The world had to turn over that day. Literally, it could not have happened any other day. It had to be the day that he had a splitting headache, so powerful that he felt like someone was climbing up his spinal cord as if it were a high school gym rope, anchored to his brain and squeezing it through the tiny portal at the base of his skull. It was the agonizing pressure of trying to get through something it could not. Increasingly tight as if someone had strapped wrenches to his temples.
When gravity had reversed, he had only thought that his mental perception of the world had been skewed by his vexed brain. He was already seeing the lightning flashes of neural synapses desperate to escape their shrinking confines. It was only by chance that he had made it back to his shabby apartment before the flip; he had cut short his afternoon run by one mile in order to nurse his headache. Had he completed his run, he would have been out in the open and would have been flung into the blue furnace of the upper atmosphere at the flip.
But, as it was, he was laying on his ceiling, having narrowly escaped death by falling couch, and still trying to convince the fat kid to get off his spinal cord. It was only now that he understood why he had been wary about buying the ceiling with the prickly texture. He would probably have lung cancer after knocking all the mold spores free.
The fat kid was slowly losing weight, and his brain was feeling less and less taught. It was times like these that called for a scotch or a cold beer. He slowly stood, testing the ceiling’s stability with sock-covered toes.
He stepped over the now bottom-protruding door frame and entered the small kitchen, which had thrown-up its contents upon being turned upside down. Potato chips, beer cans, and canned food lay strewn about the ceiling, some split open and others only dented or crumpled. He picked up one of the dented beer cans and downed it in one gulp. And belched.
Upon taking down his precious scotch bottle (which had miraculously survived intact) and grabbing a slightly chipped glass, he walked back to his ceilinged living room. Flipping over an overturned couch, and righting his substandard television, he plopped down to watch sports on a grainy screen, his feet aching from walking on the ceiling.
The fat kid was back to tug at his brain.
