Part 2

Hector woke up feeling like someone had taken a torque wrench just to the left side of his spine. He stretched and twisted and glared at his thin bedroll like it had betrayed him. A gurgling came from the pipes in the bathroom which, because he had no water, could only mean the thing that lived in the sink was also awake. After pulling on a sweatshirt, he attempted to run his fingers through his mop of hair, yanked out some tangles in the process, picked up a plastic up off the floor and gingerly stepped over exposed nails and forgotten screws as he made his way to the stairs.

He'd stumbled into the house last week, bleeding profusely, running low on slugs, and weak in the knees from hoofing his way nonstop for six miles. Gloriously, police sirens passed, the streetlights made the second story navigable, and -- he found the next morning -- the pawn shop next door had a working exterior faucet.

Hector loped down the stairs and padded his way onto the cracked concrete sidewalk, squinting up at a grayscale sky. He scratched himself as he filled the cup at the pawn shop faucet, drank once, and filled it again. Then Bigfoot disappeared back into his cave.

"Ohsonofabitch!" He hopped his way to the bathroom, baptizing himself in the process, and plucked a tiny screw from his bare heel. The moment he reached the sink, a muffled sigh filled the air. "You have got to be kidding me." Another sigh, then a soft clicking sound.

Hector put down the plastic cup and yanked his sweatshirt off, glaring in the mirror at the mouth on his chest.

"You can't be hungry yet."

The mouth, a lipless row of sharklike teeth, sighed and clicked its pearly-whites again three times. The thick cords of musculature and blood vessels that snugly laced into his skin as they hugged his ribs and collar bones tightened perceptibly, like the slow but firm flex of a fist.

Hector sneered, rolled his brown eyes, and picked up his toothbrush, the bristles of which resembled a thriving sea anemone. He plopped it into his cup of water, swishing it around as he soundlessly roared at the splotchy mirror. The hazy light of morning just barely managed to reveal the cavity in his back left molar. But at least it hadn't grown any. Furious brushing ensued.

A sigh. Click click click.

He spat and tapped the mirror with his toothbrush on the vicious maw that grinned at him from his torso. "Guido. Listen. I fed you two days ago. Two! I can still feel your love juice!," which, he realized with growing concern, was not true.

He did not feel calm and happy and lazy. He didn't feel like silk was lining his veins from where they were intercepted and penetrated by Guido's "fingers." He felt strong and confident and jittery. And wide, wide awake. It was like being in the fetal position while standing: his chest was heavy and warm but his arms and legs were insubstantial. He could feel the blood gushing through his brain and the lightning storm of synapses firing across the plump ridges of gray matter. He looked at his eyes, then again at Guido, the splotches on the mirror casting cavities onto his perfect teeth.

Click click click. It wasn't a sigh; it was a hiss.

Hector jerked backward from the sink as a greenish tentacle, thick as a garden hose, lurched out from the drain. Missing his wrist, he felt the thing's soapy flesh glide across his thumb, knuckle, and forefinger as it snatched the toothbrush from his grip and stole it, snapping, back down the sink.

"Oh come on! That was my--!" He kicked the pipes squarely with the ball of his foot, then listened as the gurgling sound retreated farther and farther until the drain was perfectly quiet. "You fucker." Hector dropped his pants and made to urinate into the sink, but the adrenaline flooding his brain -- as well as a few neurotransmitters wholly alien to human physiology -- kept his sympathetic nervous system active and ready. The floodgates were closed. "Damn."

Lifting his pants, he looked back in the mirror. Guido grinned as usual, relaxing a little, loosing its grip on his ribs. Hector smirked. "Sorry, bud. I appreciate the warning, though."

Part 1

It took Hector Samsa two near-death experiences, one murder, and a lifetime of hallucinations -- and things he wished were hallucinations -- for him to realize that sanity was just a psychological popularity contest. Somewhere, a group of very sane men in very sane suits sat around a table, drank coffee and chai, and made up a list of all the things sane people didn't do. The list is still in development.

But Hector was pretty sure none of these men had ever taken a turn down the wrong alley to find a man mating with an ATM only to feel guilty about interrupting such an intimate moment. None of these men had ever held a shotgun hoping, praying, that this last slug would penetrate some unidentifiable vital organ in a writhin mass that stared at them hungrily with blind eyes. And not a single one of them had ever rode the public transportation busses.

The busses were asylums on wheels. In the gray hours of morning, you could pay your dollar, climb on board, and ride the circuit of the dispossessed. People sat as far away from each other as possible because misfortune is communicable; it's catching. If the wrong person sneezed in your direction your credit would go bad, the repo men would finally find your car at your uncle's house, and the store manager would actually take the time to read your application to see that, yes, you had been convicted of a felony. The busses were greedy. Once you stepped on, you might as well get used to the hard plastic seats, the laughable padding, and the cardboard ads that told you to stay off drugs, mortgage your home, and buy soda.

As much as Hector hated the busses, he liked riding. For a single dollar, you could step on, sit down, and zone out for hours while the route was run. You didn't do anything, but there was still a sense of progress, of movement. That was why he and the old-timers (who were only sometimes old, only sometimes sober, and only sometimes conscious) would always be on the busses. He never spoke to them -- never spoke to anyone beyond a nodded hello to the driver -- but he gave them all nicknames. Harry Hairlip drooled like someone was paying him to do it. Rosie the Rum-Guzzler smelled like a truckstop floor. Chattering Bob would hold unending conversations with himself that would go for hours: twisting, hyperactive words that fell down hills of antipsychotic meds and drowned in dried-up rivers of debate. Hector never could zone him out. Hector would listen as Chattering Bob told someone who wasn't there what he thought about President Carter and hopscotch and scotch and scots and cots and his time in the Navy. Chattering Bob was crazy. He was irredeemably, irrevocably crazy.

Hector would stare into the bus windows, looking into the eyes of his reflection, peer over his own dark hair and stubbly beard and the jagged scar that ran from his ear to the corner of his mouth and think I used to be that crazy, and know it.

Before too long, though, Guido would get hungry and he'd have to get off the bus and wander down a few sidestreets until he found a cat or pigeon and feed him.