Chapter 24

24

Abraham Lincoln Panim went home after the incident with Brandon and Ariel, still not sure about what to do at school.

He took out his key, opened the door to the house, and made a bee line directly to his bedroom. He prepared for bed, and crawled into it. With the lights off, he was still able to see a framed picture of a smiling Mrs. Stottle that he had on the desk in his room.

“If Mrs. Stottle was still around, what would she tell me to do?” he thought, as he finally dozed off.

He had a rough night, the worst that he could ever remember. He tossed and turned and had visions of Brandon and Ariel jumping back and forth in his nightmares.

He heard the taunts from Brandon--“rat-faced boy” and “Eddie Munster”--constantly in his nightmares, and he tossed and turned all night.

He also saw bright lights as he slept, going off and on constantly, and loud noises, not lightning and thunder but something bright and very loud, hurting both his closed eyes and ears.

And Abraham Lincoln Panim also saw himself with his rat face and without his rat face, as both images flashed off and on during the intensity of the nightmare.

The intensity of his nightmare was so much that night that he ended up falling out of the bed onto the floor.

He woke up, lying on the floor, and in the pitch black of night, he felt he needed to go to the bathroom and put cold water on his face. He went to the bathroom with the lights out, reached out for the faucet, put on the cold water, and cupped his hands so that he could gather water, which he threw on his face.

Abraham Lincoln Panim felt the cool water on his face, and then decided to take a drink of the cool water to try to further calm himself down. He reached for the cup dispenser on the wall, pulled out a cup from its bottom, and filled up the cup with water.

He took a drink of the cool water, stood there for a moment, and then dropped the cup where he thought the trash can was. He heard the cup hit the floor.

He bent down to pick it up, but could not find it, so he stood up, turned on the light, found the cup and put it in the trash can.

He stood up, intending to put more cold water on his face. He turned on the faucet, cupped some water in his hands, splashed it on his face, and looked in the mirror to see how he looked after another splash of water.

He looked, was ready to walk away, but did a double take, and looked in the mirror again.

He stared into the mirror for a couple of seconds and saw his face. It was rid of any semblance of his former rat face. His nose was smaller, there were no whiskers coming out of the sides of his lip, and his mouth and teeth were straight and normal.

He peeled away the top of his pajamas, and saw that there was on hair at all where it had been before.

Abraham Lincoln Panim continued to stare into the mirror, looking at his new countenance with astonishment.

“This has got to be part of a nightmare,” he thought to himself. “This isn’t me. This can’t be me.”

He continued to stare into the mirror, shook his head a few times, and then went to bed.

“Let me get through this nightmare,” he thought to himself, and then went into a deep sleep.

As opposed to his initial sleep that evening, this one was a calm one, a good one, a restful one.