The man watching this particular television set this morning might have had an interest in the story had he been able to hear or see it. Unfortunately, he was sprawled on the hardwood floor; face down in a puddle of coffee where his cup had shattered.
He convulsed and postured as the sudden seizure ravaged his body, forcing him to bite his tongue and writhe as if holding the bare end of a live extension cord.
CHAPTER 1:
My tongue felt like someone had taken hold of it with a meat-tenderizing mallet or some other equally heinous implement of destruction. Whatever it was that had happened, at the moment, the salty tang of blood was effectively presenting its unmistakable flavor to the few taste buds that remained intact.
My head was throbbing too. Well, maybe not so much throbbing as imploding and exploding all at once. I knew full well that such was a literal impossibility, of course; even so, that was what it felt like all the same. It didn’t take long for me to realize that trying to think about it too hard made it hurt just that much worse, so I accepted my brain’s knee-jerk comparison as a cold fact and left it at that.
Additional sensations began sneaking in through the tiny fissures in the pain that was hammering my skull; each of them petitioning to be heard, felt, and otherwise experienced to the fullest. Unfortunately, none of those sensations were any more pleasant than the one occupying center stage at the moment.
Given my current inventory of pains, the only somewhat neutral feeling I could identify was linked directly to the right side of my face. In fact, at this very moment, my cheek was reporting back to me that it was firmly pressed against something hard.