“So what’s it gonna be then?”
A man asked this to the darkness. A man composed of pockets of black bags and sickly freckled skin sat twirling a single half consumed cigarette like a twitching insect antenna between two slender fingers. Smoke rose creeping up, a spider up the waterspout, engulfing the thick air around the man and twisting his head into a blur. The stove clicked and chirped cricket calls from the base of a single heated burner radiating an intense burning orange. He used it previously to light the aforementioned smoke, due to the lack of a lighter which was lost to the void of forgetfulness. His house was covered and filled with darkness, inside and out, excluding the tiny flares that illuminated the man’s crown (which pulsated from a single light bulb from a low hanging ceiling lamp) and the orange glow located in the kitchen.
The living room was revealed to the eyes as a tattered map would reveal any charted area. Pieces of the imagery was lost to the darkness, lost in areas of shadowed pockets while other sections of the claustrophobic room stood upon the threshold between the unknown and the deceiving placidness. The rest of the rooms, the upstairs bedroom, the kitchen (stove still burning), the bathroom (sink dripping), the basement, and the guest room (lacking any guest) hung along with the blackened spots in a state of unknown. Despite the intimidating shroud these rooms were well kept. Pots hung in rows in the kitchen, towels on the bathroom rack welcomed any moistened embrace, A tidy and untouched guest room sat silently, and even the basement (despite its darkness and diminutive size) held unpacked boxes stacked neatly against the wall.
Leroy appeared as a skeleton draped in skin that hung sloth like off his bottle neck arms. A coat, increased in size due to Leroy’s relative decrease in girth, hung off his hanging skin. A black and white contrast to his room, Leroy sat parallel to the tranquility and hospitality of his home. He was a poor man, that is to say a sickly man. It had been days, weeks, months, years? He could hardly recall how long it’s been since he last left home. And for however long Leroy has been isolated this fact remains; he has never left his seat, only to light a new cigarette or to drink bird sips from a cup filled with tap water.
He sat there day in and day out watching the nothing as it slipped by in its glacial slunk. This long alone locked in darkness has naturally caused his skin to pale in between yellow malaise spawned bruises. His pupils burst wide from the consistent darkness and his bones became more sponge like and softer, ever so slightly. The bodily sores can be seen sprinkled here and there like sunspots bursting on the surface of a bloated sun. Despite all of this he sat there, fearing nothing.
“So what’s it gonna be then?” he asked once more. A drone mayday signal that he repeated constantly and consistently. “So wha-“, he dragged his breath along a deep smoke, “is it gonna be?” .The nothing replied soundless as it always had. His nose started to run causing him to suck the trail back in. The two boned fingers fidgeted with the uneasiness of a dying old man’s last reach for a physical feeling. Ashes plummeted off the cigarette in a suicide jump towards his legs. The loose fitted jeans he wore still hugged his sides (uncomfortably causing a deep red etching which ringed around his body) yet the leg of the pants bagged around two gaunt limbs.
Leroy attempted to speak again, to offer the nothing his fears, but fell short of words from a thunderous cough. He spat up a sort of yellow ichor into his open palm. His nose began to run again with the opening of the flood gates. In a panic, spawned from fear that the nothing would do him in while he sat wiping his nose, Leroy charged and ricocheted off the hallway threshold bounding into the bathroom. The cigarette slipped from his tongue into his hand which he used to light a candle’s wick.
The photon beamed bulbs would burn his eyes far too much for him to function properly so instead, he operated under the lulling blaze of the candle. The dripping sink burst into a waterfall into cupped hands used to drown his facial glaze of grease, and snot, and yellowed spit. For a moment Leroy caught his reflection illuminated by the candle light. His face was now gaunt; cheeks inverted and sunk in on themselves. His hair formed a thick canopy matted down by a screen of grease. The hair that hung in strands across his forehead resulted in pimples freckled in patches near his hair line. A prickled beard grew unevenly with the rest of his facial hair. Patches of darker hair located around his concave cheeks and jaunted chin.
A bulge lumped and dropped in his coat pocket, his shirt was stained and stinking of sweat and pants breezed heels. The sink continued to run in a perpetual manner which suggested that water was a limitless resource, now overflowing the sink and raining down upon a trail of cinnamon brown dried blood; located on the face of the pallid bathroom tiles. Next to the mirror was a calendar depicting a picture of some snowy courtyard dominated by an old Anglo Saxon cottage. It read December across a thick upper edging with all days circled off excluding the 31st. Leroy gazed lazily at the calendar, astonished at how long it has been since he had contact with any measure of time, that is to say, if it had been long at all. He flipped back the page of the calendar revealing the end of the year; marked by a lack of calendar readings.
His feet touched water; the outside stimuli of the wetness pricked his senses like the splash of the face did. His stomach rumbled and squished and despite this, hunger had yet to turn the man feral. As a matter of fact, he hardly felt hungry at all. Then there came another noise, tumultuous in essence, a crashing and the twang of metal echoed through the thick nothingness and wrapped itself in Leroy’s ear. Muscles clenched as Leroy’s eyes grew even larger. Breathing became a struggle, a mix between involuntary spasms and self induced survival mechanisms. Leroy’s words, yelps of terror were now stuck between the gears. Drops of water splashed from his carved calloused hands upon the flame extinguishing it.
“It’s come…that…it”
He stuttered among pointless words for nobody as he made his way to the door but stopping as soon as flesh met bronze metal. There was a sizzle and a crackling from one of the opposite rooms. Leroy motioned and clumsily felt around for the nearest impromptu weapon. His hands met down on a plastic plunger on the floor. Bringing his body closer he observed (by touch) a needle.
The door swung open with a ghostly wail forced out by unexpected burst of energy. The crackling came from the kitchen riding on the illuminated waves of a flame. His mind met a crossroad, deciding whether or not to charge into the kitchen and if for what could he do? The nothing was trying to smoke him out or burn his flesh (one or the other or both). The thick smog rose and danced around his crown as his cigarette smoke once did. Reverting back to primal ignorance Leroy ran to the nearest door leading to the undertow if the house. He charged, stumbled, and cracked his head on the spines erected out of the lazy work which made the plaster concrete of the opposite wall. No pain shivered down his spine yet his body reached accordingly as he hunched over scuffling off to the farthest corner of the room.
The crackling continued and the lions roar of flames raged in a torrent whirling in the kitchen engulfing what he expected to be the curtains, napkins, magazines, and his pots (among a laundry list of items which would also burn). Not knowing what to do Leroy begun to barricade himself in the dark corner, pulling boxes in stacks around him. One in particular was packed with something heavy, he tugged, failed to move the package, and fell backwards hitting the raw spot on his head in the rift where the two walls met. His ears rang from the dull thud; blood trickled down with molasses speed through the canyons of hair roots and matted knots. He continued to crumple in the corner and lay flat on his stomach, face hanging effortlessly between two boxes. Then he felt a touch, “You!” and he let out a half scream half awkward yell, swung around and stabbed the thick arm of the nothingness. The needle stuck, and lacking anymore strength he let it stay.
“Muther…fu…errr”
His voice trailed off into a wet slobbering slur. His eyes shut under lead lids and for a moment, he relaxed. He thought that it was gone, ran off or disappeared. With comfort in his triumph, he lifted back up, finding difficulty standing on his right leg he hobbled out of the barricade and to the landing of the stairs. For a moment he sat watching the basement fill with smoke. It was a sort of hypnotic mist, swirling and twisting, and coiling around itself as a snake does. Urgency rang through his throbbing head yet he could not bring himself to acknowledge the seriousness of his situation. Then, on tiny cat feet, something moved along the staircase, up to the top. It spoke to Leroy with a familiar and oddly slurring drone.
“I’m going to die now, I’m going to die. It doesn’t matter now, goodbye.”
Leroy then found himself syncing his lips to these words yet he knew it was that thing, the stalker, the madness ringing constantly in his ears. Leroy then found himself at the top of the stairs where the voice was once audible from. Deciding that he must leave the basement before the smoke captured his life Leroy lifted himself up clenching on the doorknob. A rush of heat and stinging pain clenched his hand and so he screamed. It was impossible to hear his words; they were pounded to pieces by the roaring flames and its shrill shrieks. It was too loud to hear anything besides.
“I’m going to die” he spoke, echoing the nothing. With his browned and crisped hand Leroy hoisted up level with the top of the door. Kicking, screaming, and thrashing Leroy impaled the wooden door with the heel of his foot until a large enough hole formed for him to pull apart and squeeze through. Leroy wormed through the hole, head first, chest, then his legs. Flesh tore alongside his calf and a bloody needle fell and pinged on the metal frame of the edging on the first step. His leg was now free from the gouge, relinquishing his body from hopelessness. Leaping through a wall of paper thin flames, Leroy busted out the back door onto a field of melting slush, his pants scorched and his skin burnt and bubbling. The pain was now apparent, the second feet touched grass he fell turning his body print into the slush.
Habit took a hold of his hand, reaching into his coat pocket Leroy pulled out half of the sagging bulge in his coat pocket. It was a plastic box, untouched by the flames that now engulfed his entire house. It lit and burned like a great golden beard turned upside down and piercing the tranquil night sky. Watching in horrific awe he dispensed most of the boxes contents into his hand, small things that jingled and shuffled around in his palm. His first “meal” in days, weeks, months, or years was inhaled within seconds.
Moments passed into the unknown, void of time left behind Leroy. Along with it went the pain and all feeling. It was a struggle to keep himself erected into the air, Juxtapose from the blades of balding grass. Something stood behind him, humanoid in appearance. Leroy dared not to look at the being as it stared. It was that fear, that stare that kept him faced away. It knew something he did not. It was calm and quite for some reason and the fact that Leroy knew not why it behaved like so caused him great fear and anguish. He wished for it to go away, the flames, the nothing, and his burnt flesh. Slowly numbness crept up his spine and all through his body. It tingled and his flesh fell dead, it was as if his senses floated somewhere above the body now, drifting off into space. Leroy’s head cocked back, unable to control it’s bobbing, and he stared the nothing right in the eyes.
He was back in bed. As a child at a young age, his mother had been gone all night from working late and his father absent from the household. The moon’s lace lingered over the grass outside. Bells played a lullaby to him, that is to say a sort of programmed Xylophone chimed in and out. The darkness enveloped his entire cubical room, leaving the empty wide spaces to fill with an ambiance of the unknown. The nothing was there again, at the foot of his bed.
“He stands at the foot of my bed.”
Leroy woke, and stepped into the shadows for a moment. The man who stood there was very real, no dream. It was tangible; he felt the man’s clothes and iron grip. Leroy’s bedroom window was open, this being the only illuminated portion of the room due to the moon’s brilliance.
“Rats and children follow me out of town.”
Leroy moved, shuffling in motions. Two fears overtook him. The first being the fear of a stranger, the second, being the fear of loneliness. The later dominated his mind though and the first fear was thrown to the wind. He followed the man outside, along the lawn, in his car and all through town. A bit of serendipity saved him that night, a passing stranger recognized the nothing man and knew his lack of an offspring. It seemed that the nothing has had a reputation to seem, odd, well that is to say that people were unsure whether or not he was a normal man by the gaze on his face and the lulling smile stretched across. By dawn the authorities had arrested the man and Leroy returned home only to pray for the man or some man to come back and take him away from the nothingness of the night.
It was that man which he saw tonight. It was that man who lifted Leroy’s numb body up and carried him off to town. All was quite and bare. The streets dripped and oozed from the inebriated slunk of the out-laters. His ears filled with white noise, his mind shut off now, and his sense took over. He watched a flickering star grow, A cotton white dream which expanded and grew until he found himself on the star. His body moved in reluctant motions, swaying and falling in on itself. He was happy now, he was safe now. He watched from this lustrous surface as the galaxies and all of their worlds were pulled down. Aliens whizzed around his head, making home movies for strangers off in unknown stars. He was let down and falling, diving and crashing back into the earth. Crushed like a bug in the ground now.
Leroy was back at his body, some feeling came over his right hand. His skin continued to bubble and the pain grew up from his spine to the back of his head. He wished to go back to that happy place where the nothing and the loneliness did not exist. Tossing the plastic boxed filled with a candy store assortment of pills, LSD tablets, heroin vials, bags of cocaine, and other strong pain relievers which only a doctor would have access to, he grabbed the other bulged in his pocket and squeezed it in his hand. Dawn approached reluctantly signaled by the chirping of Leroy’s pager which he had forgotten all about. It must have been an emergency to be buzzing at this time of day and this date in particular.
Screaming at the newly realized pain, Leroy tossed the pager to the slush and it landed in a murky puddle not too far away from his body. The bulge in his right hand was placed on the temple of his forehead. The snout of a barrel erupted and a single bullet, intended to fight off the nothing, split through his skull making a burning trail through his mind. The pager continued to beep; it contained a message from one of his interns. It was sent at 5:12 AM, January 1st.
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