Dreams

by Wesley McBride

  He could see his door open again. This time with purpose, it seemed. Someone had surely been inside his place. He thought about the garage. What he could use if someone were still inside. 1-5-0-5. The light flickering on and the garage door opening slowly, slower than normal, then stopping altogether about 5 feet up. No time. He ducked into the room, past his truck, past the bent piece of gutter and to the bench. He picked up the yellow plastic that had the thin rusted metal revealing itself from the end. He twisted the knob to force more of the blade out but it had become rusted into place after neglect and carelessness. Ducking back under the door, he made his way to the window. No sign of anyone, just a red light on his laptop. He tried to remember if he had closed the door that morning. He had slammed it he thought. He was sure of it. Now it was wide-open, inviting, waiting for him. He made his way to the stairs. There was ash in the doorway spreading itself out a few feet into the place. No footsteps. He strained to see inside. He thought about the events earlier in the afternoon. He could have sworn he had slammed the door but never thought to make sure it was properly closed. Now, looking in with the dim help of the flickering light outside, he was no longer sure of himself. He didn’t turn on the light. Slowly, he positioned himself inside the living room so that he could see into his bedroom and the bathroom. There was no one there. Around the corner. The kitchen was empty. Nowhere to hide. He looked into the bathroom again down the hall. The curtain was still draped over the top of the rod as he had left it in the morning. His towel still on the floor concealing a bloody rag and bloody tensor underneath. He walked to his bedroom. Like he had the day before, he dropped to his knees outside of the room in case someone should be under the bed. A shoebox, some sandals, some dirt. Closet still open. He rose and went back to the door, pulling out his cigarettes as he went. He sat on the crumbling step and lit his lighter. A puff of sour smoke entered his lungs as the filter caught fire in a burst of green. He tried to spit the cigarette out but the paper stuck on his lip just enough to dangle helplessly before falling onto his lap. He swatted it away, throwing his pink lighter as he did, several feet away and directly in front of the large one-eyed rat. Startled by the appearance of his companion, he bounced. What in the fuck? The rat calmly smelled the cigarette before turning his attention to the lighter that had surrounded itself in the ash, then back to the cigarette. He watched. The rat didn’t recoil from the smoke rising into its face. Instead it stayed, smelling the burnt cotton cylinder as it smouldered, the last wisp floating into his sole red eye. Slowly, he picked up a small chunk of concrete that had come loose from the step. Carefully, he took aim at the rat and threw. The chunk glanced of off the pavement bouncing through the ash, taking some speed off of it, and over the rat. It tripped a bit, attempting to get its footing after the surprise, before running down the alley, past the homeless man from the evening before, sitting in the same spot, a little dirtier, a little ashier, than the previous night. He didn’t know why he had done that. He was angry at the events of the day, at his father, at himself, but not the rat. The rat was just a rat, had nothing consequential about it, and yet he found himself hating the rat as well. He went to the garage door and tried to pull it closed. The motor above had quit and he couldn’t pull it down manually. Frustrated. He left the door open, light on outside. He approached the homeless man, still wearing the same flannel and sweater and coat. Still wearing the shoes that were the same as his. Face dirtier than the day before. He looked gaunter, his eyes more sunken somehow. Darker. Yet strangely familiar. Recognizable eyes.

  Hey, weird question, have you been here all day? Like since around three or so?

  I don’t generally keep the time young man, he said looking down at his bare wrist.

  Sure, kay, did you see anyone go in there? he said pointing to the door.

  A woman came by here earlier.

  Did she go inside?

  I don’t know.

  You don’t know?

  I don’t know.

  Cool. Fuck, thanks, he said sarcastically.

  She was crying.

  What?

  The old woman. She looked sad. She was crying when she left. Got a cigarette?

  She was an old crying woman?

  Older. You got a cigarette on you?

  No, he lied.

  He turned and walked back to his door. As he did, he saw his footprints, looping around the front of the garage and into the apartment, and a second set, a set he hadn’t noticed before, more visible at first then gradually fading from view as he neared the door. Filled in with ash, he thought. The ash that still stung his eyes. Someone had been there.

  He poured warm water from his bathroom faucet into a large bowl that had previously held popcorn and hadn’t been cleaned, and brought it to the living room, pushing the coffee table out of the way with his foot and placing the bowl on the floor. He turned the television on but turned his attention to his foot. Blood had seeped through both layers of sock during his walk during the day and had stained the bottom of both socks maroon. He peeled them off of his foot simultaneously, careful to pry from the bottom and pull down rather than pulling from the tip, revealing the wound. It had tried to heal during the night it seemed but tore back open during the day. Freshly dabbed and mottled blood framed by a dark, almost black attempt to repair itself. He dipped his foot in the water, immersed. It stung, but he kept it there as the pain melted away and became soothing. The news was on again. He grabbed the remote. Sports. A movie from 1985 that he would enjoy if he actually watched it. People arguing on a beach on a channel that used to play music. History of the North African campaigns of the Second World War. He left it there. He reached into the bowl and cradled some water out, splashing it on his face and down his shirt. He looked at his phone again.

  Listen you should call me, okie?

  He thought for a while. He hadn’t seen a friendly text come from this number in years. Not a sincere one. He wondered whether or not this text was truly friendly or feigned and phony. He texted. Talking to her always reminded him of his son and so he stopped. He thought of his son now. The car accident. He would be a few months away from going to high school now. He couldn’t actually remember the accident itself. Only waking up in the hospital. Waking up and being told the news. Being told the news by an angry wife and family. Being told it was all his fault before she stomped out of the room. They were divorced a few months later. And he had been here ever since.

  What do you want? I’m home now if you want to call.

  He sat, awaiting a reply, watching the Desert Fox himself pushing into Egypt.

  He laid on the floor, struggling to breath. He couldn’t remember why. He had managed to open and close the door before falling into a slimy puddle. It was still cold. It felt nice on his face. It smelled awful in the alley. He was hot. Where am I? He tried to look around but his eyes were blurred with tears and instability. He was being watched. He couldn’t see but he could feel. He looked up. Shapes. No not blurry. Smokey? He had an audience. More than one, led by the largest. He pushed himself to his hands and knees and started to crawl. He could feel the hand on his ankle, clawing, burning, trying to hold him in place, losing its grasp but still content now just following him, watching him, judging him. Howling. Not human. No not human. Something worse. Something angry with him. It wanted to show him something he was sure he did not want to see. Something much worse. No. Not human. You’re not real. You can’t be real.

  He woke up, hot, sweating, struggling to breath. It was black. Where am I, he thought, briefly. He could see a faint outline of the door. He thought he could see the TV flicker but was unable to lift his head to see. He wasn’t alone he thought. What is that? Something stood in his living room, staring at him through the doorway. He tried to cry out, to yell at it. He couldn’t. Please leave me alone. Please leave. The thing came closer, watching him. It had no eyes but it could see, no form yet visible. Coming towards him but not on legs. He struggled. He struggled to move, to roll over. He struggled to
sit up, to get away from this thing. Get up! His hand moved. He blinked. He tried to yell out again, lips moving but no words. Nervousness and dread. His legs twitched. Slowly coming closer, past the frame and nearing the end of the bed. He tried to shake his head. No. Breathing heavier now, heavier still, panicked, eyes not moving from the thing though unable to make it out. A murmur escaped, faint. It moved like fog, like smoke. No eyes, pits. No mouth. Just anger. His head began to rock back and forth. His fingers moved. His knees and legs tensed lightly.

  Go, he whispered.

  Now hovering above him.

  Go, he said.

  The fog moved closer to his face still. The shadow.

  Go, he yelled. Go! He sat up in bed. Go!

  Staring at the doorway, he realized he was alone, realized what had happened. It was the same as before, same as dozens of times, yet different. They called them night terrors. Sleep paralysis. Normally, a woman. A witch. She would pay him a visit every couple of months, just to watch him, to scare him. And he would lay paralyzed. Unable to yell out. And she would sit upon his chest and squeeze him. Pushing on his lungs until he thought he would suffocate before pulling her long finger tips out of his chest and allowing him to breath, to yell at her, to make her leave and then simply fade out, never there to begin and leaving him unable and unwanting to return to sleep. This was different. He got up and went to the living room, to the window. He couldn’t remember going to bed. His garage door was still open. He pulled on a set of pyjama pants, the blue ones he had a received from his sister on his birthday 6 months ago, and the slippers that unintentionally matched. Smoke lit. His door was closed now tightly. He jerked on the handle. It didn’t move. He tried again, frustrated. A groan but no movement. He punched the door now, and again harder. Breath. Don’t lose it. He lifted up on the brass as he turned the knob and pulled. It opened. The ashes that had rained during the day had stopped. Maybe the wind changed direction, he thought though he couldn’t feel any wind. He could still see his footsteps from the day before, grinding the grey ash into heavy black smudges on the step, in front of the garage. No sign of the other footsteps. He saw that ash had made its way into the garage peppering the brown floor. He walked back into the house and into the kitchen, pulled the broom from behind the green newspaper box, then stopped. He went to his fridge. He hadn’t eaten more than a few bites over two days though he wasn’t hungry. He noticed what appeared to be red sauce on the handle then came to see it as more blood, somehow climbing up from his foot or down from his face. Opening the fridge, he saw condiments. Ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, barbecue sauce. He saw pickles and olives and expired milk and ginger ale he had bought a month ago to mix his whiskey with but never using it. He saw bread. He pulled the loaf out and put his slices in the burned toaster. He went back to the door and outside to the garage. 1-5-0-5. Still nothing. He tried to pull the door down. Nothing but the sound of metal scraping against metal as the chain to the motor strained under his weight. He pushed upwards. It moved. He shoved upwards now, sure to fling the door completely open. It remained slightly closed. He pushed it with the broom to the level of the frame. He looked at the ground in front of him and began to sweep, sure to use a light touch, pulling the ash towards him with purposeful strokes, starting from the right. A few feet in he saw it. A stain in front of the truck. He didn’t remember why the stain was there, or why it was important, but somehow he knew he would find it there as if whispering to him, whispering a secret. Soap? It had dried with the appearance of being wet. Glossy, yet bubbled. Light green. Had he seen the stain in his dream he thought. Or maybe he had simply saw it the day before. He couldn’t remember the dream. Only that he was scared. He stared at it for a time, unsure why, before turning back towards the door. He wondered if the homeless man still sat in the alley. When he returned to the kitchen, his toast was complete. In the dark, he reached for a knife but settled on a spoon and went about smearing the butter that sat on his counter. He wondered if the rat had gotten into it. He took a bite of one of the pieces. He coughed. Dusty and sour. He groped the darkness above his head and found the chain. Mold. The bread was blue, spotted, visible beneath the colour of the toasting, shiny with butter. He coughed again, spitting into the sink. He took the same glass he had used two days prior, filled it from the faucet, and drank, repeating the process. He sighed now, standing over moldy toast that lay accusingly on his counter. He picked it up and threw it against the wall in one movement. It dropped pathetically to the table. He opened the fridge. Examining, he saw it now, he hadn’t noticed before, but he saw it now. Saucers of green and blue and white scattered amongst the bottles. Pickles blackened. Milk scum dried onto the side of the plastic. He felt the rack. Warm. The smell of rot hitting him now. The same smell. He opened the freezer. A bottle he forgot was there. He placed his hand against it. Warm. Almost hot. He removed the bottle from the freezer and closed the doors, turning his back to them. Pulling the chain again, he let himself slide down and onto the floor, pushed his hands against his face, and began to cry. Outside, the light above the garage door flickered briefly then died.

  There was a gas station about ten blocks away, he thought. He had spent the rest of the early morning on the kitchen floor, awake, slowly sipping from the bottle he had found but he didn’t feel intoxicated. He felt tired. The sun burned through the window and the ash that dusted it. It felt hot on his face. He hated it but had refused to move, something he could control, just closed his eyes and allowed a few dim rays to filter through his eyelids. He had things to do today that he didn’t want to. He checked his phone. Three missed calls last night from a familiar number and one text.

  Sorry I was busy.

  He hadn’t heard it ring. He had expected a message from his mother but no. He typed.

  I’m sorry I missed you yesterday. Call me.

  He hadn’t showered, instead wiping his face and neck and arms and genitals with a dish rag before changing his clothes and putting on a hat. He sat on the bed for a while. His foot, triple socked this time, throbbed worse than before, as did his face. He had refused to look in a mirror, to look at the cut and his eye. He didn’t care about that. Brace yourself. You got this. He counted while he felt his pockets, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and headed out of his bedroom. He looked at his shoes resting by the crease in the slightly open door. Ashes. He forced them onto his feet. Laces tied. He struggled with both, smudging the ashes. He thought for a moment they looked like the bums shoes. Funny. When he left he didn’t bother slamming the door. The ash was thicker now. He wondered again how close the fire must be. How hot. Ducking under the door that he didn’t need to duck under, he went to the back of the truck and loosened the cord he had tightened himself years ago, when he lived in the countryside, from the small jerry can in the back of the truck. He ducked again. He saw that the stain had been covered by ash again. Footprints gone. He walked. That smell of something burning was back. Not wood. He gagged a little imperceptibly.

  As he turned the corner down the street he felt a blast. A furnace. Stifling. His alley must have kept the wind out he thought. He briefly closed his eyes to shield them from the wind. He didn’t notice the swirling mass of heat and ash whipping down the sidewalk towards him until it hit him, danced around him briefly, furiously, then died as quickly as it had been born. He coughed.

  Fuck off, he whispered, to nothing.

  The street was deserted. He didn’t mind that today. He had no desire to see faces today, even those of strangers, let alone those he knew. He wasn’t feeling the effects of the alcohol still yet had an anxiousness about him he hadn’t felt in years. Impending. No, something looming. He began to walk faster. Anything to quicken the trip and get the day over with as soon as possible, to be alone again. To be able to hide.

  The cashier hadn’t been particularly nice. Of course, he thought, I must look like shit. The little can of gasoline was heavy. He wondered how hot the air would have to be to ignite it, to cause it to burst in his hands. He turned into the alley. The
bricks gave him a small breather from the heat. Breath. As he walked he saw that the bum didn’t sit there this morning. He hadn’t thought about this when he left but now saw that the imprint of where he had been leaning against the brick the night before looked fresh. Did I not notice the man when I left? The wind should have filled in the indent by now, consumed it, but there it was, contoured and black between the random debris. He kept on, making sure to confirm the door to his place was still closed, and into the garage, not careful to strap the can back down after he filled the truck, throwing it into the back. He got in. After a few tries the engine caught and vibrated. He looked up and bent the mirror towards his face. He studied. The scratch on his cheek had turned into a cut overnight, still being attacked on all sides by black scab but not healing. His eyes were immersed in dark pools, especially the right. Redness painted his face in splotches. He thought he looked older than ever. He felt like this often after a session of drink that lasted a few days. He told himself this will all pass. He told himself it wouldn’t pass soon enough. Couldn’t pass soon enough. To his right, on the floor, a green bottle rolled and shifted as he pulled into the alley. Reflexively, he reached behind him and opened the window to the box of the truck and dropped the bottle through it. It shattered.