Falling asleep in public transport - and other violent encounters

Inquietem est cor nostrum                                              

'What is the matter with you?' demands the nurse sternly.
'I think I might have broken my toe' I answer.
'Aha, well, right. take off your shoe and wait in that chair!' she commands.
I obey hastily and sit around in the chair for quite a while with nothing to keep me company but muffled cries of pain from the surrounding rooms. 'I told you not to move it' is the usual response after each cry.
A doctor passes me. 'What are you doing here?' he asks me in surprise.
'I was told to wait' I reply.
'Good' he says and leaves.
The evil nurse comes back. 'Come here' she says, 'and now wait there'. I move to another room, another chair and I wait until another doctor comes in. 'What are you dong here?' he asks.
'I think I broke my toe' I say. 'Wone?' he says. 'The crooked purple one that looks completely wrong' I reply. 'Looks perfectly fine to me. Can you move it?' he asks.
'No.' I reply. 'Maybe we should x-ray it, go to that chair in front of the other room there' he says and leaves.
I wait in front of the room and an old Turkish woman is rolled past me on a trolley, a young Turk and a doctor are walking next to her. They stop next to me. 'What happened? asks the doctor the old woman. 'She fell out of a window' says the young Turk, 'she doesn't speak German. 'Tell her to roll over' says the doctor.
'She says she can't' is the answer after a short whispered conversation.
'Well, she has to'!
I hear her moan as the trolley is moved on to another room.
'Why is that foot so cold, it's irresponsible!' says the doctor in the x-ray room.
'Because' I say 'it has been bare and in the open for half an hour now'
'Irresponsible, put on that jacket here! Careful, heavy.'
'Not broken, put on that ointment here, sorry but we couldn't find a lid for the cup, I could have sworn we had lids for those, wait a minute' ....new doctor, new problems.
I leave ten minutes later, my cup with ointment sealed with a plaster, the pain in my toe long forgotten.
 
 
Today, I found a stone in my meal at the cafeteria. A stone!

My next-door neighbours are very fond of making love. They seem to possess superhuman stamina, and the noise they are producing reminds me very much of a stampeding flock of chicken. A flat piece of wood seems also somehow to be involved in the whole process, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they are actually perfoming the act itself on/with said poultry (in ignorance of the severe health risks this poses in our troubled times)
I'm getting curious and I decided to record these unearthly sounds with my mobile to maybe play them to a vet, and disperse my dark suspicions (or sell them on e-bay, smut like that sells).
However, the whole thing is very exciting and as I lean over the desk to position my phone on the window pane the damn thing falls out of my trembling fingers and disappears straight into a pint glas full of water on my desk. It sinks with a very sad 'Blubb!'
As I stare at the floating ruins of my mobile phone my neighbours get louder and louder.

Still staggering from a long and sleepless night I daringly enter the area of the portable toilets, the norotrious and feared dixi-toilets. Theres a scent lying over the whole area, a smell of rot and decay. The festival smell. The ground trampled and poisoned by alcohol and excrements slowly dying, slowly giving way. His silent moaning and the constant stomping and jumping of 30.000 drunken vandals waking up the dead that lie, long forgotten, buried in its depth; who dares to interrupt our sleep; who dares to dance on our graves?
 And with every convulsion of the dying ground they rise, they rise a little bit higher towards the source of all this red noise.
high above I enter the toilet of my choice and prepare for a hearty good-morning wee. But, alas, by force of habbit, or dark design, I commit the cardinal sin, I make the unforgivable mistake of looking into the toilet bowl. Undigested sweetcorn lies here in heaps, forming a huge yellow-brownish mass out of which the angry red eye of blood-soaked tampon stares at me.
I recoil in horror at the sight and turn around to flee this dreadful toilet but I slip in some sort of puddle and fall, my head hitting the plastic door which reluctantly springs open and I fall into the wet mud outside the cabin.
'There are worse ways to start the day,' I think drowsily, as sceletal fingers grab my arms and legs and slowly pull my down into the darkness.

'To the green' she whispers.
'The green, the green?' I think 'What green?'
we are both having difficulties in finding our way. the sidewalk keeps moving and we fall often.
We end up in a thicket. 'Let us stay here,' she says, 'Let us stay, nobody can see us here.'
We manage to lose each other in the already autumnal de-leaved thicket, as she looks for a place for her jacket and I wonder where my cap has gone. I crawl looking for the cap, I remember that there was somebody else, but who. I suddenly stumble out of the hedge and stand in front of the hospital. 'Sit there and wait!' A voice like ice rings in my ears.
I dive back into the scratchy branches and crawl back, this time coming out at the waterside. I sit down and look at the floating swans, asleep, do they ever wonder when they wake up? This is not the place I went to sleep at! Not again, not again!! All of a sudden I feel very tired. 'Let's go.' she says. 'I think I lost my cap' I mumble.
When we leave we do so in different directions.

I wake up to very disturbing situation. I'm falling backwards, and it seems that out of reflex I have grabbed the hair of a girl standing in front of me in the train. At least I let go of her hair, but its too late and mother gravity is a passionate mistress. we both scream as we hit the metal floor of the compartment. There are worse situations to wake up to, I think, as I prepare to explain myself in my non-existent Hungarian to her absolutely flabbergasted and very tall boyfriend.
 
You know something is going wrong when you are sitting in the back of a car and you hear a sound remotely like PA-KLUNK! - only much louder. I turn in my seat and see a twisted piece of metal dancing an angry jitterbug down the road, sparks and all. 'Damn' says our driver, I knew that the bloody screw would never hold it all the way...' I watch the ex-piece of our car dancing away, now on its very own journey; rites of passage: you got to let 'em go when the time comes poppa; and I'm praying, praying that its brothers and sister don't follow suit. Hold on you nails and screws!

Up she wakes to take a long look at me.
'Tonight' she says finally 'I'll definitely drink less'
There are worse ways of starting the day, but I can't help feeling a bit insulted.

FuThump! The sound of being hit on the eye with full force, a nasty thing and I never saw the blow coming. My world sinks into shades of red and I never even felt the second one hit my nose, a voice  in me shouting 'move on! move on! don't fall! don't fall! or they'll all start! I move on with my eye sealed shut forever I'm sure of it, oh sweet Jesus save my eye, please save my eye, don't fall move on, don't fall. A kick misses me and then I'm out of it and my eye is all swollen, I must look like Quasimodo after a nasty night of heavy drinking. A very red voice inside of me starts screaming all sorts of things, but all my own voice manages is a repeated 'Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck' I dare to open my eye for a second and I see, I see lights and shades and then my vision turns clear albeit painful and I'm so releaved and glad that I don't even realize how my nose starts bleeding onto my sweater as if a tap had been turned on there.

I walk home, barefooted, cursing the thief of my shoes with every single step. I turn into the street. Right street. I walk up to the house. Right number. Wrong house. impossible. I walk back, and forth right street, right number, wrong house. I walk back to the train station and back to the right street, right number, wrong house. I give up. Kafkadian! I walk on, I don't care, you only need shoes when it rains or when its cold anyway, right so why bother. I come to another right street (another right street, of course) right number, right house, why not beautiful. I sit down on the couch, and curse the thief of my shoes. the thought of a warm, never-ending shower the only thing on my mind, but my feet won't carry me anymore. Up to here sonny and that's it, we're done for, buy shoes. I pull a pillow over my head and collaps backwards, completely unable to sleep.

'This game is over' and playfully the young lady starts to push the remaining balls into the pockets. 'Our turn now' she says with the voice of the child that she still is.
'Sorry miss, but if you give us just five minutes more...' I begin
'I' she says, staring at me as if I was an illness, 'am actually way too good looking, for you to talk to me. She leaves me staring in disbelief. Only after two minutes do I realize that I had a billard cue in my hand when she said that to me. esprit d'escalier, I say to myself, esprit d'escalier.

I wake up in the tube. This is not the place I fell asleep at! Not again! NOT AGAIN!
Something is very wrong. My wallet is gone, my book is gone, my necklace is gone, most vital parts of my memory are gone and I see the evil figure of a ticket inspector moving on to my walletless self.
There are worse ways to start the day, but I can't think of many.

'Goddammit' says the very nice girl in the qeue right next to me.
'This fucking barkeeper is completely ignoring me, and she mimicks a very violent act.
I hand her an orange.
She throws it.
We both turn and run.

(Those who wear contacts will know)
It starts as a small but sharp pain inside of your eyelid. It will then crawl down for your pupil eddying red shocks of pain through you eyeballs. Every time you blink, you'll feel your eyes on fire, water, water, we need water.
Green eyes are a sign for those close to the fairies and leprechauns, they say. If you meet someone with one green and one brown eye, it means that the person in question was stolen by the fairies, when he or she was a child. I always like dmy green eyes, with the yellow ring around them (I'd say golden Corona, but people keep correcting me). Foxtrott your way to the northern lights, green eyes will be there, yes sir. But alas, pride is a sin, and how I treat my precious eyes, oh oh. They are all red and bloodshot, wasted and battered and hardly discernibly between my dark-rimed eyes, sleep is not only for the dead. I wasted my green eyes, oh my what will the fairies say; what will the riverspirits say? Not the way to handle a gift me boy, and what of your mission? what of that eh? So they punish me. Red phosphor burns its way through my pupils, down and through the corona, melting that pot of gold, make yourself a chandelier of it, me boy, we don't care no really not. Leaving only
 ashes and burning embers. I wake up in a world of grey fog and red mist, the fucking worst place to wake up in and there's no escaping it, except for your eyes to pop, explode but they never do, we need water here, not again, not again, a sword, give me my sword!

Dear Sir (writes my bank)
(Even though 'dear' and 'sir' are crossed out and replaced by 'godamn hermaphroditical swine')
We think that last piece was very much on the melodramatic side, stop being such a sissy for chrissake, we're talking about contact lenses here, and not the Spanish Inquisition.
We furthermore believe that you fell victim to a major misconception concerning the nature of modern economics in general, and your relationship to our institution in particular. We are not there to pay your bills (especially not those for contact lenses)!!So stop sending them to us!!
We hope this little misunderstanding is herebye eliminated (because otherwise we will eliminate you).
Sincerely and all the best
Jack Pott

The hunchbacked dwarf is a specialist. 'I see' he says that you already have hot soup on your menu' he informs the lady working the counter. 'Yes' she says, 'but it doesn't sell.
It is too warm. Ruddy October. No summer at all, and now you have 20 degrees in octobre. How am I supposed to sell soup with 20 degrees in October. I'm sweating my brains out in here. There are more flies and fucking insects in here than through all of spring and summer together.
I stare at the sizzling fries in the boiling water, digesting the instect news, and wondering whether I'm hungry after all.
'Nothing right these days, 20 degrees in octobre' she mutters.
'But people in the street are much friendlier.' I venture. 'They smile more often when it's warm and no rain.
The dwarf turns towards me:
'If people smile at you in the street' he says sternly, 'it is usually the prelude to a machete attack'
and with that he leaves me standing at the counter,
soon afterwards its starting to rain.