The hangover to end hangovers

You wake with your head throbbing and your bladder bursting. You roll off the bed and stagger into the bathroom, leaning against the wall as you piss for what seems like hours. Finally drained, you sigh in relief and stagger back to bed, sliding between the sheets and pulling the covers over your head to shut out the early morning light streaming through your windows.

Your head is really pounding, a dark dull pain that seems to tighten around your skull. You change position in bed, trying to find a way to lay that doesn't hurt, but it's no use. Blindly you reach a hand out to the night table, fumbling for the bottle of painkillers you always keep there for occasions like this. Your fingers can't find it, and frustrated and muttering curses, you toss the covers back and look. Nothing on the night table at all. Figuring you must have knocked them off when your staggered into bed you roll and lean over the edge of the bed to look at the floor, but once again find nothing.

Something nags at you. A tendril of unease starts in the depths of your brain and grows. Something is wrong.

You realize that as you're looking down to search for your painkillers you're staring at an old fashioned rag rug. Except there is no such rug beside your bed. Slowly you sit up and look around. The apartment looks similar to yours but all the furniture is different. None of your posters hang on the walls, the plant that Lillian gave you isn't sitting on the window sill. Nothing is familiar. You're in the wrong apartment.

You slide out of bed and look for your clothes, then remember you fell into bed wearing them last night. Right. You'll just grab your shoes and sneak out of whoever's place this is and...... If you went the bed in your clothes last night why are you wearing pajamas? You don't even own pajamas. But you're undoubtedly wearing a set of blue and white striped ones. You sit on the bed and put your face in your hands and try to think. You remember nothing after falling into bed drunk. You remember the scuffle between the woman and the man, and the parcel. You remember being knocked over and cracking your head on the sidewalk.

You touch the back of your head and find a tender spot that makes you wince. As you do your eyes are drawn to the floor near the apartment door. A parcel wrapped in brown paper lays there. Okay, so far so good. You staggered into the wrong apartment and some good Samaritan loaned you his pajamas and let you sleep it off. So where are they? The studio apartment leaves no place for anyone to hide.

And where are your clothes? You were wearing jeans and sneakers and a San Francisco Forty-Niners sweat shirt yesterday, but none of that is in sight. There's some clothes hung over the back of a straight chair but those definitely aren't yours. You don't own any suits, and that's definitely a suit.

You shake your head, trying to clear it. You really need some painkillers. Whoever's apartment this is must have some in the bathroom, you reason. Well if they were nice enough to loan you pajamas, they shouldn't begrudge you a couple of painkillers, you think as you get up and make your way back into the bathroom.

There's a wooden cabinet with shelves on the wall but no sign of any kind of pain medicine. The apartment dweller uses an old fashioned safety razor, you notice, even older looking than the one your remember your dad using. You shake your head ruefully, amused at the old fashioned habits some people keep, and turn to look elsewhere for pain medicine.

That turn puts you facing the sink, and therefore facing the mirror above it. You jump in shock and can't help but emit a yelp of surprise at what you see looking back at you.