Clouded Rainbow by Jonathan Sturak Read Free Book Online Page A

ran through the pain, turned down a hallway, and then hid inside a room. He wanted nothing more than to go home, to go to a safe place to solve the questions that hung over him. But Roger realized that just like his phone number, the phone number to safety, he didn’t even remember his address.
    Roger watched from inside the room as the men passed. The threat was averted. As he turned to exit the room, a strange man startled him. Roger recognized that the man resembled himself, but he had cuts and bruises on his grubby face and wore a tight bandage around his head. Then, Roger realized the man was actually reflecting back from a mirror; he was seeing the image of himself.
    “What happened to you?” he asked the stranger staring at him.
    Roger looked deep into the man’s hazel eyes. He longed to find the lost memory that held his home address. His mind throbbed with pain, but Roger kept trying, kept focusing. And then like a ray of light penetrating a black cloud, Roger blinked.
    “Dietrich Road,” he whispered.
    Roger grabbed a pen from a table nearby and scribbled the two words on his wrist. He tried to remember the street number, but numbers appeared to be the most damaged in his mind.
    With an ounce of hope, Roger looked around the dark room and noticed a figure lying in the bed. He sneaked around the curtain and saw an elderly man asleep and unaware of the intrusion. Roger looked down at the blue gown covering his aching body, and then shifted his eyes to a pile of perfectly folded clothes on a chair nearby. The simple sight made him suddenly strive for Lois. She sometimes laid out an outfit for him in the morning on a chair if he was running late and in the shower. He wished it were one of those mornings.
    Roger began to disrobe the blue gown and felt the cool air against his naked body. It felt purifying and tickled his sensitive skin. He took a second to glance down at his exposed penis, which was his cue to dress rapidly. Roger grabbed the dark-colored pants and slid them on his legs through the pain. He noticed his right leg involuntarily twitched as he raised it, and concluded it must have been a result of his affliction. He grabbed the light-colored dress shirt and began to button it up, as he did every morning before work. Roger finished and instinctively tucked the shirt into the pants, giving a sense of neatness to the outfit. He slid into a pair of loafers that were under the chair. Luckily, the shoes were a perfect fit. Roger took a step into the brighter light cast from the hallway, and then stopped cold. His attention focused on the pants, which were riding up several inches to his ankles. Roger peered at the man lying horizontally in the bed and tried to assess his height. Even though Roger was a few inches taller than average, those inches rested in his torso. He noticed a photograph propped on the bedside table. It showed the elderly man wearing a vivacious smile as he gripped a similarly aged woman close to his side. The couple looked happy and peaceful, enjoying a moment together that would forever be captured in the snapshot. Roger looked at the man’s now bewildered face, which was pale and unresponsive.
    What happened? Roger thought. He realized his intention in looking at the photograph was to find out the man’s height. He noticed the man was comically shorter than the woman; he reasoned that either she was unnaturally tall or he was unusually short. Roger looked down at the high-water pants and knew the latter was the hand to bet.
    The stranger in the mirror stopped Roger again, as he took a moment to fix his shirt. Roger performed an unconscious polish to his collar whenever he saw a mirror, an instinct ingrained in him from years in the business world. Roger studied his weary face as he grabbed the head bandage and threw it aside. He knew it had to go, as it was a sure sign of his jailbreak. With the problem of appearance mostly solved, Roger was ready to embark on the next stage of his