Salvation Road

Benjamin

Benjamin Carlston’s head felt like it was going to burst.

He was sprawled on a puke-green carpet in what seemed to be a hot-pink ante-room. Black circles danced in his eyes, and he moaned, coughing up phlegm from his mouth. The cough, however, had not adequately propelled the mouth-goo, so it stuck to his cheek. Slowly, he shook his head in an effort to get it off. For some reason, he knew that he would regret moving his arm to swipe it off. Some great curse—or worse yet, sharp pain—would afflict him immediately thereafter. So he thought it best to find whatever means necessary—barring, you know, reaching toward his face—to get the phlegm.

Not once through the whole ordeal did it ever occur to Benjamin to leave the phlegm be, to go back to whatever slumber from which he came. Benjamin Carlston, simply put, was a perfectionist, and borderline-OCD. He had always been so—not to mention a major germaphobe. Benjamin would not—and could not—stand something being out of place. A dancer out of step. A singer off-key in a chorus. If it wasn’t supposed to be there, Benjamin would make sure that it wasn’t. And so, the phlegm simply had to go. The slimy, oozy wetness and the uncomfortable warmth that it emanated had to go.

Euch. Benjamin mouthed the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in a final effort—to no avail. The ball of phlegm stayed stagnant as ever. Benjamin could only see a fraction of the mass of icky goo from his peripheral vision, but he could imagine—somehow, quite clearly—that the phlegm (which was now somehow sentient) would stand up on it’s non-existent hind legs and taunt him, waggling a gooey, ever-shifting ball of goo in the general shape of a finger in his face. He sighed. What was happening?

Making going back to sleep no easier was the room itself. Benjamin wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but he assumed that it must have been a nursery—there were bluebirds painted along the wall, side-by-side with what seemed to be . . . pigeons? Below them was a thin forest of misshapen trees painted sloppily on top of a neon-pink hill. A bright sun with a bandana (why exactly . . . ?) shone in the corner, rays of sunlight running from it in thick, bold stripes of a sickly yellow that contrasted terribly against the pink background. If Benjamin had to guess, he would think that it was either drawn by a modern artist portraying what the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust might look like . . . or a gaggle of five-year-olds attempting wall-painting.

So yeah. Falling back asleep was not an option.

Groaning with frustration, he buried his face into the carpet. And then smashed his face in

again five more times for good measure. And yet, as he turned onto his back once again, shifting his body carefully—as not to provoke his arm and kick-start whatever horrible thing might happen as a result—the god-forsaken slime had not left his face (which was now red with carpet-burn). In fact, it seemed to have spread, now covering his entire cheek, stretching down to his chin, and near the corner of his eye. He grunted. Blinked. And yet, it would not drip down his cheek and fade into the vast, unbroached expanse of vomit-colored carpet. It clung to him, as if he were its last lifeline, the only way it would ever survive.

Do phlegm have . . . feelings? Benjamin wondered to himself, and immediately thunked the back of his head into the carpet. Two minutes spent on a upchuck-looking carpet in a garishly-decorated room and he was imagining phlegm feelings matter parades. The thought revulsed him.

He decided to sit up. A change of pace might do him some good. Again, with some strange, innate intuition, while he knew that moving his hand would be of the utmost imprudency, that very same way he knew that whatever gods/higher beings that were watching this whole slow-motion trainwreck would be indifferent if he decided to sit up by his own power. He was tempted, surely, to stretch his arm for a split second to help himself up, but after much internal debate, he resorted to shuffling uncomfortable onto his side and—bending his knees—fought his way to an upright position.

He paused, not daring to breathe. Five seconds. Ten. Thirty. He hadn’t been struck by lightning or turned into a pig, so he thought he was safe. He scooted—painfully slowly—to the nearest wall. He nestled his head under a bird’s outstretched talons, so it looked like he was being picked up by a pigeon and dragged over a spindly, dormant forest. He managed a chuckle. What was happening? What was this room? Where was he? Who was he?

Benjamin sighed heavily. He had an answer to the last question—or he had the start of one. He was Benjamin Carlston, CEO (see dictator) of the global media company Truth Hurts Inc. He was 34, as of April 3, 2019. What day was it now? Benjamin craned his neck to try to look at his watch, but he stopped after he started to develop an intense pain in the nape of his neck. Judging from his smell (or, as he preferred to call it, his manly musk) though, it couldn’t have been more than a few days since he had last been awake. Maybe as little as a few minutes.

. . . About that. Why had he been unconscious just a few minutes ago? How did he move from the place where he fell unconscious to . . . here? He exhaled sharply. His breath reeked—so maybe it had been more than a few minutes—but he couldn’t detect any alcohol. Then again, it could have just worn off. Did alcohol . . . wear off? He’d only drank alcohol twice in his life—and both times, the only thing he remembered the morning after was an intense, searing pain in his head that made it seem like the world was being torn apart, so he’d sort of kept those memories suppressed. But where did he fall unconscious? What was happening? How did he know that he couldn’t touch the phlegm?

Ugh. The phlegm. While he had been interrogating himself, it had started to creep down his cheek. A drop touched his long, thick, chestnut sideburns. He winced, scrunching his eyebrows up and closing his eyes as tight as he could. He pulled his legs closer to his stomach and shook his head violently.

That was a mistake. A single stream of phlegm went flying across his face. For a fleeting moment, he thought that he had actually succeeded in getting it off of him for good. He smiled, which made a bad situation worse.

The runaway phlegm, which had been poised to jump back on to the middle of his left cheek now overshot, because Benjamin had moved his flesh—including his cheeks—while expressing his short-lived joy. The phlegm now jumped over the area his cheeks were in previously. In midair, by some magical power, the single strand of goo split into an astounding three; one rocketed towards his exposed pearly-white teeth, another found its way to the tip of his nose, and the third landed squarely inside his then-blinking right eyelid.

He tensed up, and frowned—which made the phlegm in his mouth swish around, now covering his entire upper jaw. He gagged, which contorted his face—which made the other two strands of phlegm shift as well.

Benjamin was now dripping with phlegm in four different places—his front teeth, the entirety of his nose, the eyelashes and eyelids of his right eye, and his left cheek, by his sideburns. It took all he could—and a little more—for him not to gag again. Instead, he took deep, laborious breaths, counting softly.

One, two, three. Benjamin felt the urge to lift his arm, to react, to do something, anything, to stop the phlegm party that seemed to be going on on his face. But again, he chided himself. There was that voice again, the one that portented ominous things happening if he did anything. He nodded slightly in assent, and then—with utmost caution—slid both his legs over his arms. As a perfectionist, Benjamin prided himself in never skipping a day in the gym—especially leg day. So, as large as his biceps were, putting his legs over them was crushing (literally).

Four, five, six. His breathing quickened. The phlegm was on the move. He could feel it sliding down both the front and sides of his face. Leading the charge was the upper-jaw phlegm. In just six seconds, it had worked its way down to his bottom lip, which started to quiver. He almost retched, but contained himself. However disgusting the phlegm was, the voice was telling him that something worse might happen. An eternity of torture—or worse, nothingness. No one to talk to, nothing to do, no path, no reason.

Seven, eight. The phlegm was working faster. The upper-jaw phlegm had now coated the entirety of his chin, the nose phlegm had joined forces with the upper-jaw phlegm, the eye phlegm was daintily making its down his cheek like a teardrop, and the left-cheek phlegm had now somehow split in half—the bottom joined the nose and upper-jaw phlegm, and the top was somehow (against the rules of gravity) inching its way towards his left ear.

Nine, ten. All the units of phlegm had now pooled together at his chin. He watched, wide-eyed, as the goo slipped down his chin and into his lap. The two seconds seemed to stretch into infinity as it dropped slowly—painfully slowly—onto his inner thigh and as the thigh jerked involuntarily, the hand it had been restraining sprung free from its prison. He stayed there for twelve seconds: stationary, one arm arched and ready to strike the phlegm, one thigh hovering above it. He stared in fascinated horror as the hand—over the voice’s plentiful internal protests—reached to his face and touched the goo, wiping it off with one clean sweep.

He immediately slumped. The whole ordeal had probably lasted around seven minutes, but it felt more like seven hours. He just wanted to go to sleep —even though he really hadn’t done anything, and the room was unnaturally bright.

But as soon as he moved again, bright lights exploded all around him and fanfare played. The air turned uncomfortably chilly, and a banner unfurled from right before where he sat, with the words YOU’RE GOING TO UW scribbled on it. He blinked, confused. What was happening, and what did the University of Washington have to do with it?