Peace of Mind

What the fuck? Clyde thought. Where am I? I can’t breathe!

The last thing he remembered was the hands pressed into his neck so deeply that he could feel the outline of each individual finger bone through his flesh. He recalled the shuddering convulsions of his chest which had failed to bring so much as a molecule of oxygen into his starving lungs.

He felt a hand slide behind his neck and saw a blinding light ahead of him. Something warm and moist gripped his shoulders, released, then tightened again. Clyde felt himself being expelled into an empty space that was as cold as it was bright. There was an uncomfortable tug on his belly. He saw light flash against a knife blade that was thrust towards his exposed flesh. Why am I naked? He thought.

An earsplitting scream, impossibly close, left him with his throat raw and drool running out of the corners of his mouth. What? Why would a loud sound give him a sore throat?

He saw a doctor dressed in pink scrubs. Was he in a hospital? He must have survived the suffocation and been brought here in an ambulance. He kept trying to ask the doctor where he was and what was going on, but every time he did a baby started crying so loud he couldn’t hear his own voice. Will someone please shut that fucking kid up! he thought as the crying continued unabated.

The doctor smiled and said, “Somebody has a powerful set of lungs. You’re the proud mother of a healthy baby girl!”

Somebody with extraordinarily large hands – each one could reach across Clyde’s entire chest – wrapped him in a soft warm blanket and clutched him to their breast. Are they hiring retired women’s basketball players as nurses now? Clyde thought as the Amazonian woman lifted him up and placed him on the breast of another preternaturally large woman reclined on a gurney.

Tears streamed from the woman’s red-rimmed eyes as she pursed her lips and cooed at him. Clyde looked deep into her eyes. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, but the goddamned baby was screaming over his words again.

“Oh, you poor thing. You must be hungry,” said the woman as she opened her gown to expose her swollen breast. “Here you go,” she said as she guided his mouth over her enlarged nipple. “Mama’s got something for you.”

Am I not in a hospital after all? Am I just lying on the floor of my bedroom conjuring up a final erotic hallucination with the last of my brain’s expiring synapses? He drank deeply of the milk and his memories faded as quickly as his thirst until he was Clyde no more. But she had her peace of mind.