Flash fiction

Dashed off something for a harmless little competition.

HANGOVER
By Charles Deemer
cdeemer@yahoo.com

I stepped out of the Henry Building downtown into an afternoon that had had the color sucked out of it. The day looked like I felt: gray, gloomy, without prospects of sunshine. A typical February day in Portland, and a typical Sunday afternoon in my throbbing head.
At Kelly’s Bar, only a few blocks from my apartment, I’d made the mistake of switching from beer to Jameson’s Irish last night under the pretense of celebrating a gift in the mail, my final divorce papers. I should’ve known better. I’m not as young as I used to be, and Frankie was there to dare me on. He or somebody else had ended up getting me home after the bar closed. The night’s details were as lost as color in the city’s winter coat. But it must’ve been a hell of a night.
Then I saw the blood on my hands. It was crusted into a dark rusty grime, a splattering of stiffness on the backs of my hands and fingers. I didn’t remember taking down a deer and cleaning it last night. I didn’t remember tearing someone’s throat out.
I stood outside the door of the Henry Building, staring at my hands. I smelled them. No clue there. Maybe there was one back in my apartment.
As soon as I opened the door, I saw the bare legs sticking out from behind the sofa. Shapely legs. Womanly legs. I heard something and realized that the shower was on. Who the hell was taking a shower in my apartment? Then I heard voices in there.
I stepped toward the bathroom. As I passed the sofa, I looked behind it. The legs belonged to a young woman wearing a nightgown. Was she dead? If she was, she was a damn sexy corpse.
Someone in the bathroom laughed, then a couple others. Maybe three voices coming from there. The shower was still running.
I moved into the hallway, the bathroom just down the way.
Suddenly a woman’s voice behind me said, “I’m still waiting in here!”
I jumped. The corpse spoke? Who the hell else could it be?
I turned back toward the bathroom and faced Frankie.
“Where the hell’s the coffee?” he asked.
“Coffee?”
“I’m cold in here!” said the woman behind the sofa.
“Everybody take fifteen!” Frankie yelled. To me he said, “Why didn’t you get coffee?”
“I have blood on my hands.”
“Of course you do. You’re a zombie.”
“I am?”
The shower went off. Three people came out of the bathroom.
“Where’s the coffee?” someone asked.
“Charlie, do you want to be in this movie or not? You said you did, but I need to know you’ll be there. You were supposed to get coffee. Now can you do that?”
I stepped into a February Portland afternoon that had had the color sucked out of it. Frankie was making a movie. I was a zombie. Perfect.