that led up through a wood full of black trees. He pointed the way into a clearing that contained a shack made of human flesh, the wall pulsating like it was alive and breathing. When I walked inside it enveloped me and for brief while my pain was gone. Then I came back to the hospital and the angel was there, staring at my drip.
I can't find the clearing or the house again. I've looked all over and all there is is the blood red sea and the black woods full of rotting trees. I can still feel the pain, but at least I can move, I can run even though the rocks in the sand cut my feet. I've been trying to stay here as much as possible, but I always come back to the hospital and the doctor with his putrid thoughts, the TV, the ceiling, and the dirty buzzing flies. My angel is gone. He hasn't taken me with him....
I'm glad the ceiling has stopped broadcasting. I think the insects have run out of things to eat. I can't remember anything anymore. Who am I? Was I married? I seem to remember a girl with red hair and green eyes but I can't seem to grasp what she meant to me. I can't find her on the beach or in any of the rooms either. I don't like searching in the rooms anymore, all I find is blood and pain. I like the beach because it's dark. I've been trying to grasp at the darkness and pull it down, but it's so far away....
They took my legs away today. I was taken from my room and there people standing over me. I went to the beach for a long time and when I woke up my legs were gone. The pain is so much worse, It radiates from my head out to the rest of what used to be my body. The doctor pities me, his thoughts say so. I told him to fuck off. I think looked surprised. Or did I just imagine it? Can I still speak? I tried screaming today but I found that I couldn't open my mouth. There are cartoons on the TV and they talk to me. The little brown skinned girl wanted to know if I'd seen the map. I told her no and asked if she's seen the beach, if they bodies meant anything to her. She didn't answer and skipped away through a green forest with her friend the fox. I laughed. This startled me. I hadn't laughed for a long time. It didn't make the pain any less though.
The angel is back again, only know he's covered with blood and the flame on his sword has gone out. I wanted to know what he'd been doing but he didn't answer. Angels are very useless creatures.
I think my arms are gone, even though I can't see them. The angel is leaking blood from it's eyes. The TV is screaming and the flies are buzzing in a cloud around my head. I'm trying to get to the beach, if I could only get there and stay there, everything would be fine....

"I couldn't stand to see him laying there with no arms or legs, just staring at the ceiling. The doctor's said he was still alive so they had to try and keep him alive or it'd be murder. When no one was looking I pulled the plug on his respirator, and waited till the machine flat-lined. Then I plugged it back in and calmly walked out of the hospital. On the way home I pulled over and cried till my stomach hurt and I opened the door and threw up. None of the passing cars stopped...."

The beach and the sky are mine forever. If only I could find that damn hut again...