Watch out for the ice

A feather was tickling my upper lip. I brushed it away with the back of my hand. It moved to my ear. I swiped it off. Then it moved to my right eye. I opened it. A fly buzzed around my head. I opened the other eye. Sunlight drenched me. I was in a prison cell. A very bright one. It smelt bad. No, it smelt horrendous, as if someone had…

It all came back to me in a rush.

The tiny Bangkok hotel room. Not much bigger than the bed itself. A fan screwed to one wall, a tiny television to another. A cupboard sized bathroom, tiled in white, an Asian toilet with a shower nozzle above it. Next to the toilet was a tube with a trigger-operated tap on the end, explaining the absence of toilet paper.

I remembered coming back last night, head spinning. As I closed the door behind me, sudden cramps twisted my gut. Sharp knives sliced up my intestines. Then I was pulling down my shorts and squatting in the bathroom. My rear end exploded. Yellowness sprayed the bowl and the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief, then remembered there was no toilet paper. Oh shit. I could sense my backside was covered in the stuff. I looked dubiously at the hose. Unhooking it from the wall, I aimed it at my butt and pulled the trigger. Water squirted all over my legs and shorts. I stripped off my shorts, thought a second, and pulled off my shirt as well. I tossed them through the open door into the bedroom and tried the spray again. Eventually I just stood under the shower. As the water was streaming over me, the vomiting began. Red noodles turned yellow in the bowl. I gagged and threw up again. The next hour passed in a blur. Each time I thought I was in the clear, I was racked again. My legs went numb as I squatted over the hole. I slipped on the wet floor and realised I didn’t care what I was sitting in. It felt like it was coming out of both ends at once.

Finally, I crawled out of the bathroom and wiped myself down with my T shirt. Shivering under the sheet, my teeth chattered. I felt hot then cold. My head hammered. I lost track of time.

Hours passed.

My stomach muscles winced as I sat up. My head tried to float away, and I lay down again quickly. I tried again, more slowly. Much more slowly. A woodpecker was pounding my temples, but I managed to sit on the edge of the bed. God, the smell was foul. I took stock of my naked body. My legs weren’t usually that colour, were they? My throat was a dry river bed. My tongue the carcass of a dead alligator. A distant section of my brain dragged up the memory of a water bottle. My eyes flickered around the room. Nothing. My hands, gorilla-like, dangled under the bed and came up with a plastic cylinder. I swallowed painfully. Evaluated. No reaction from the gut. I drank more. Refreshed, my nostrils reminded my brain that close at hand something smelled revolting. Refreshed, my brain concluded that the something was myself.

I stood up, tentatively. The room wobbled then remained still. I took the few steps to the bathroom, turned the tap to full blast, then stepped into the torrent. It was the water of life.

In stark contrast to the ice in the fruit juice I'd drunk the day before. The water of death. The water of gastroenteritis at least. I wouldn't make that mistake again.