Homebody / Way out

Daniela Mattes

Homebody / Way Out

2 Short Stories

Daniela Mattes

Homebody / Way Out

2 Short Stories

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek:

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

Text: © Daniela Mattes

Translation: Julia Haass

Cover: © Foto Fee Flora, www.fotofeeflora.de

Author: Daniela Mattes

Schwarzwaldstr. 13

78549 Spaichingen

www.daniela-mattes.de

Print/e-Book by:

epubli – a Service of Neopubli GmbH, Berlin

These two short stories have been taken

from a series of mysterious short stories by the author

Homebody

Marc slowly tried to get up from the couch. His head felt as if a house had collapsed on top of him and was still lying there. Flashes of light exploded before his eyes when he tried to open them, and he was dizzy. Moving slowly, like an old man, he tried to sit up and stay upright.

He had a bad taste in his mouth and his tongue felt swollen. He felt gross. As his eyes got used to the light in the living room, he looked around weakly, squinting into the bright sunlight coming in through the balcony door. Why the hell had he slept on the couch? And what had happened to the apartment?

He couldn’t remember a thing about the previous night. The room was strewn with empty pizza boxes, potato chip crumbs, empty bottles, used glasses, magazines, DVDs without cases, and cases without DVDs. When he tried to think back to the previous night, his head just started hurting even more. His brain refused to work in his current state.

He’d need some aspirin to dull his hangover at least a little bit. Carefully, as if he was an unstable explosive, he finally got up and shuffled in slow-motion into the hallway and to the bathroom. Looking into the mirror, he couldn’t help but laugh.

“Man, I look like shit,“ he slurred, running ice cold water over his face.

He rummaged through the medicine cabinet looking for aspirin, pushing aside the illegal substances. Working in a chem lab, he could get his hands on a lot things if he wanted to.

He closed the cabinet, popped an aspirin into his mouth, and washed it down with a few gulps of water. Then he looked back at his reflection. A small sliver of a memory came back. He had made some interesting drinks last night, infused liberally with his illegal drugs, and had partied hard with his buddies.

Apparently, he had been too liberal this time because most of the night was still blacked-out in his memory. At least the others seemed to have been sober enough to make their way home. He had hardly finished the thought when he heard someone groaning from the other side of the hallway. He grinned. So someone hadn’t found their way home after all, probably hadn’t even tried. Sighing and trying to ignore his headache, he followed the sounds and found his friend Tony lying curled up in front of the toilet in the second bathroom.

“Had one too many?“ he asked, grinning.

“Oh, shut up. What were you, trying to kill us?“ Tony said weakly, sounding pissed off. “You have some aspirin and some coffee?“

Marc dragged his friend out of the puddle of vomit, opened the little bathroom window, closed the door behind them, and pushed Tony along before him to the master bathroom and straight into the shower.

“While you’re cleaning your sad corpse, I’ll make breakfast.“

Marc shuffled off to the kitchen.

“Another one?“ he chuckled, when he almost fell over a pair of legs. Then he paused. He’d never seen that guy before. Considering his partial black-out, that wasn’t saying much, though. He knelt down and started turning the fat, bald man over. He didn’t look like he’d be one of their friends. So why was this guy lying in his kitchen?

Marc turned him over and gasped. The guy’s eyes were wide open, his face blue. Instinctively, he felt for a pulse anyway, not wanting the guy to suffocate in his kitchen. But it was too late -- this was a dead body.

Shocked and panicking, he jumped up, which caused an explosion of lights to go off in his tortured head, and ran back to Tony.

“Tony!“ he yelled, ignoring his protesting head. “There’s a dead body in my kitchen!“

He stormed into the bathroom, almost crashing right into Tony, who had left the shower because it was hurting his head and who was now standing in front of the sink to take his aspirin.

Tony stared at his friend as he barged in, panicked, his face drained of blood.

“Hey man, chill,“ Tony said quietly so as to not set off his headache even more. “That’s just after-effects from the brew you cooked up last night. Hallucinations.“

“No man, I’m telling you, there’s a dead body in the kitchen. Come and look!“

Reluctantly, Tony let himself get dragged off, swallowing his aspirin on the way. Once in the kitchen, he looked around but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, aside from the impressive mess they had made.