Free Styx by Bavo Dhooge

himself in the mirror, his heart stood still.
    â€œJesus God!”
    What the fuck was wrong with him? His healthy complexion had taken on a greenish tint, the color of withered weeds. His pupils were unnaturally large, like a cat’s, but the whites of his eyes had gone yellow and were crisscrossed with ominous red veins.
    Styx had spent an unusual amount of time examining himself in mirrors these last few months. Ever since he turned forty, there was always something new to worry about. A wrinkle here, a liver spot there. And his eyes seemed to be receding into his skull. But the years, he felt, were adding character to his face. Some men were lucky that way, and he was apparently one of them.
    But now, in the middle of the night in the station lavatory, Raphael Styx couldn’t believe what he saw.
    It didn’t make any sense. The dark circles ringing his eyes, the red and purple sores, the bruises, the scar tissue. His lips were black, like some Gothic rock star. He grimaced at the mirror and saw that his teeth were yellow and plastered with patches of dried blood.
    This is insane , he thought.
    He rinsed his mouth, but couldn’t get rid of the gunk. It was baked on, ineradicable.
    He backed away from the mirror in horror, and now, beneath thebright artificial lights, got his first clear look at the rest of himself. There was blood all over his shirt, his jacket, his pants.
    Okay, so not blanks , he thought.
    He tried to unbutton his shirt—no simple task, since he found that he had little control of his fingers. They were unsteady, almost impossible to manage. Like his shoulder.
    At last he ripped the shirt open, and his breath caught in his throat.
    The wounds.
    Real bullet wounds. He saw the holes where the three shots had hit him. Stomach, chest, and heart.
    I just wanna know if you need us to get you to the hops—the hospital.
    Styx touched the gaping wounds with trembling fingers.
    I thought something awful must have happened to you .
    He half closed his eyes against the monstrousness of what he was about to do and pushed the tip of his index finger into one of the holes. He could feel his finger slide deep inside his body.
    I’m sorry, Dad. I thought you were dead.
    He pulled his finger free. It made a sickening sucking sound as it emerged from his body. The bullets must still be inside him, he realized. What the fuck was going on? Was he somehow immune to hot lead, like some people were immune to AIDS?
    This is nuts. I must be dreaming.
    He looked at his wristwatch. It was 2:13 AM . He unclasped it from his wrist so he could wash his arm, but stood there watching the seconds tick by.
    Tick, tick, tick . . .
    His shoulder spasmed. Another kind of tic , he thought.
    He laughed hysterically.
    He didn’t want to believe what he was thinking, but knew there was a way to find out for sure.
    He pressed the index and middle fingers of his right hand to his left wrist and held them there.
    â€œCome on,” he urged himself. “Come on !”
    It always took a while to find it. He was never sure exactly where he was supposed to feel it.
    He moved his fingers side to side, up and down the inside of his wrist.
    Nothing.
    Absolutely nothing.
    At the police academy they’d made the recruits check their pulses every day—after every twelve-minute Cooper test, after each scuba lesson, during the damn first-aid lectures—but he never did get the hang of it.
    â€œCome on , dammit!”
    He let go of his wrist and pressed his fingertips to the side of his neck, feeling for the external carotid artery.
    Nothing.
    There had to be something , dammit. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here. Where the fuck was his pulse?
    He still had a heart, didn’t he? After all, he’d taken a bullet to it!
    And then he realized what that meant, what it implied, and his wristwatch slipped from his fingers and fell into the sink.
    His legs gave out from under him and, for the