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  I watch the blood drip in consistently random drops from my lips.  It tastes like conductive metal.  Hook me up to some wires, baby.  I look at my hands, palm pressed against the bare basement floor, fingers splayed and bruised.  It amazes me that these frail hands can support my weight.  I follow the blood streams racing down my arms and I’m struggling to remember if it’s all my blood or someone else’s.

  But why would it be someone else’s?

  I drop my head in suddenly impulse and the blood from my lips splatters against the floor like shitty artwork.  I see my knees supporting my weight, my frail, cracked, bony knees.  They’re scratched and blood and dirt intermingle in some sort of mockery of alleyway fucking.  
  I let out a shallow, shaky breath and the hot air glides painfully over shallow cuts on my chest.  All of a sudden, I’m overwhelmed with a stinging sensation and I hiss through blood-glazed teeth.  I can feel the pain multiplying over my body as it starts to remember what pain feels like.  White-hot fire burns on my forearms and my right shoulder.  My left thigh takes the cake, though.  I scan my hazy eyes over the skin and I can see why; the inside of my thigh is open, exposing layers of muscle amongst the dark flood of red. I gasp, more in surprise that my leg looks like a doorway into a fucked-up Narnia than in pain, and my body reacts reasonably.  I start shaking violently.  It’s almost too much for my arms to handle.  I’m partially confused because I don’t feel like I should be shaking violently.  If anything, I could be shivering because I’m cold and lightly-clad.  But this isn’t shivering.  This is the warning sign that my body is about to give out on me, like in the movies when the plane is about to blow up and everything is ringing and red lights are flashing fast enough to give a person a fucking seizure.
  Oh.  I’m in shock.  Which leads to a more pertaining question: if I was in shock, wouldn’t I be too shocked to realize it?  I look at all the blood seeping into the cement under me.  It’s probably all my blood.  Though I’m pretty sure this is the result of some outside party.  My shoulder spasms as if possessed.  The right side of my body then falls, collapsing with an eerie, wet smack onto the bloody ground.  The left side follows and I groan.  I’m swimming in a puddle of my own blood.  And I’m so oddly fucking calm.  
  The rational side of my brain tells me that I should be freaking out, vomiting from blood loss and the overall disgusting atmosphere, screaming for help, or at least trying to close the gaping hole in my thigh.
  The irrational side of my brain tells me that I feel good regardless.  The blood is warm against my skin and the room is so damn cold.  The blood tastes pleasant, like something I’ve been craving.  The salt tingles on my taste buds like the dirt tingles on my fingertips.  I don’t need to scream for help, or can’t for that matter because I don’t have the strength.  The hole in my thigh isn’t fatal.  For some reason, I know that.  
  Get this, I’m yawning.  Lying here in my warm, salty blood and my underwear, covered in countless wounds and shaking in my bones, I’m tired.  

  “Take a nap, you’ll need it.”

  That’s all it takes, a separate voice.  My irrational peace is broken.  I cough violently and whip my head around, looking for the source.  My pain is doubling, tripling, as my heart beats faster.  My organs start to realize that as I’m panicking I need more blood.  Impossibly, my shaking increases and tears spring to my eyes as the pain takes over.  My thigh is rapidly contracting and relaxing, breaking the clotting factors and causing the hole to bleed again.  Every cut, scrape, bruise is burning and my body writhes to get rid of the sensation.  I can feel the blood seeping into my hair and smearing against my scalp.  All the while I hear a sound like a strangled creature.
  It’s only after I’m feeling the pinprick in my carotid artery and seeing an inhuman darkness close over my vision that I understand the sound is coming from me.