Changing Room

The Changing Room

I awakened to the song that was humming out of the radio, ‘When I woke up this morning, you were on my mind,’ by Crispian St. Peters.

And you WERE on my mind. I remembered we had a very romantic evening the night before, after downing a bottle of red wine and watching a horny film. A glowing tingle spread through my loins as she walked into the bedroom from the on suite. I was lying face-down on the emperor-sized bed with my face buried in the downy pillow as my partner climbed in next to me and attempted to spoon into my body. Her soft-spoken voice cooed into my ear, “Let’s go for it again sweetheart.”

I turned to face her in expectation, opened my eyes, and nearly shit myself. My burgeoning erect Royal Guardsman flaccidly shrunk into the nest of my pubic hairs.

“Who the hell are you?” I gasped.

“What a joker you are Mike. I’m Sheila your wife. Who on earth did you think I was?”

I backpedalled in horror and feverishly looked around the room to gain some sort of explanation. It was our bedroom with its familiar wallpaper, curtains, furniture, and bedside lights, but my wife was not Sheila, it was Shirley, and she was blonde – not ginger.

“What’s going on for Christ’s sake? I’ve never seen you in my life.”

“Will you stop messing around darling and give me a kiss?”

My head was spinning. It was trying to formulate some sort of explanation to this alternate reality. It wasn’t as if I was totally ‘out of it’ last night. I remembered every little delightful detail of the previous evening with the lady who normally shared my bed.

I can easily manage a full bottle of wine and just feel moderately inebriated. The bottle we shared had only made me tipsy to the point of enhancing my desire. And that was only the night before. Where was my real wife and where was I? It certainly looked like our room, but she looked nothing like my wife of 5 years. A feeling of panic swept over me as I sank into the mattress.

To accompany my head, the room started spinning. It was at that point I must have fainted, as darkness blanketed my senses.

The radio alarm awoke about 6.30 am as the summer sun started streaming through our east-facing window. The record playing was, ‘Burning Down the House,’ by Tom Jones.

I like to start the day early. I turned to Shirley, who was snoring gentle pussy cat purrs into her pillow. Everything seemed normal. Same wallpaper, curtains, furniture, and bedside lights.

Then the horror of yesterday came back to me. Relief! It was ok. My wife was the correct one, looking as content as a fox that had gorged on chicken eggs. “Jeesus!” that was some dream, I exclaimed to myself. It seemed so real.

“I hope I don’t have one like that one again!”

A cold shudder rippled down my spine. I mean I am still totally in love with her and there was no way that I would even entertain the thought that I might be having an affair with another woman. No way.

While these thoughts were running through my mind and Tom Jones was still rattling out ‘Burning Down the House’ I thought I could smell the faint, acrid odour of smoke filtering through the room. I sat up on the edge of the bed and spread my nostrils to deeply sniff at the air. I could definitely detect the pong of something burning. Shafts of sun illuminated floating dust and, oh my Gorrd, what looked like flakes of ash.

I jumped out of the bed in a frantic effort to try and discover the source of the smoke. It seemed to be snaking its ethereal fluidity through the narrow gap beneath the door to the landing. A memory of a class full of naughty kids having sneaky fags in the science storeroom at the Comprehensive flashed in front of my eyes as the ominous grey smoke belched its way into our bedroom. Inspiration for Stephen King.

I shouted across to Shirley to awaken her to the knowledge of impending asphyxiation, when I did what every disaster movie told me not to. I opened the damn door.

A dragon breath of fire shot out towards me, catapulting me backward onto the bed, almost knocking Shirley off the mattress. I thought I heard her scream. Immediately the smoke thickened, becoming more acidic by the second. Coughing and spluttering I blindly staggered around the room, trying to find Shirley and some sort of way out of this mess. My mind literally fogged up as my choking, rapid breaths gasped for relief that wasn’t forthcoming. I heard the windowpanes shatter sharp clattering janglings with the increasing heat, but could not see where that escape route was. I was completely disorientated.

As I lost consciousness, I was aware of the faint lyrics of ‘Burning Down the House’ disappearing into the smouldering ether.

At 6.30 am I awoke in a cold sweat. From the radio, Johnny Cash was singing, ‘Bull Rider’. At first, I thought I had died. Remembering the traumatic events of yesterday morning I anxiously turned to check that Shirley was ok. My lungs felt good. The air was clean with no after-smell of cloying smoke. The curtains were not frayed, the furniture was not smoke-stained, the bed was clean, and the lampshades were unaffected by yesterday’s fire. Best of all my Shirley was safe, sound, and breathing softly in as contented a way as I could have hoped.

These dreams I was experiencing were all too real and scary. With bleary eyes, some instinct made me squint at the alarm clock to check the date. It was the 5th of August. “Surely that can’t be?” I reasoned to myself. I’d only been in bed since the day before. Those experiences I had were bad nightmares confusing me into thinking multiple days had passed. They must have been nightmares as I couldn’t see any fire damage and Shirley was Shirley and not ginger Sheila. And, of course, I was still alive and breathing normally.

While trying to sort out the facts in my fuzzy head I heard a scratching at the door followed by a deep snorting. I couldn’t figure what was making the noises and so stood up and walked over to the door. Shamefully, I did what the horror movies always told me not to. I opened it. The last thing I expected was a large black bovine. It didn’t look very happy.

” What the fuck!”

The snorting animal scratched a gouge out of the door as it charged into the bedroom. That racket made Shirl almost wet the bed when she realised what the origin of the thunder was. Curling into a foetal position, she uttered an ear-piercing scream and covered her ears and eyes in one go.

As the bull lurched forward, I managed to grab one of its horns. Instinctively the animal shook its head and flicked me onto its back. Grabbing the other horn to stabilise myself, I hung on for my dear life as it bounced around the room trying to buck me to the strains of Jonny Cash and his ‘Bull Rider’.

“Oh how apt”, I ironically thought, hanging on like a rag doll being tossed around by a thoughtlessly devilish child trying to knock its stuffing out.

In what seemed to me to take forever but could only have been seconds, the rampaging bull finally tossed me off – its back!

In the background, Jonny was still singing in his own unique way when the massive brute reared up and slam dunked me down, crushing most of my ribs and pelvis. Shirl accompanied its snorts with a series of screams. It stuck its pointed horn into my abdomen. The light went out as I weakly sang the words, ‘Live fast, die young. Bull Rider’.

In the stark, sterile, clinically bland, antiseptic, furniture-less private room at the sanitorium...

Doctor, with a creepy smile on his face, "I wonder if he’ll still be hallucinating tomorrow. I'll update the medical chart, to 'Delusional Paranoia'."

Nurse, holding hands with the doctor, whispered with a cheeky sparkle in her eyes, "Let's see how he reacts to David Bowie's, Space Oddity."

Word count 1398