[2/2]...The woman covered her eyes and sobbed, trying and failing to quell herself. Keith turned around and ran out of the hallway and found an empty living room with withdrawn curtains: so that the windows let in a bright white.

"Carlos, what did you do..."

Keith turned around to find that the hallway was replaced by an open doorway into a hospital room. Inside was dark and mirthless, with a single lamp in the corner illuminating the drawn glass window that showcased a stormy parking lot. The hospital room was also empty.

"Carlos, what did you do!"

It came from the window. In the doorway of the living room, a dark silhouette of a uniformed man threw open the door and charge at him with balled fists. Thunder screamed as all the windows started to buckle under intense rain. The man grabbed at Keith's neck.

"Carlos-"

It looked like a black tattoo. It was a lie: so, Keith threw himself at the tattoo and began biting the nostrils of a man who looked a lot like himself. But it occurred to Keith that the mirror hadn't shown his true reflection: it was only a coincidence that they looked alike, because he didn't look like that; naturally.

The black man struggled but managed to produce a knife from his chest and sliced at Keith's face a few times. The tattoo struggled, but Keith eventually choked the consciousness out of it. Using the knife, he mangled the face up until it was indistinguishable.

Breathing hard, the naked man stood up. He had fought with the tattoo next to the open doorway of the front entrance. An array of policemen with pointed pistols brandished him with fiery orange eyes. The sky was a bright cloudy white, like a blank canvas of smoke, and the windows continued to rhythmically thud despite the rain having seemingly stopped.

"Freeze, motherfucker."

Keith looked down at his body. He was in his underwear, the stitches and blemishes were gone, but his entire forearm was drenched in blood, cuts and bitemarks. There was also a layer of blistered red skin over his chest that was coated by a brown aromatic sauce.

"Raise your hands!"

"Hands up and drop the weapon. Hands up!"

Keith briefly heard the word "hands" and understood from the context that he should raise his hands. But then he remembered that there was writing on the palm, so he turned his hand to see if it had changed.

"Hands up!" A cop yelled angrily, growling the words out.

The message was still there on his hands. But it read differently:

"Gracias por hacer un buen acto. Casi listo, mi amor. Levante la mano y gana."

"¿Mi amor?" Keith said perplexed. He raised both hands.

"Drop the knife!"

He dropped the knife and faced his palms to the police. Immediately, gunshots sounded as his bleeding forearm was assaulted by the palm.

Keith screamed as he fell, landing on the wisping sand. A hiss slithered out from his body before a force propelled his limp form against the walls of the entryway like a flung towel. Dark tendrils of reptilian skin, coated with Keith's blood, had erupted from the bone of the brutally fresh orifice. These tendrils had no core body or head, and simply flung line after line into the crowd of policemen: skewering their necks and heads in one swift movement.

They all stood still as Keith's hand wiggled inside of each human's corpse. A pleasant humming sound vibrated from Keith's head. The walls of the house started to fade away, and he was back in the hospital room. But this time, it didn't look so mirthless and dreary; though this time, there was a reflection in the window. And so, you watch yourself on the bed for a long while, taking in details you have forgotten since the beginning of that special day. You didn't seem to blink as you watched yourself in wonder. And you find comfort in that gaze of yours.

"Have you thought of a name yet, dear? I know you said you wanted a girl, so you could name her after Keisha."

"I know, I remember..."

"We've got to name our baby something. The people are waiting on us."

"Hm, how about Keith then?"

"That's a good deal, sweetie. I'm sorry for what happened to her but remember that I'll name the next baby, okay?"

A light clap of thunder sounded from overhead. Keith wriggled his index finger slightly.

"I know honey. I know."

"¡Concentramos! ¡Tres, dos, uno...!"

The sand blew from the two's feet as they ran, launching themselves towards the stand of foam frisbees. Blazing fire boomed from torch poles behind them. People in their respective team colors watch from the benches, against gray walls of spray-painted graffiti. They scream and throw their arms as the red and blue members raced for the chance to aim at air.

"¡Cuidado allí, cuidado allí!" a woman boomed.

The man with blue jumped up onto a black net and began to heave himself over the obstacle. At the end was a ring of sticks that moved like a carousel. All he had to do was knock down all the blue sticks with the frisbees before the red team could in order to win.

"Que paso," a voice groaned audibly when the blue missed all his shots. Everyone was shouting for him to pick them up and try again.

...

He yawned and stretched his stiff back. His body was more than stiff but numb all over with a hint of fatigued tearing. His breath jolted after catching himself; regaining his footwork, he continued to wobble. The floor was ice to his tender flesh.

Without opening his eyes since he rolled out of bed, he flicked the light switch of his bathroom on. The light boomed like a winged pest, casting a light blue hue. He yawned and opened his eyes to find himself naked.

The toilet seat was next to the sink, so he reached and aimed for the hole as he pissed. A couple of seconds later, his bleary eyes squinted hard and blinked.

Still swaying, the man slowly brought his arm to his nose and peered at his skin. It was an elaborate tattoo with black letters etched into a bold pattern. It took a moment for him to remember that he could read and grazed his arm with his eyes a fourth time.

YOU HAVE ALZEIMER'S.

YOU LOVE YOUR WIFE.

YOUR NAME IS KEITH.

The tattoo had encompassed the whole forearm, with only a space of untainted skin in the inner arm marking the start and end of the edgy calligraphy.

"Bueno." Keith said, feeling indifferent of the discovery to his body. He shifted his hands and noticed that there was ink on his palm as well. Mildly intrigued, he examined the palm of his tattooed hand.

It wasn't a tattoo, but words hastily scrawled in a style that was hard to appreciate. In marker, it read: "THE TATTOOS ARE A LIE".

"Ohh," Keith noted appreciatively, trying to memorize the English words for future use. He looked down his whole body, expecting to see his tattoos from years of living rashly and making bad artistic decisions: his breath caught.

The tattoos on his stomach were not only faded and grey, but his skin looked older. Also, his body hair was unkempt as if he had forgotten to personally groom himself and stopped decades ago. And there were segments of pink skin that gave rise to rows and rows of stitches, with hints of red tender flesh that had been amateurishly sewn together to make an uneven lump of flesh, scattered all over his core and arms.

His heartbeat and awareness slowly reignited and maintained a seriously fast-paced tempo. He looked down at his dick and saw for the first time the lacerations that roamed the suddenly sensitive surface. He swiftly faced the sink's mirror.

Keith was a tan individual with newly discovered aged lines around his brow. His jaw seemed less defined and saggy, his hair was thinning and frayed with gray, and his eyes looked unrelentingly shocked and crazed. He was a naked old man looking at his naked self.

Three knocks echoed from outside the bathroom, beyond the bedroom. Keith jumped and looked around, heart racing and chest hurting. Thinking, and thinking fast, he wondered how this had happened.

"Hello, honey?" A chillingly enchanting woman's voice called out. "I-I-I've got you some medicinal tea and some soup for you, but my hands are full."

Keith observed his forearm again, with the tattoo he doesn't recognize. It, too, seemed old and aged. He paused to read the words again.

YOU HAD AN ACCIDENT

YOUR WIFE LOVES YOU

YOU LOVE TEA AND SOUP

"Ah!" Keith exclaimed, recognizing some of the English words: you, accident, tea, soup... "¡¿Pero que había pasado?! ¡No recuerdo nada lo que pasó desde...!"

His mind drifted back to his dream. Traces of sand wipe at his eroding memory. What was he, and did he win for his team? As he looked down, he found himself back on that arena with a blazing heat caressing the back of his soul. The obstacle course of the week stretched on and on. He ran, in slow motion, reaching for the frisbee stand.

"¿Eso no era cierto...?"

He pulled back his hand to read the marker on his palm: "THEYRE COMING FOR YOU! RUN".

Time sped up as Keith jumped over a bed that had always been there.

"Vamos, vamos," screamed his teammates.

He turned the corner and shouldered himself into the block of blue wood and started to push it past the goal line. Keith screamed as he gave one last hard shove and caused the column of wood to topple onto its side.

Everyone screamed as scalding liquid burned Keith's naked flesh. He opened his eyes to find an aged woman screaming in pain, doused in brown liquids with a tray of silverware pressed sharply into her flabby and loose floral chest. He was on top of this poor woman, pressing her tray and utensils into her boobs; much like a dull rock imprinting a marshmallow in such an irreversible way.

"Ay mierda," he whispered, rolling off her.

She was writhing in agony, belting out a loud panic. The naked man considered briefly of helping her, but hesitantly backed away instead.

[1/2]