She stabbed me with something. I didn’t even see what it was, but it made me bleed. Until that point, I thought it was all fun and games. I thought she liked me. When I had leaned in for a kiss at the crowded party she had reached her hand up and put her finger over my lips, but then she took me by the hand and led me off into the shadows.
I’m not normally that forward, but I was dressed as Batman and something about the mask made me feel empowered. It was as if the purpose of the costume was to fool myself into thinking that I was someone who just had to reach out his hand to receive something sweet. The psychic subterfuge seemed to work. The raven-haired beauty dressed as a vampire actually looked like she was interested in me, the guy who works night shift at the KwikStop mini-mart. I knew if she had come into the store, though, she wouldn’t have given me a second glance.
Was that why she had stabbed me in the neck? Once she got a better look at me she saw that she was so far out of my league that my very presence in her vicinity felt like an assault? In any case, I begged her for my life. She spit out a condescending laugh and vanished. Not an unusual occurrence in my dating life. I figured that it was probably all for the best that my Batman costume was ruined by the bloodstains so that it could no longer afford me the confidence to make a fool of myself.
Slinking home, I put some Neosporin on my neck, pulled the comforter over my head and went to sleep. I must have drunk far more than I had remembered at the party because I was terribly dehydrated. I had fitful dreams of being in the blinding heat of a desert and growing so thirsty that I was licking drops of salty sweat off of my arms as soon as they formed.
When my alarm clock went off at 10pm, I went straight to the fridge to get something to drink. I pulled out the pack of pork sausage that I had pulled from the freezer the day before. Pink liquid had pooled in the bottom of the styrofoam tray as it had thawed. I peeled back the saran wrap so that I could pull some of the meat out to form a patty for my breakfast, but without thinking I brought the packet up to my lips and drank. I immediately felt better and made a mental note of this unlikely new hangover cure.
Literature in Small Doses 