I felt sweaty and smelled sugary - of partially digested spirits and gun pop. A second sugar spike, a watery morning sun and dehydration conspired to wake them up – like a mother, for their own good “drink something”, chastising “what did you drink?”.
I woke up and saw everything too clearly. I had slept wearing contact lenses limpit-clinging onto my eye balls, which felt sucked on and bruised. With a low throb of guilt I raked around the floor next to the bed looking for saline solution, knocking over a glass of ordinary, bacteria riddled tap water in the process. Balanced on one elbow I blinked it in – ‘this should loosen them up and they’ll slide right off. Hopefully’. Blasé, I try not to think about corneal ulcers.
Once, new to contact lenses, I had rubbed my eye in the cinema. It had been an early date I think, with a boyfriend who I envision foggily to my left although I couldn’t tell you if it were David or Kieran. We were watching a film. Suddenly my right eye looked at the screen as if through a Vaselined camera lens. It felt like the popcorn in my stomach had suddenly sucked up all the Pepsi and bile sitting in there with it. I was convinced that I had pushed the lens behind my eyeball. I rose, panicked, to the ladies - my good eye leading the way.
Good eye still reeling from the transition from the dark screening room into an aggressively well-lit bathroom, I stooped over a sink, face inches from the mirror. Eyelid pulled up, I looked for an edge of plastic to tease from behind my eye. I rubbed my salted popcorn fingers on the whites of my eyes until they were laced with red. Finally, hands on the faux marble sink top I calmed myself – I must have rubbed the lens right out of my eye in the first place and it will be lying ruined on the sticky cinema floor. It’s not in there and now my eye hurts from prodding. I returned to the cinema screen and watched the film half blind. Some twenty minutes later I blinked and the lens descended from above, deus ex machina. As when the optician puts a new disk in the test glasses my vision was restored.
I’d freaked out about a contact lens going behind my eye before I had it happen. Same as I freaked out about them adhering them to my eyes if I accidentally slept in them. Same as I was terrified of getting toxic shock system if I slept with a tampon inserted. Now I do them all, all the time.
I get the disks of thin plastic off their eyes eventually, and withrelief settled into a familiar blur. The plastic was harder now on their fingertip than when they went in. I absentmindedly put the lens on the tip of my tongue. Saline solution correctly tastes of salt water. Their eyes still felt like they have sand trapped behind the lids. Cold eyedrop tears run mutely down their face, then neck and are absorbed in the collar of their already grubby sleeping tshirt, soft with sweat.
A short battle raged between lying down and staying still, and needing a piss and needing water. The liquids won out. Uncomfortably cold around the neck from the cooling sweat and saline solution, they took a ginger walk with bare feet towards the toilet. Collecting mystery bruises from doorways on the way, they relieved themselves and stood with their eyes closed in the cold bathroom, feeling the air between them and the wall and the floor.
I felt crispy and hollow, nausea slowly lapping at the shore and threatening to crest. My headache the more immediate issue. I had stood too quickly from the toilet and the momentum had smashed my brain against the inside of my skull. I remembered a friend who had once held a brain for work that the inside of your skull is actually full of little spikes and that the fluid in there is partly to stop your brain from being raked along them. I image when I’m dehydrated the fluid surrounding my brain depletes and my brain is stretched out like it’s a vacuum and its filling in the space. Chugging stale water from a pint glass stolen by some previous tenant and they imagined it trickling into their dehydrated brain, filling up their tissues like a magic “grow your own boyfriend” sponge in water. After they felt human enough to look for their glasses. Finding them lens down (shit) on the coffee table, they put them on. The flat came into focus – ish, behind a film of slimey finger prints. They gave them a cursory rub with the edge of their tshirt and replaced them.
Padding back to their bedroom their foot skidded out from under them on a patch of something slimey on the lino floor and nearly had them set their neck. They examined the patch. It was colourless but iridescent, thicker than water. Glancing round to establish the cause they noticed a pattern of wet patches coming from their bedroom. Quizzical they made to stand, using the wall to steady themselves. Their hand left an oily, iridescent smear.
Repulsed they sprung away and held their palms out in front of them, making their hungover head throb. Turning to make their way to the bathroom their eye was caught by what they had earlier missed. Slimey hand and foot prints covered the flat. Oily and magpie shiney the liquid had seeped into the upholstery of the chairs, was smeared on the doorframe.
What the fuck did you do? There’s no one home, all you did was watch some shit after you got in, still a bit tipsy from the pub and fall asleep on the sofa. They remembered waking up in the night and blearily taking off their work stuff and pulling on an old tshirt from some uni thing. Looking down at their shirt its kind of shining too, even. Their skin is too. Panicked they suddenly feel hot and breathless. Wheeling to the bathroom, whatever is it, they’re sweating it out.
‘You could be pregnant, make an appointment with your GP’.
That’s impossible.
‘Bacterial infection’ ‘Flu’ ‘Cancer’
Water coming from the taps is marbled.
What did I drink?