You must be this old to enter the Dungeon

5] Operation Clean Cut

Shifting around uneasily in my bed, I wondered what was wrong.

Through my blurred vision, I could see the first number on the alarm clock was a nine. "Nine? That's like, six hours of sleep."

Squirming around in bed to slide my legs off the edge of the mattress and pushing myself up to a sitting position, I realized that I was only feeling a few dull pains in all the old familiar places, rather than the normal sharp, bone deep aches and pains.

So… not something wrong, just not the typical way I woke up.

I also realized looking down at the dirty clothes on the floor, that I never had dug out anything clean to wear yesterday, probably because I never did get around to getting into the shower.

“I need to pee… and more.”

Something was stirring around in my guts, and it was going to come out in a minute or two with or without me getting to the toilet first.

I didn’t even have time to grab something to read, let alone get my robe on.

I’ll spare you the details, but it felt like everything that had been clogging me up over the last several years had decided to all come out at once. It certainly smelled like it.

So… Do I check to see what it looks like?

Gross, I know. But you got to look for things like blood, and abnormal colors.

Or the black tar like patches. “Oh god, why did I look…”

I wiped five times before it got the last of it, and then I got right into the shower.

Even with the reduced pain, I still kept one hand clenched on the metal bar mounted on the wall. The last time I had fallen it had taken me two hours to claw my way out into the hall and get to my phone to call for an ambulance.

Just some contusions, nothing broken. But I had to sneak out of the emergency room to avoid an overnight stay in a disturbingly overpriced hospital room for “Monitoring overnight.” and an interview with a Geriatric specialist.

I’m old and I’m going to die, getting my life savings stolen by a hospital's scam prices wasn't going to help that any.

Hosed down, scrubbed up, rinsed off. Then toweled dry and checked myself in the mirror.

A ghastly pale man whose skin had outgrown him looked back at me. My hair was more white now than gray and had withdrawn on the edges of my forehead. It was also sticking up in all directions as I realized how long it had been since I last had it cut down.

The gray stubble covering my face and neck was long enough now to look more like the start of a sloppy beard than just a lack of shaving.

Between the wrinkles that a blade could catch on and the pain of standing on my feet for that long, shaving had become an exercise in counting how many spots I was bleeding from rather than checking if I had scrapped away all the face fuzz.

Today though, I made an effort.

I had never bothered with shaving cream when I was younger, I never saw the point. Now though, it at least let me know what spots I had missed on the first attempt.

Today, I was only left bleeding in three spots, and I had to check to find them when I saw the blood drops mixed in with the white foam in the sink.

Blood thinners... they made every little hole in you look so dramatic. The holes I poked in my fingers every morning had to use a tiny little needle and it still bled like crazy, but it was either that or the poke was so light it took over a full minute of squeezing on my fingertip to get enough blood to flow down into the blood tester strip.

The hard part was getting it to stop once it got going, I usually had little red smears all over my mouse and keyboard because holding a tissue over my pricked finger for a minute or two didn’t always do the job, but putting on a band aide was too much trouble.

After putting some little bits of toilet paper on all the cuts on my face, at least the ones I could find, I finished drying off with the hair dryer, which at my age is for more than just hair, and made my way into my bedroom to get dressed.

I felt… Not so much good, but less bad than normal, it was enough to bother putting on a tee shirt before pulling a clean hoodie over it and digging out a clean set of jeans.

An hour and a bowl of microwaved whole oats mixed with sugar free blueberry flavored yogurt later and I was picking off the last of the toilet paper from my face, getting on my orthopedic shoes, and filling my pockets to go out.

The Cops warned me to stay in my home last night, but after having spent all morning yesterday outside without evil monkeys attacking me, I figured I must be safe. At least during the day.

Just in case, I shook up the little squirt bottle filled with a mix of cayenne pepper and water which I had mixed up after someone had tried to rob me in my own yard.

Like I would have cash on me while I was pulling weeds in my backyard.

I had tried a squirt of it on my eggs once, and it was almost too hot for me to eat, so I had figured it would do a number on anyone’s eyes.

There hadn’t been much cause to ever use it, so I gave the cutting board a squirt and ran a finger over the wetness before licking my fingertip to check to see if it was still any good.

“Hoo-yeah, still pure evil in a bottle.”

Then I was off to the bus stop with the hard cased wheeled luggage I had gotten from a thrift store to use to haul back my groceries. The case had a crack in it, but it could still hold a lot and keep anything cold from getting too warm inside it with a few old plastic lunch bag chill packs. The extendable handle could also have a plastic bag or two looped over it for anything that didn’t fit in the luggage.

It did it’s job. What else could you ask out of an inanimate object that I picked up for three bucks?

Halfway to the bus stop, I heard the whining from the alleyway and saw the trail of blood going down it.

Not human blood, somehow the color was off.

Dog blood.

“None of my business.”

Whatever it was, it sounded hurt and young.

“I should get moving.”

The closest thing I had to a pet was the one eyed old tom cat that I left water out for in my shed in return for it killing the mice that got in there, and the rabbits and other varmints that liked to hit my garden. But I hadn’t seen the cat in… A couple of years now.

Another whine came out of the alley, almost desperate sounding, and followed by a weak growl.

Somehow I found myself walking down the alleyway, dragging my luggage behind me, and with a spray bottle in my hand.

Something had torn up the mother Coyote, badly enough she wasn’t able to struggle her way up to her feet as she growled at me. A single pup faced off against me as it scooted back until its butt hit its mother where she lay on the gravel behind it.

Just the one? I looked around to see if there were any others hiding around somewhere. What was I supposed to do here, call animal control?

Even if they would come out here, they would just shoot them or something. Coyotes were considered vermin.

As I looked at her again, I realized that she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking and growling at something behind me.

Whispering “...crap…” I slowly turned around to look at the evil red monkey that had been following the blood trail to finish off its prey.

And had found a brand new chew toy.