This Time of Night

by Jon F. Merz

  He’d have to reconnect the phone line, though.

  And he’d need more bananas…

  The Man On Three

  This one is based on the tenant who lived on the third floor of the triple-decker house my wife and I moved into right after we got married. While he never fortunately materialized into the thing in this story, he was quite an odd-ball who eventually disappeared after Constables kept showing up and delivering various summons. We later found out he’d been involved in insurance scams, although nothing ever explained his unnatural love for keeping his heat turned up so high that it made every floor a sweltering oven.

  In the beginning, it was the heat.

  Most folks around the neighborhood hadn't even considered turning on their heat yet, it just wasn't cold enough. If they got cool at nights, it was enough just to heap another crocheted afghan on top of the bed and snuggle under it. Certainly it wasn't time to jump start the furnace.

  My wife and I lived in a three-family house on the first floor. When we'd moved in almost two years previously, the landlords at the time had mentioned the benefits of living on the ground floor.

  "In the winter time, your heating bills will be really low. The pipes to the other apartments run right through here and you get some peripheral heat."

  It worked out well for us. We were young, freshly married, and not that well established. Saving money was important.

  Time passed and neighbors changed. The third floor apartment was vacant for only a month when he moved in.

  We scarcely saw him the first month he was living there. Our second-floor neighbors, two professional women and their dog, told us that the man was some type of freelance legal professional who researched things for clients.

  "He does his work at home," they said.

  Two months passed and still we hadn't seen him.

  But we had felt the heat.

  "It's stifling in here," said Liz to me one day while we were relaxing with our two cats. "Do you have the heat on?"

  "I haven't turned it on since we moved in here, why start now?" I walked over to the pipes that ran through the room and touched one of them. Cold. I moved my hand to the other and clutched it. I jerked back. "Shit! It's boiling!"

  "Whose pipe is that?"

  "Third floor. That Aronson guy must have it on full blast."

  So we cracked the windows and that was that.

  Two thirty one Sunday morning, I finally glimpsed our neighbor. I was sitting up watching late night television, a habit I had inherited from my deceased father, when I heard footsteps approaching through the dead fall leaves outside. The lights were out and the room was illuminated by the pale glow from the television. I cracked the blinds and peered out wondering who was out and about at that time of night.

  He was older. Dark with swarthy features that made him appear slightly sinister given the time of night. He had black hair, cut short, that was just beginning to gray around the temples. I thought he looked Mediterranean.

  He walked up the stairs quietly and I let the blind snap back into its formal position. I sat listening for his keys and heard them penetrate the lock before the hall door swung open. He closed the door and shuffled up the steps. I strained my ears and at last heard the door to his apartment open briefly and then close.

  Almost immediately, I heard the furnace groan and rumble down in the cellar. He'd turned his heat on again.

  It went on like this for several weeks. I began to suspect that he was either a deep-cover agent for the CIA, or a vampire. One or the other. I had no trouble justifying either extreme.

  "I only see him at night. Never during the day. He's hunting hapless victims at night clubs. Gotta be."

  Or...

  "It's a surveillance post. Seen 'em before. They station this one guy in a house to watch someone. Hard duty, that's for sure. He must be bored out of his skull."

  My wife was fond of arranging fictitious appointments with psychiatrists for my delusional ramblings.

  Facetious though they may have been, even she couldn't deny the omnipresence of the stifling heat in our apartment. It was never-ending. Here it was the beginning of October and still our windows were open. Maybe that was fine in warmer climes, but in New England, October will have you shivering if you're not careful.

  "Why don't you talk to him?"

  "How? You want me to call him? I don't have his number."

  "So go up and see him."

  I looked at her. "What? Go up and see him? Knock on the vampire's door?" I shook my head. "You're nuts."

  "He's not a vampire, silly. Just go up and ask him if he could lower his heat. Explain that we're dying down here."

  "All part of his plan," I said. "Just watch."

  But I did venture up those creaky wooden stairs. I brought along the folding sea knife with a marlin spike my sister-in-law had given me as a gift the previous Christmas, though. I'd never had a woman pick out a blade for me before, but I was so impressed with the choice she made, I carried it everywhere now. And while Aronson may not have been dangerous-looking, I always followed the "better safe than sorry" rule.

  His door stood next to the attic, the solemn oak barrier separated me from whatever bizarre habits he was fulfilling on the other side. I imagined horrid sacrifices and mutilated corpses strewn about the apartment.

  I placed my ear to the door and listened. Nothing. No sound escaped the confines of that apartment. A thin line of perspiration broke out along my hairline and trickled down across my face. The heat was even more palpable up here.

  I knocked.

  And waited for several moments before repeating myself. Still no answer. After a third try, I descended the stairs and remarked "Not home" to my wife upon re-entering our apartment.

  "You see? It's the middle of the day. If he's not home, that means he's out."

  "So?"

  "So," she smirked, "that means he can't possible be a vampire. The sunlight thing, remember?"

  I shook my head. "Be tough to hear a doorbell if you were lying in a coffin." But my wife had already gone back to watching her favorite entertainment gossip shows on the tube.

  A week later I finally got my chance to speak to our neighbor. This time it was a bright sunny day. I was forced to concede defeat for my vampire theory.

  He came walking up the street from somewhere, smiling as he approached. He didn't offer me a handshake, and to be truthful, I didn't feel much like shaking hands with him. I was still uneasy.

  He introduced himself and I asked where he was coming from. He gestured behind him.

  "Parking my car."

  "Not enough room here?"

  He pointed at the brown house next door to us. It was a section-8 housing unit that looked structurally unsound. "Don't want them getting curious about the car."

  He pronounced the "them" with decidedly racial overtones. True enough, our neighbors next door were Hispanic and just last month one of the apartments had been raided by the DEA, but they were a nice enough bunch of people now that the drug dealers had been arrested. I found myself wondering how Aronson would feel about me when he found out my wife was Asian. I decided that I would welcome the chance to break his face if he made any negative comments about her.

  "You work at home, do you?"

  He nodded. "When I'm not researching."

  "Researching? What, exactly?"

  "Deeds. Land ownership notices, that sort of thing. I do work for lawyers who don't have the time or staff to do a lot of footwork for those articles." He shrugged. "Pays the rent, anyway."

  "That's good," I said. "I can't help imagining how expensive your fuel bill must be."

  He looked at me obliquely, then chuckled. "You mean the heat."

  I laughed with him. "Yeah. Been keeping us nice and warm, you have. Truth be known, my wife and I were starting to melt the other day."

  "Sorry about that. I'll try to remember not to turn it up so high."

  I nodded. "Mind me asking why you have it cranked up so m
uch? It's not exactly mid-winter yet."

  He shrugged. "I get cold easily."

  "That it?"

  "I like to cook a lot."

  And then he was up the steps and into the house before I could ask the inevitable question of what exactly he was cooking three flights up.

  When my wife came home, I told her about the conversation.

  "He's cooking? What's he cooking?"

  "Dunno. Never got the chance to ask him."

  She shook her head and reached for a new slice of pizza. "Sure would like to know."

  "You and me both."

  She looked at me with a glint in her eye. "So why don't we?"

  "Why don't we what?"

  "Find out, silly." She stood up. "C'mon."

  "Where are we going?"

  She put her hands on her hips. "Upstairs."

  "No way."

  "Why not?"

  "How are we going to get in?"

  She smiled. "You're saying you suddenly forgot how to pick locks?"

  It was a trick I'd picked up in the military. "I'm saying it's illegal. The guy works with lawyers all the time. Last thing we need is a lawsuit over some useless B&E."

  "We won't take anything."

  I shook my head. "Not the point."

  "We could always ask Rita and Jennifer for the key."

  "What? Why the hell would our landlords give us the key to someone else's apartment?"

  She put on her angelic face. "Curiosity?"

  "Fat chance." I put my feet up on the table and switched on the tube. "Forget it."

  But two weeks later we were up on the third floor landing. Me peering into the deadbolt keyhole while Liz listened for any sounds that didn't belong. My picks threaded their way past the tumblers, until at last they clicked into the proper position. Slowly, inexorably, the bolt slid back and then came to rest with a steady thunk.

  I signaled my wife and we both looked at each other knowing the moment was at hand. I put a gloved hand on the doorknob and turned it ever so slowly.

  Their was an audible hiss, like we'd just violated the seals on some hyperbaric chamber where they cure divers with the bends. I felt the onslaught of heat as we pushed

  the door open wider. It was absolutely stifling. The air was so thick it was tough to breathe and I glanced at my wife. She was already sweating profusely.

  The first room was sparsely furnished. A threadbare couch and a small rug had been positioned in what could only be called a random arrangement. The windows had the blinds drawn and the lighting was dim.

  A door on the left side of the room barred our progress. I wiped my forehead, copious with sweat, and then turned the handle on the second room. The door swung open and the temperature increased even more. My wife was breathing audibly now and I began to get concerned about her welfare. I turned and mouthed that she should go back downstairs. She shook her head no, and latched her hand in mine as we walked into the second room.

  There was a vague odor that penetrated the room, clinging to the wooden floor and few framed prints on the walls. Otherwise there was nothing except another door.

  I looked at my wife and she back at me. Third time's the charm, she mouthed and pointed at the door.

  I sighed and we moved toward it. Again I reached for the doorknob. Again, I turned it.

  As the door opened, the stench hit us.

  It smelled like the moldy petri dishes I'd grown bacteria on for a ninth grade science fair. And then we saw what was the cause of the smell.

  The walls of the room were covered in some kind of clear mucus membrane that branched and forked in every conceivable direction. From our vantage point just outside the room, we could see it dripping in continuous tepid streams that made me recall the ectoplasm from the Ghostbusters movies.

  And then in the corner of the room I saw the outline of the heaving creature. Long tubes ran from it into a huge bubbly pile of oval shapes. The creature would heave and then another sticky pear-shaped bauble would slide down the opaque tube until it came to rest in the congealing mass of ooze. The whole process repeated itself endlessly, accompanied by a barrage of nauseating sounds that made my skin crawl.

  My wife was retching and we turned to leave.

  Aronson-

  was behind us.

  "So you came up."

  "What the hell IS that?" I demanded.

  "A rather rare strain of the common housefly. The difference being that these will eventually grow as large as four feet around. That is the mother there in the corner hatching her eggs in one long continuous stream. Beautiful, isn't it?"

  My wife was still retching. I looked at Aronson. "It's disgusting. What the hell are you doing with such creatures?"

  "I'm raising them, you fool. Pretty soon, when the eggs hatch into maggots, they'll work wonders on the world's garbage problem." He winked at me. "In the meantime, they can get rather hungry."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "It means," said Aronson pointing a gun at me, "that they need to eat."

  I didn't wait for him to explain. I kicked him in the groin and then dropped an elbow into his face. Aronson went down. I grabbed the gun and tucked it into my pants. Liz looked at me.

  "Now what?"

  "Now we leave-"

  Aronson's hands grabbed for my legs. I gave him a solid kick that sent him sprawling into the mucus room. He tried to stand up, but slipped on the mucus and slid into the corner where the creature was spewing eggs.

  Instantly furry legs that I hadn't seen before closed around Aronson's body. He screamed as they pulled him under the beast's proboscis. He cried out for help, but I stood transfixed by the sight of the fly's proboscis as it pierced his skull. There was an awful slurping sound then, that made me choke back the bile in my throat. Aronson's cries sounded like somebody screaming underwater, that muffled bubbling croak that fades into nothing.

  Liz was pulling on my arm. "We have to get out of here!"

  I followed her at a run, expecting those same hairy legs to reach for me and yank me back into the room with Aronson's corpse.

  But we made it out of there, spilling down the stairs and into our apartment. Liz looked at me.

  "We have to destroy that thing."

  I nodded. There was no alternative.

  "What about Rita and Jennifer?"

  I shrugged. "They're away in Vermont. When they get back, it'll just be one of those unfortunate occurrences. We woke up, but couldn't get to Aronson."

  "Fire?"

  "Yeah, I think it's the best way."

  And later that night our three family house went up in flames. I had mixed the gasoline with detergent to make a napalm-like mixture that would light the place up in a matter of seconds. There would be nothing the fire department could do.

  We stood outside, basking in the cool night air with our most precious belongings tucked away in the car. We watched the fire take the house, Aronson, and his beloved flies out of our world.

  Liz held my hand. "Is it over?"

  I nodded. And it was. The flies were gone.

  But more importantly, so was Aronson...

  and soon enough, so too the heat.

  The Resume God

  Bizarre, kooky, funny…if nothing else, this story shows how brain-dead I often felt working in Corporate America.

  Fred Billings clicked out of the on-line job directory at his computer and leaned back in his cubicle chair. The position sounded exactly like what he was looking for. Almost twice his current salary, the copy writing position would be a step up and lead to greater advancements than the job he held now in the accounts payable department.

  His resume needed work, though. And he knew the competition for the job spot would be tough. He opened up the second drawer in his desk and pulled the current version of his resume out. It had everything it was supposed to, including the responsibilities of his current position, yet it failed under his objective eye to stimulate him. And that was something that bothered him.


  If he was to get this job, his resume would have to be magical. Spectacular. Something any hiring manager would kill to recruit.

  Something it wasn't yet.

  "It's not like I don't have the experience or the talent necessary for the job," he told his friend Mike later on that morning over coffee.

  "It's just your resume looks like some burger flipping loser's cheat sheet," said Mike between forkfuls of the cafeteria's lasagna.

  Fred looked at Mike. "Thanks for the kind words."

  Mike shrugged. "Just telling it like I see it."

  "Maybe edit it some next time. For content, at least?"

  Mike smiled. "Okay, see, you got your problem. I got your solution."

  "You?" Fred chuckled. "Come on, man."

  "What? You think I can't help you, is that it?"

  "Look, you've got a great job. I don't."

  Mike nodded. "Yeah, and how do you think I got that job? It wasn't just my natural boyish charm."

  "And it couldn't have been sheer genius, either," said Fred.

  "Touché," said Mike. "But listen, I do know what you can do to get that job."

  "What's that?"

  Mike sipped his Coke. "Go visit the Resume God."

  "The what?"

  Mike smiled. "You heard me. If you're really interested in getting that job, he can help. Hell, he helped me. I'm a true convert."

  "You're talking like it's some kind of religion."

  Mike nodded. "Yeah, well, I worship my paycheck, buddy. And this guy helped put me back in the black if you catch my meaning."

  "So where is this guy?"

  Mike wiped his mouth on a napkin. "In the basement. Call me at two and I'll give you the exact directions."

  "Why all the secrecy?'

  Mike shrugged. "Think about it. If everyone knew what this guy could do, it wouldn't be as powerful, would it? Not only that butt HR would catch on and then what good would it do to get his help? It's strictly on the QT, okay? I tell you where to go, you can't breathe a word of it to anyone else, okay?"