On/Off - A Jekyll and Hyde Story

by Mike Attebery

  “Phew. What is that?

  “That’s a secret,” Kelli laughed. “I’ll tell you when I see you. Try not to drink it all before I get there.”

  Jamie again lifted the flask to his nose, drawing in another warm breath. He cocked his head at an angle as he took a whiff. Then his eyes moved to the doorway, and a shiver ran up his spine. He saw something, ever so briefly.

  “Jamie?” Kelli asked.

  His jaw dropped.

  “Jamie-”

  “Yeah?” he asked sharply.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Is everything ok? He thought. He wasn’t sure.

  “Jamie?”

  He turned back to the phone. “Sorry,” he answered. “I thought I saw something.”

  “What?” she asked again.

  “Some sort of déjà vu.”

  Or a ghost…

  That’s what he’d seen. Just for a second. A flash. The corner of a face, and a winking eye, but a familiar one.

  Jeff.

  He had distinctly seen his father peaking around the corner at him.

  “I don’t follow,” Kelli said.

  Jamie stood and walked to the door. He peered around the corner and down the hall.

  “Is this thing filled with absinthe?” he asked.

  “I’m not telling,” Kelli replied.

  The hall was empty.

  “Think I must be getting hungry,” he continued as he turned and walked back to his bed. He slumped on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Do you like your present?”

  He stared into space, looked up at the ceiling, just as he had so many months earlier as his body had shaken uncontrollably.

  “I love it,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

  ***

  Christmas came and went. Red wine, family, and food. For the first time in years, Jamie celebrated the holidays in full health. Yet, he spent each hour thinking about Kelli. He needed to be with her again. On his last night at home, he felt a tingling sensation in the back of his head, at the base of his skull. That night, he dreamt he was his father. The dark clouds swirled in his head as he stood over the cold, black water, stepped off into oblivion, and sank to the bottom alone.

  III

  CHAPTER TEN

  By December twenty-eighth, Jamie was ready to go back to the dorms. Kelli wouldn’t be back for another day, but he liked the idea of having time to settle in and relax, entirely alone. He’d be away from the house. Away from his father’s papers, which he’d had to forcibly stop himself from rifling through again. He could go to the dorms, hunker down in the empty space, and give himself some time to wander the caverns of his mind.

  Was it bad that he looked forward to being alone? A bit too Jeff Pepper-like perhaps? Maybe so, but for all the similarities to his father that he liked to believe he possessed, dark, brooding unhappiness wasn’t one of them. Even at the lowest point, when he’d been bedridden and shaking like a drug withdrawal patient, Jamie had never lost his determined, hard-nosed streak of optimism, something that Jeff had never had. He was too young to think he’d hit the end, he was too… different. The time in the dorms would be good for him. No distractions. No fucking around. Not yet anyways. He’d go for some runs, he’d focus on his artwork, and he'd have some time to hear himself think.

  What he hadn’t stopped to ponder was whether the campus would even be accessible during the holiday break. When Lynn pulled up to the main drive, Jamie suddenly realized that no one was planning to be around any time soon. The roads that looped around the RIT campus were completely unplowed. Nothing but long stretches of deep, thick snow stretched from the main road to the brick buildings off in the distance. It was just as they were pulling up to the edge of campus that a new storm began moving in. It started with a couple of flakes, which swirled down out of the gray in a Charlie Brown Christmas-manner, loop-di-looping lackadaisically in the air around Jamie’s head. Then the flakes started coming down faster, picking up speed as they grew in number.

  Lynn looked up at the sky, then gave him a skeptical look. “You sure about this?”

  Jamie nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You think you can get in?!”

  He looked towards the buildings again. “Not a problem. I’ve got keys.”

  Lynn sighed. “Okay. If you change your mind about this, call me.”

  “I will.”

  He got out of the car, walked around to the trunk, and pulled out his travel bag, which he slung over his shoulder. Lynn rolled down the driver’s side window.

  “Happy New Year.”

  “Happy New Year!”

  Then a pause.

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  Lynn put the car in gear and drove away, leaving Jamie at the end of the unplowed road. He stood for a moment, utterly still, staring out across the fields of snow. Ice crystals crackled on the ground and in the air around him. There was no wind. No air practically. Just the falling flakes, and him, alone in the biting cold. He started walking, watching the buildings’ red brick faces rise up ahead of him. There were three main dorm towers on the campus, each with a dozen or so floors of rooms. Then there were the dorms for the NTID students, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Their building looked like the residential towers, only slightly taller, decked out with a complex series of strobe lights in each room, lights that functioned as both door “bells” and part of the building’s fire alarm system. Unfortunately, the NTID lights mostly served as an endless source of amusement for the more malevolent characters on campus, as well as the members of the Greek community at the University of Rochester across town, who found it riotously entertaining to make their way to the NTID building, set off the fire alarms, and watch the building light up like a Christmas tree as everyone inside went ape-shit. Having been woken just once by a false alarm in the middle of the night, Jamie could only imagine how aggravating nightly evacuations must be. Still, watching the systematic display of strobe lights flash-bulbing through the building was strangely hypnotic; he couldn’t deny that. His eyes scanned the windows of the NTID tower. Everything looked dark. For that matter, everything in the other buildings looked dark too. Were there people hiding in the other parts of the campus? Probably. Sort of creepy, but exciting to think about.

  The going was slow, and exhausting. The snow was several feet high now, and it creeped down the tops of his boots as he trudged toward the buildings. His jeans quickly became soaked through as the snow clung to his pant legs and dissolved from his body heat.

  Was this really such a great idea?

  He climbed up the hillside along the side of the road, cutting through the residential parking lots as he headed for the building. The snow was coming down faster now, the sound of the wind adding its own gothic touch. Jamie looked up at the buildings overhead; their sharps angles towered over him now. Snow on the rooftop roared over the edge of the building, swooping down towards him and shooting off across the fields. Jamie pulled down his ski cap and lowered his head now as he made his way down the steps to the outside of the door. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the keys Fritz has slipped into his hand a week earlier.

  “Don’t let anyone know about these,” he’d said.

  Had anyone else on campus finagled the same deal? Probably. At this moment, in each of these massive buildings, there were probably a dozen couples huddled up in their rooms, fucking the hours away in the cozy, private warmth of the empty dormitories.

  Jamie turned the key in the icy lock. The frozen metals of the bolt and the door frame let out a hollow click. He shuffled into the foyer. The heat was on. Thank God. Jamie unzipped his coat as the warm air swirled around him. It was surprisingly hot inside. The school must keep the heat cranked when no one’s around to prevent a frozen pipe or a burst sprinkler line. Half the ceiling lights were off, every other panel, casting the halls in a striped pattern that receded down the corridor and into blackness at the end. Was there anybody else in t
he building? Again, kind of creepy to ponder. He headed upstairs to his dorm room, where he pushed the door open and reached inside to flip on the light. Everything looked the same. What was he expecting, that Kelli might surprise him by coming back early and spreading out naked in his bed?

  Maybe.

  He shut the door behind him, instinctively flipping the lock with his thumb as he threw his jacket and backpack on the bed, pulled off the ski cap, and scratched at the scars on his head with a gloved hand; they were itchy and clammy from the weather. He kneaded the skin, enjoying the pressure on the thick scar tissue.

  Unpacking was a cinch. He slipped a few clean shirts and pants into the dresser drawers, tossed his rolled up socks into a bucket in the corner, and set out his bottles of pills, one by one, along the back edge of the dresser top.

  Jamie let out a long sigh.

  How best to kill the better part of the next day?

  He walked over, fell backwards onto the bed, and lay staring up at the ceiling. His eyes grew heavy, the lids swelling - sleep and fatigue pushing together over his eyes.

  He shifted his body on the bed. Arms and legs oozed into the mattress. Head floated. The light flickered. Then he was asleep, a deep sleep, the sleep of a drunk man, collapsed in a snowbank as the storms swept in and buried him from view. Jamie pulled the blankets up around him, drew his knees up to his chest, and drifted out of the world as the wind whistled outside his window, and the snow fell. Faster. And faster.

  ~

  “It looks like I’m snowed in here.”

  Jamie lay on his bed, his socked feet resting on the rounded metal edge of the radiator.

  “I am too,” Kelli’s voice came through the phone receiver. “This morning’s train north was delayed indefinitely.”

  “Think you can get out of there tomorrow?” Jamie asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “Me too.”

  “What have you been doing with yourself there? Or don’t I want to know? You going crazy?”

  “No Jack Torrance symptoms yet. Getting a little itchy to exercise though. Kinda creepy in the building with no one here.”

  “I can imagine! What are you doing for food?”

  “The vending machines are all working. Been eating some Ramen I brought from home and getting snacks from the vending machines in C wing.”

  “It must be kind of cool though, right?” Kelli asked. “I always wanted to get snowed in at school when I was a kid.”

  “At school?!”

  “Yeah, you know, when everyone was younger and nice to each other. Not middle school or anything.”

  “I suppose. High school would have been fun, assuming all the hot girls were there and their boyfriends were trapped outside.”

  Jamie raised his legs up toward the ceiling, twisting his back. He groaned.

  “Yeah,” Kelli said. “I really don’t want to know what you’re up to right now.”

  “What? I’m just stretching. My body’s getting stiff.”

  Kelli laughed again, softly.

  The air rumbled as a flurry of snow pummeled the window. The building’s brick walls seemed to tense up around him, like a canvas sail fighting to stay in place.

  “It’s really blowing out there.” Jamie hesitated. “ I really hope you’re here by New Year’s or this is gonna suck.”

  “It already does.”

  Jamie stood and paced the room. He stretched his arms as he peered out the window at a wall of white. The fields were smothered in snow. Earlier in the day, a couple of plows had been coming around each hour, trying their best to get a foothold in the ever-increasing accumulations on the loops and roadways around the campus. Now they’d both stopped rolling past. Probably snowed out.

  This was a crazy storm.

  Jamie leaned his head against the glass, looking down at the sidewalks leading up to the tower.

  “No footprints.”

  “What was that, babe?” Kelli asked.

  “Sorry, I was looking for footprints around campus. Nothing.”

  “Hoping to find a hot chicky hiding out there with you?”

  “Hardly. Just hoping my hot chicky can make it up here on the train tomorrow.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  Jamie’s feet were restless. He arched up on his toes, then rolled back on his heels and squatted, feeling the muscles in his legs stretching and pulling. He sighed again.

  “Stop that.”

  “I’m stretching. I need to get some exercise. Didn’t think I’d be stuck here, unable to get outside and run.”

  “Then run inside. There’s no one there, might as well take advantage of it. Get the energy out of your system.”

  “That’s actually not a bad idea,” Jamie answered.

  “Take care of yourself, baby. Don’t go crazy on me.”

  “I won’t,” Jamie answered. “Don’t worry about that. Don’t even joke.”

  ~

  “Don’t go crazy on me.”

  Why did that sentence keep flashing in his mind now? Of course he wouldn’t go crazy. Why would she even say that? Well, all right, family history, the whole snowed in thing, his health. Maybe sanity was something to worry about.

  Or maybe she was just joking. That was it, he knew, but the words kept surfacing in his thoughts as his arms and legs pumped up and down. Sweat streamed down his face, soaking through the front of his shirt and running down his abdomen. He could feel the wet fabric of his running clothes clinging to his skin, stretching and pulling, spattering sweat in a flurry of perspiration.

  Don’t go crazy. Don’t go crazy.

  He was ripping through the building now. He’d started on the first floor, sort of jogging down the long, darkened corridor at first, letting his feet and legs adjust to the carpeted concrete surface. Then he’d picked up speed, moving a bit faster. A bit smoother. The building was mostly warm, with just the slightest shiver of cold in the air - just enough to remind him that it was a couple dozen degrees below zero outside. He breathed in a chestful of air, then let it out in a steady wheeze, feeling his lungs come into sync with his movements.

  A little faster.

  He burst out in the front corridor, twisting on one leg and darting up the stairs to the second floor. Twisting again and racing down the next murky hallway. He'd done this through five floors of the building before working his way back down in reverse. Twice. Back down the fourth floor hallway, to the stairs, down another level, his knees coming up high, feet pattering over each step, then out on the third floor and away in a full stride. Halfway down the third floor hallway he stopped and started walking.

  He had to take a leak.

  This floor, like all the rest, was silent. No sounds of TV’s eaking out from the dorm rooms. No music. No couples. Only the sound of the wind outside, roaring over and through the empty campus.

  “Take care of yourself, baby.”

  Was he getting lonely?

  “Don’t go crazy on me.”

  He brought his hands to his hips, feeling the flare of his hip bones shifting under the surface his sweaty skin. He kneaded the tissue with his finger tips. His fingers slipped under the band of his running shorts, creeping towards the front of his lower abdomen, where the muscles tightened and flexed softly. He stopped in the hallways outside the bathroom door. His hands started to creep farther down than they ought to. Not that it mattered. The building was empty. If he wanted to pull off his shorts and run through the building like a wild banshee, he could. If he wanted to pull out the business and jerk off in the corridor, he could do that too. But it was neither of those things that was bothering him, or occurring to him, it was just the simple fact that he was alone, and had been, totally, not speaking or looking at another person in the flesh for almost two days. It was a strange feeling, the type of atmosphere in which widowers sit alone on the couch day after day, week after week, scratching at themselves, making a slow, endless loop through the staticy channels on an old TV set. It was the same atmosphere in whi
ch older women became fixated on their lawn boys, wandering out of the house in nightgowns and curlers, maybe some little fuzzy slippers, and nothing else, making honest-to-God attempts at seducing men twenty or thirty years their juniors. Craziness. Loneliness. The utter silence. The realization that nothing you do can, or will, be held against you. Cause hell, no one will be there to see it or care!

  Now that was a scary thought!

  Shut up Jamie. Just take a leak and get back to your run.

  He pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness, his heart crackling with cold as he turned in a blind half circle, feeling for the switch. He found it, flipped it, and watched green swirls of light appear at the ends of each fluorescent tube overhead as something sizzled inside them, then, hoooowhum, the room filled with a sickly yellow light. He blinked and looked around the tiled bathroom. Aside from some different scratch marks on the counter, and most likely, some subtle variations on ejaculating dick illustrations in the stalls, this bathroom was nearly identical to the one on the third floor. Jamie walked over to the urinals, pulling down the elastic band of his running shorts and adjusting himself for business as he stepped forward. He stared at the brick wall in front of him. Nothing written in the mortar between the painted concrete blocks; that was always another favorite place for guys to write shit like “For a good time call…” or “Too much Dick and Bush.” This bathroom on the other hand was remarkably graffiti-free. He let out a long sigh as he finished up, and was just tucking the goods away when he glanced to his left and saw a man, dressed entirely in black, standing off to the side staring at him.

  Jamie’s heart burped ice water as he jumped. Fuck. He looked away, then back again. Nothing. But he knew what he’d seen, the same thing he’d seen in his dream a month ago, right around the time he got so sick. The same guy. Same look. Dressed entirely in black, no clear face, no clear shape, like the edges were fuzzy, or continually shifting.