The New Year's Special (Mirror)

Call it the holiday spirit if you want, if the holiday spirit could be found in chainsaws and spruce trees. Call it laziness or apathy, otherwise. Whatever the reason, it was New Year’s Eve, and Rupert’s apartment was still decked out for the holidays. Not the most unusual thing. Except that he hadn’t done it.

The more he looked at those homey little hand-made ornaments, the more he wanted to tear the whole lot down. Rupert wiped a sleeve over his eyes, and dug through the third cabinet drawer for a trash bag. That’s where they should have been. He always kept them there. Damn bags, moving on him. He tore through the other cabinets, finding the rest of his cleaning supplies where they should be, then started on the drawers.

Achoo.

The tissues were on the top of the stove. The trash bags, it turned out, were in the second drawer down, under his gun. Right: he’d been using them for a little more than his day-old bagels, lately. He coughed. Those fuzzy pink hand cuffs, in their half-opened box? First to get shoved in. Something glittery and star-shaped followed, along with something that was either a cutout angel or a self-portrait, were close behind.

Flipsy followed him curiously into the bathroom, and stood wagging her tail with confused cheer as he washed out his watery eyes with a splash of water, bar soap, and cursing. Then it was back to the kitchen for a tissue. An empty syringe sat innocuously on the countertop, next to a vial of diddly squat. That’s apparently all he’d paid for. It had been nearly two hours, and he wasn’t exactly shooting fireballs out his nose. Damn dealers. Damn transvestite brat. He knocked his whole damn Christmas tree into the trash, tied its dead pine scent in with a sharp knot, and went back for a new bag.

He caught himself on the counter, one hand clutching his chest as he stared at the glass vial and tried to breathe. He’d remembered how, a minute ago, but it didn’t seem to be working now. What if he was going to turn into one of those... what were they, fish mutants? Except that he’d seen plenty of those on land, and they didn’t seem to be having this trouble.

Flipsy’s tail was not wagging as she watched her master drag himself back down the hall. This was just some kind of allergic reaction, that was all. There was always some percent of people who had those to drugs. Oh shucks: he was just too human to turn into a freak. Yeah, that’d just keep him up at night crying, once he got that epi-pen out of his first aid kit.

It never occurred to him that he wouldn’t get that far. Not until he’d wrestled the bag out from under the sink; not until he had the clear package in his hands, but his hands were too weak to open it.

The last thing Rupert saw was the pen rolling onto the floor. His head was down there, too: he didn’t know when that had happened. The tiles felt searingly cold under his face.

Flipsy was standing over him, barking. The clock in the living room struck eleven. One hour to midnight. Another happy damn new year. Did he even care?

Too damn hard a question. Rupert’s world went black.