5. Power Rangers

     I was a pretty angsty kid in middle school. Not suicide-risk angsty -- that came way later -- but I definitely felt like everyone other than myself was too stupid to see how shitty the world was. Granted, I probably couldn't tell you what was so terrible about it without using the phrase "You wouldn't understand". I was standoffish and arrogant, and I probably would have gotten in a ton of fights if I weren't such a colossal pussy.
     Anyway, there was about a two year period where I would do basically nothing except play video games and play music at an alarming volume. My weapon of choice was typically Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory album. I'd put that fucker on repeat the minute I got home from school most days, rapping and singing and screaming away all my thirteen year old anguish. I knew every song word for word.
     Last summer, Tom and I were cruising along some highway killing time until his dealer got off work. The windows were down and the music was loud, Tom was driving and I was flipping idly through his gigantic book of CDs. In there, nestled between Weird Al's Bad Hair Day and a burned CD simply labeled "Zep", was a copy of Hybrid Theory. I threw it in the player instantly. Tom didn't object.
     At this point in time it had probably been eight or ten years since I heard any of those songs. If you had asked me to tell you how one of them started, I would have drawn a blank. My brain had long since dumped out that information. As soon as the first track started playing, though, my mouth remembered it all for me. You'd have thought I was still thirteen. No idea where it came from. Muscle memory I guess. It was a weird experience.
     That strange verbal memory is the closest thing I can describe to explain what happened after I was woken up to eat breakfast with my dead grandparents.

     I was not in my apartment. Still in my bed though. Plus I wasn't hatching thousands of mutant centipedes. Counting the disembodied voice of my late grandfather I was only 2 for 4 in terms of weird shit so far today so I took it as a blessing. Passing out in an alley and waking up in your own bed is miraculous itself.
     "Alex!" Grandpa's voice again. Loud but distant. Damn this place looked familiar.
     "I'll be right down!"
     I don't know why I said that. It just sort of came out of my mouth.
     The room I was in was a little smaller than my apartment but looked way nicer. Antique furniture lined the walls and a fancy rug adorned an immaculate hardwood floor. A huge tree blocked most of the view from the only window and a single door stood on the opposing wall. My beat-to-hell mattress on a crappy metal frame looked wildly out of place.
      I know I don't go into detail about my clothes very often. It's usually unimportant. In this instance, however, it's worth noting that during my encounter with the Hobopede I was not wearing the Power Ranger pajamas I currently found myself in. They were some sweet jammies though. I hadn't seen anything like them since I was-
     Son of a bitch.
     I jumped off my bed and crossed the room to a large vanity mirror, confirming my fear.
     I was a seven year old child. Well, seven-ish. I was always a bigger kid so it was tough to tell, but there I was, looking at my childhood self in the mirror.
     Click.
     This was my bedroom. When I was a kid I spent a couple years living with my grandparents while my parents were travelling, and I stayed in the spare bedroom I was standing in now. I tore open a few dresser drawers and saw the neatly folded clothes I wore in elementary school.
     I was dreaming. No other explanation. I pinched myself. It hurt.
     Shit.
     I stared at my reflection for what felt like an hour, trying to compute exactly what the hell was going on. Were the last twenty years just an elaborate dream? No, I wouldn't have the mind of an adult.
     Would I?
     Maybe I never did in the first place. It would explain why I never stopped loving cartoons and toilet humor. But what about all the stuff I learned in school growing up? Hell, it was nonsense anyway. I probably just invented it all and none of it was real. Are second graders capable of this sort of rationalization? Screw it, this one was.
     In retrospect, I realize how crazy it would be to accept this conclusion. In my defense, you'd gobble up any excuse to believe the events of the last 24 hours never really happened. I promise.
     As I stood there, examining my ding-dong and praying it would eventually be bigger than I'd dreamed it would end up, I heard the door swing open behind me.
     "Dammit boy, stop playing with yourself and get downstairs for breakfast!"
     Oh my God. Grandma's cooking. I hadn't eaten it in years. Was it years or hours? This was getting complicated. Fortunately, that particular conundrum was jettisoned out of my skull
     I stared at my reflection for what felt like an hour, trying to compute exactly what the hell was going on. Were the last twenty years just an elaborate dream? No, I wouldn't have the mind of an adult.
     Would I?
     Maybe I never did in a the first place. It would explain why I never stopped loving cartoons and toilet humor. But what about all the stuff I learned in school growing up? Hell, it was nonsense anyway. I probably just invented it all and none of it was real. Are second graders capable of this sort of rationalization? Screw it, this one was.
     In retrospect, I realize how crazy it would be to accept this conclusion. In my defense, you'd gobble up any excuse to believe the events of the last 24 hours had never really happened. I promise.
     As I stood there, examining my ding-dong and praying it would eventually be bigger than I'd dreamed it would end up, I heard the door swing open behind me.
     "Dammit boy, stop playing with yourself and get downstairs for breakfast!"
     Oh my God. Grandma's cooking. I hadn't eaten it in years. Was it years or hours? This was getting complicated. Fortunately, that particular conundrum was jettisoned out of my skull as soon as I turned to greet my never-really-died Grampa.

	I need to take a minute to discuss what it’s like being suddenly converted into the body of a seven year old boy. When you’re growing up at whatever rate you’re destined for, you never really get to appreciate the change in perspective between the height of a child and the height of an adult. When you lose two and a half feet of height in a single blackout, on the other hand, it takes a while to get used to. It’s not terribly easy to put into words, but it’s the reason why grocery stores put all the expensive sugary cereal brands on the bottom shelf. Kids tend to focus on what’s at their own eye level. Just something to think about.

	So there I was, barely four feet tall. I was looking at the belly of my beloved, miraculously living grandfather. My heart had gone through the spin cycle already today, and I was just so full of these crazy emotions that I dashed forward and buried my face in his chest and gave him a hug. This was a hell of a hug, man. The sort of hug you would give your grandfather if you thought he was dead for fifteen years.
	“What in the heck has gotten into you, kid?”
	Hearing his voice again tipped me over the edge. I was home. I was with my two favorite people in the world and everything was going to be okay. I could come to terms with the fact that I had a traumatizing, twenty year nightmare if I had them with me again. I would put up with a thousand tours through middle school if I had them. I was overwhelmed with the feelings I was whipping through that I just sobbed. It was that staccato exhale where you can’t let yourself breathe back in again until you’re ready to start a full-blown meltdown. You know what I’m talking about. Even if you’ve never done it, you’ve watched someone do it.
I finally let that single, glorious rush of long-awaited air fill my lungs.
And then the stench hit me.
I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled a dead body. I certainly hadn’t. I’ve been in a lot of weird situations but I had never had my face squeezed into the polo shirt of a corpse until that moment. It smells exactly the way you would expect it to. Rotting meat is all pretty much the same. We aren’t that different from cows, ultimately.
	I gagged and coughed, and I pulled away to get my first good look at my his face and lifeless eyes looked back at me. Jagged, gangrenous scraps of flesh lined the space where his bottom jaw was supposed to be, and in its place were a pair of tar-black pincers.
	“If your breakfast is cold, you’re still eating it.”
	When he spoke, his head flopped around and his body flailed like a Muppets character. His movements were unnatural and jerky like a marionette, and his voice had no source.
	I screamed as loud as I could. I braced myself and threw out my arms and dared God to call in a noise complaint on my ass, and screamed bloody murder.
	But I didn’t hear a scream. I heard my own, seven year old voice, speaking defeatedly to his totally normal and not dead Grampa..
	“I told you I was coming! Geesh!”
	“Get a move on, then!” he said with a chuckle.

	The following is a dramatized retelling of the neural conversation between my brain and the rest of my body parts at that moment. I sincerely hope it lends itself positively to your reading experience.

	“Nope. No fucking way am I doing that,” said Brain, “Fuck that shit until it dies.”
	“Orders, sir?” said Bladder, obediently.
	“Drain ballast!” said Brain.
	“Sir, yes sir!”
	“Now that that’s out of the way, Legs, I need you to turn us around and sprint towards the window. Arms will shield Face from the glass and then we’ll jump to safety. Do you copy?”
	Radio static.
	“Legs, status report!”
	Krrsshh. “Fuck you, sir!” said Legs.
	“Excuse me?” said Brain.
	Static.
	“Legs! What are you doing?”
	End of transmission.

	Despite my earnest desire to not see Grandma the way I was looking at my grandpa right then, I dutifully trotted out into the hallway and down the stairs leading to the dining room. It’s like I was spectating from inside my own head but had no say in what was going on.
	Photographs lining the stairwell depicted every member of my family, each one dead and rotting with the giant head of a centipede forced through a gaping hole in their neck. Everybody except me. There was little Alex, learning how to ride a bike from Uncle Monsterthroat. Here’s one of him with Aunt Zombiepuppet after he graduated kindergarten! I remembered the original images well and the bastardization was almost as disturbing as seeing Grampa hopping down the stairs without bending his knees.
	As I rounded into the foyer I saw Grandma and my heart smashed through the floor beneath my feet.. She was just as dead as Grampa and I know I expected it but actually seeing it was something else entirely. She was in Grampa’s office, playing solitaire on his computer, cigarette pinched between the mandibles of the abomination inside of her.
	I cried, but the sounds were replaced before they even left my lungs.
	“Morning Gramma!”
	“Uh huh.” Centipede Grandma needs her coffee too, I guess.
	Thankfully whatever otherworldly script I was following didn’t include me hugging my deceased grandmother, so I walked onward to the kitchen where I found an omelet waiting for me. Here in the South, most folk can’t shut up about their Mamaw’s biscuits and gravy, or grits, or whatever, but Gramma McGowan made the hell out of an omelet. What I saw was identical to one of her masterpieces but I wasn’t stupid enough to eat it.
	Unfortunately, my arms chose that moment to join the mutiny against Captain Brain, and I picked up the plate and carried it to the living room. I sat down, grabbed the remote, and turned on the television. You know damn well the Power Rangers had throat centipedes. I brought a bite of omelet to my lips and after one last futile attempt to resist, I popped it into my mouth.
	“This is some good shit, huh?”
	I turned, startled, to see a fully grown, centipede-free Tom sitting on the couch next to me.