March 30, 2016

Mitch:

My stomach is growling, but I can't tell if it's from hunger or nausea. I haven't eaten in over a day and it feels like the little cancer growing inside of me is alive and kicking in protest because of what I am about to do. I have no regret. I just wish I didn't have to do this in the first place. I hand Jerome my keys, wallet, and phone, all of the important things I have left, before I take the surgical gown off of the hospital bed and head across the hall from my room to change in the bathroom. I take my sweet time, knowing that we are a few minutes early, but the dark rings around my eyes are telling me that it isn't happening soon enough.

I just want it to be over with.

I'm tired of waiting and worrying, and I'm even more tired of watching Jerome wait around and worry. I'm tired of catching myself imagining what the doctors and nurses are going to think when they put me under and strip this last scrap of clothing off of me. I don't want to picture what happens after that. It isn't that I am queasy - I inject myself with needles every week and I was half awake when they ripped my wisdom teeth out of my skull. No, I just don't want to think about what them doing this surgery entails. I also know that I am going to feel like absolute shit for at least a week afterward, not only from the incisions and the drugs, but from the steady river of blood I am going to have to cope with. I haven't had that problem since I was in middle school and I was hoping I would never have to think about it again, let alone experience it. As always, Google told me otherwise.

"Have they come back yet?" Jerome looks up at me from his favorite tile on the floor, the lack of sleep obvious in his dark, glassy eyes. He shakes his head after a second and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands as he reclines in his uncomfortable metal chair. "Are you okay, dood? You're just going to spend the morning in the cafeteria and you look worse than I do."

"Great. Thanks, Mitch. I'm... I'm just kinda worried, ya know? This's a big thing and... I really don't trust that doctor you found. He's a creep and a half and there're certain rules for certain reasons and he just goes around breakin' 'em all for a couple extra bucks."

"Yeah, and that's exactly why we're here right now. The rules are stupid, Jerome. They're fucked up. Either we can be here right now getting this taken care of for good, or we could go home, I could order a magic potion online and go to the emergency room, and we could be doing this a month from now. This is going to happen one way or another so stop worrying so much." He nods his head in his usual, gawky way, but I can tell he still doesn't buy my story. "Why are you so-?"

"You realize this's my fault, right? You didn't even wanna do it that night and you did it anyway, just to get me off for my birthday. And look where it landed us. Look what it did to you. Look what I did to you. And now if somethin' goes wrong here and you get hurt or sick or y-you die... That's on me. That's my fault. And now we can't even sue this motherfucker for all he's worth if he fucks something up. It feels bad, man. Real, real fuckin' bad. And what can I even do about it?"

"You can shut the fuck up, to start with. We aren't doing this again today, Jerome. We're done with this. I'm tired of going around and around with you and having this same god damned fight every other day. We're done."

"Mitch-"

"I said, we're done. Chill the fuck out and sign the last few papers saying that you'll feed me twice a day and take me back to the hotel tonight after I wake up, then you can go downstairs and eat twenty pounds of chicken nuggets while they pull the tender pieces out, deep fry them, and send them downstairs to sell to you." He makes a noise somewhere between a snort of laughter and a sickening gag, not sure which face to make to accompany it.

"Really didn't need that visual, Mitch. How am I gonna eat my mystery mush now, knowin' part of what it's made of? That's nasty!"

"You were asking for it, dood. Why do you think they always put McDonald's in hospitals?" He crosses his arms in defensive playfulness and I'm grateful that he is willing to change the subject as I roll my sickly, bloated ass onto the plastic mattress cover and pull the air-thin blanket up to my waist. I am going to be giving enough shows today; no one needs to have an extra one.

"I thought it was just so they'd be a little closer to the shock machines and the morgue when the Big Macs hit but I'm just a Bac. What do I know, ya know?"

"I knew you loved Big Mac. He just... gets your heart aflutter with his juicy, buttery goodness."

"Nuh-uh. You aren't Woof so you shut your mouth about goodness, Mitch. We agreed we'd never bring that sweaty, cheesy motherfucker up again and you signed in blood. Nuh-uh. When I said I'd move to Floridiot with you, Big Mac and his collection of rumblin' love canyons was on the list of five things I hated more than Palmolive bugs and hairy ass spiders."

"Cooper doesn't count, Jerome."

"He doesn't help, either. He just watches the nasty fuckin' things crawl across the floor with this 'that's not my job' look on his face. He's like Rob's previous reincarnation or some shit." It's nice to be able to laugh for once, but all of that comes to an abrupt end with a sharp knock on the door and a big, fake smile.

"Happy early morning. Glad to see you here." I can hear the cascade of sarcastic comments thundering down Jerome's spinal cord next to me, the influx of inner asshole struggling to find a way to fit inside of his bony body without trickling out of his mouth like a rainbow in a meme. I shake the doctor's hand when he offers it to me, and I watch the Bacca do the same, just a little too enthusiastically. "The anesthesiologist should be here in a minute or two. Any last words, or are we good to go?" I see Jerome turn to look at me out of the corner of my eye, but he out of all people should know my answer by now.

"Let's get this show on the road. I need to eat dinner before I starve."

---

March 30, 2016

Jerome:

At long fucking last, I stuff my almost-dead phone in my pocket and I head upstairs with a gut full of unidentifiable chicken parts and heavy ass dread. The elevator feels like it's going a million miles an hour and it hits the fourteenth floor way too quick. It's gonna kill me to get to his new room and see him like that, all loopy and confused and in pain. Choco's supposed to be the scared baby bird, not Mitch. Senator Surgeon called me about half an hour ago and told me what room they were gonna move him to and said everything went good and all the empty platitudes all the doctors say when they know people are fucked up about something. But I hafta see him for myself to know he's okay. But I don't know if I can stand to see him like that. But I caused all this shit and dealing with a little more guilt and a couple more hours of sore-assed bitching is the least I can do after what I put him through. I take my time shufflin' down the hallway and checking the big signs hanging up by the front desk. I know I'm gonna feel like a dozen puddles of hot 'n spicy shit when I finally get there and it's gonna be a while before he comes back around to yell at me for being bad at life. But before I know it, here I am: standing outside his private room with cement bricks in my shoes and a big ass globby zombie chicken doing the nae-nae in my stomach. Goddammit.

I open and shut the door as fast as I can, making sure we're completely alone before I even dare to look up. I notice they've hooked up a couple extra bags of clear fluid to the tubes dripping shit into his arm. I take a few seconds to try to squint at the labels on the new bags to see what they are but I've never seen anything like it before. Greasy bastard writes in fuckin' hieroglyphics to hide his slimey trail. If PeteytheHutt is a slime, this guy's gotta be MarcotheMegaMansion. His all-natural oils must be what Chick-Fil-A uses to deep fry their mystery shit that Pressy likes so much. Gotta remember that one to tell Mitch someday, if he ever wakes his ass up. Bet the Senator'll want more money to wake him up. Wouldn't put it past him. Don't know where I'd get the loans from, since Mitch's the one with the good credit.

Now I can't put it off any more. I make myself look down at his face and it all finally gets to me. I know he'd start chuckin' crackers at me to go with all this cheese but it breaks my heart to see him like this, all pale and peaceful and shit. He looks like he's dead. No one looks all blank like that when they're sleeping, especially when they have big plastic spikes stuck up their nose and especially not Mitch. If he doesn't look at least a little pissed or annoyed or flat-out evil, you know it's time to poke him with a stick. Just to make sure he's okay, ya know? But no number of sticks is gonna wake him up now, for a while at least. And maybe that's a good thing? Maybe I should take advantage of him sleeping to get a little sleep myself real quick.

First thing's first, though.

I move my new, shitty, rock-hard stool of shame over to the other side of his bed and away from the sewer of tubes feeding him Nooch knows what. Now that I think of it, I don't even know what I'm gonna feed the bottomless mega shark when he wakes up. There's no good food places by our sad little hole-in-the-wall hotel and their room service sucks more balls than Preston and Woof after a pool challenge at their new, shared office. Guess that's gonna be my next problem to solve. Food's gonna cost as much as the fucking surgery. I fish his phone outta my pocket and a new layer of guilt grows on top of all the rest I've already got as I turn his cold, motionless hand over and press his thumb to the fingerprint scanner. He'd understand, at least partway. But he doesn't need to know, either.

I head to his settings folder and skim through all the files on his phone, looking to see if Keem got his satanic, gnomish ass in here, too. He did it once that we know of, nothing stoppin' him from doing it again to a new target after all the money his last scheme raked in for him. But no sign of the muckraking goonsquad today and good riddance. Assholes.

That just leaves my other conspiracy theory. And I'm not sure which one I was more scared of. I close the settings app and head over to his text messages and scan through all the threads with Abby tagged in them. If it's anywhere, it's gotta be here because he knows I can see his e-mails. If he was talking to her, it'd be here where he thought I couldn't see it.

R-ight about... here.

So where is it?

"Dammit." I glance up to see if that somehow woke him up before I scroll back down to the bottom of the thread, tab back to the message with Vik he'd left open, and close the message app so he won't know I was in here. He doesn't need to know I was checking in on him, or that I thought he was cheating on me with Abby. He'd be way better off not knowing. And I'd be a helluva lot happier not thinking about flirting and fingering and fucking that never actually happened. He was serious when he said it was all just for the camera, that or he's really good at hiding the evidence. Not gonna lie: I trust him a tiny bit more now that I've had a little look-see but I'm not gonna be happy until I can check Abby's phone. She doesn't seem like she's as smart about this kinda shit as he is. She didn't grow up with all my internet superhero shit and all the paranoia that comes with it.

But I feel like the lowest of the lowest of the low right now and it didn't even do any good - I just wanna break into more people's phones now, even though it looks like they didn't do anything wrong. Then I sit here and wonder why no one ever trusts me and why everyone thinks I'm an evil fucking monster from the black lagoon of extra-salty children's tears. Goddammit. What the actual fuck is wrong with me? Why can't I just trust someone for once? And Mitch of all people should be the one living thing on this crazy fucking planet that I trust, especially after this gigantic mess we're still tryin' to dog-paddle out of. Why couldn't I just give him the benefit of the doubt after he started puking up all three of his lungs? It's not like he'd let anyone else get close enough to him to knock him up. Hundred percent no need to do a paternity test there.

I take one last look at the apps on his phone, looking for anything else suspicious, before I finally lock it and put it away. I'm taking a big risk here and I might wake up with a smelly ass scaly foot smackin' me upside the head for being too touchy-feely but I grab his hand anyways. He's mine, at least for now. And after forty-three hours of being a total zombie, I'm calling it quits. I put my head down against his toasty warm shoulder and I'm out like a light. Shame I can't knock him out like this more often.

---

March 30, 2016

Mitch:

It was a mistake to open my eyes. Oh fuck, I should not have done that. I shut my eyes as hard as I can, but the light is still too strong and I can still see it through my eyelids. This is how video games start. Real life doesn't look like this.

I don't remember anesthesia being anywhere near this bad; it feels like I am on a roller coaster headed directly into the center of the sun, like in a shitty Smash Mouth song from the nineties. The world is spinning so much faster than it has any right to be, and it feels like any second I am going to go flying off into the gassy depths of Uranus. Heh. I even have a Bacca here to narrate the journey. Who knew Jerome got around so much?

Jerome. He must be the thing holding me here and keeping me from soaring off to bigger and better things. I can smell bleach and the clearance Axe body shit he bought at Target after Christmas and the colorful wasps of light they printed on the can start dancing behind my eyelids for my entertainment. He's here, somewhere, in this bright white pit of shit with me. I just can't open my eyes to see where. I spend a few seconds trying to remember how this body of mine works, and I can't figure it out. It won't listen to me. But I have a history of things not working how I want them to, don't I? I remember how Uma Thurman learned how to walk again in "Kill Bill" and I try that - the thing is, my feet are just too far away right now. I barely remember what they look like, let alone how to use them. I try to think about what I can move and I don't know how much time passes before I think to move the only part of me that I know is still attached. I have to have a head to be able to think, right? I somehow convince my head to move to the right, then the left, where it hits something hard and squishy at the same time. I don't know why I made that noise, but it just slipped out.

"Whaddit you hafta do that for? I wasn't doin' nothing." I know that voice but I don't know it, too. I feel something move next to me and I feel more nerves waking up. I still have hands? Where? "You okay, Mitch?"

"Yeah... I just feel like I smoked all of the grass in Mat's front yard." My voice sounds croaky and distant, and I barely understand what I'm saying. Who is telling me to say that? Who is Mat? I'm not going to worry about it anymore. Autopilot can take care of itself - I just want to go back to sleep and stop living in this too-bright fish bowl. "I'm tripping over my own two feet here, Biggums."

"Ya know, I should get this on camera. Damn surgery'd pay for itself if you put this on YouTube." It wasn't that funny but someone somewhere is laughing, and Jerome starts chuckling along with him.

"Yeah! You could sell the chunks of meat, too, as seen on TV. Sell souvenirs of this whole fuckfest and beyond." He's still laughing but Jerome doesn't seem as amused, probably because he didn't know about my whole plan. Someone should tell the poor sucker. "Do you know the best part, dood? Now you can pull a Pete and fuck me up for free and we won't ever have to come back here. It's free forever. Just like texting."

"You had him cut it all out?"

"Don't be a dumbass. Of course I did. Why else would I go find a surgeon to take care of it? I could have just bought a shop vac in Florida if I just wanted a get out of jail free card."

"I didn't know that's what you were gonna do, Mitch. I mean, I was gonna go get it taken care of and-"

"What was I going to use it for? Pumping out Adam's babies like a fangirl? The only thing that would have come out of it would be cancer in ten or fifteen years, dood. I was just putting it off until I could get a phallo and do a two-in-one misery combo. It's not a big deal."

"Like hell it's not a big deal. Goddammit, Mitch. You fly all the way up here so they can gouge your organs out and scare me half to death when they coulda just done the snip-snip on me and sent me on my merry fuckin' way in half an hour with a big bottle of shut-the-fuck-up pills. You coulda died! And you didn't even fuckin' tell me!" He is nuclear-level pissed, but that's funny somehow. Nothing makes sense right now and everything is funny, even when I feel a stab of pain from me laughing too hard. I feel my hand again when something brings it back to life - my pitiful half-laugh of pain must have guilted him into pushing the fight back until later. He doesn't say anything else and I slowly fade back into the bright white smoke of the cocktail of drugs, the cloud shifting only when he puts his head back down on the pillow next to mine. "Why do I love you so much?" I barely hear him and I don't know if my mouth even moves:

'Because you're my dumbass.'