Friday, January 7, 2011

One Day As A Lion - Chapter One

Fear not, Empire Blues is not dead. I started this last night and I'm really digging this new direction. It may be a short, it may be a long-ish story yarn. Who knows? Enjoy!
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I should really get that looked at.
That really should have been the absolute least of my worries at that point. I mean, it goes without saying that one of the very next things that will come out of my mouth will be that "I'm never drinking again." Maybe this time I'll mean it, but we all know that I probably won't. Although, if you take a look at my current situation, an intervention cannot be far behind.

I opened my eyes twenty minutes ago to notice that the ugly mole on my left thigh is out for the entire world to get a glimpse. It's probably a bad idea for me to have it out during the daylight hours, there's no way that the thing growing out of my leg, the thing that looks like a melted chocolate chip, is anything but a mass of silent cancer.

It was seeing the mole that led me to several conclusions, in fact. I noticed that I was sitting on a tile floor, a cold one at that. I saw a bank of freezers directly in front of me. Hot Pockets and Red Baron pizzas were judging the living hell out of me from behind frosted glass. I turned around to notice that I was leaning against a shelf full of maple syrup bottles. The price tags were delightfully marked down. I looked around to see a sort of starburst pattern on the walls and the aisle signs. Okay, good. You're in Wal-Mart. That's a start.

I sat up and started to notice that a few people were staring at me from the far end of the aisle. Shopping carts congregated into a gray barrier as people started to get wise to the weird guy sitting in front of Wal-Mart's syrup selection. Strange, yes. Not exactly something you can really plan for, so I couldn't really register embarrassment.

That's when I got wise to the weird purple stains on my blue workshirt. It looked like someone took grape Kool-Aid and tried to use it as a writing implement on the canvas of my torso. Hilarity ensued, no doubt.

It was around then that I realized why people were starting to congregate and stare at me. Well, the biggest clue was that a policeman was charging down the aisle at me, his partners clearing a path through the barricade of shoppers. People tend to watch things go down if the police are involved.

At that exact moment I was given enough insight to realize that I wasn't wearing any pants. That explained why the floor was so damn cold, sure. I suppose I should have put two and two together when giving that little tirade about the mole. You probably didn't wanna hear that, but oh well.

The lead officer started approaching me slowly, his Taser drawn before him. I couldn't really fathom that I was that much of a threat. Then again, had I been one of the shoppers and seen a half-naked man lying on the floor of the freezer section, my first thought would be meth. Well, it would be a top-fiver for sure.

Everything was still a bit woozy, but I tried my best to seem non-threatening. Given the situation it wasn't gonna be easy. I went to raise my hands to show that I was unarmed, but only the right arm seemed to be taking orders at this juncture. 

My left hand could only be brought to the horizontal position before a sharp pain would shoot through my wrist. I looked down to see that I was wearing handcuffs. 

I felt the shelf push into my back, shaking its contents with a force that was evidentally enough to dislodge a bottle of delicious maple from the very top. It took a few seconds to process all of this in my confused state of mind. Right when I was getting ready to figure things out, a sudden knock to the head dislodged all the necessary information for me. 

Well, enough that I could start piecing things together. 

It's Thursday. Which means that you were at the eye doctor's this morning. It all started at Dr. Palmer's.

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