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I don’t know. These don’t look like aspirin. But you seem like a good enough guy. I don’t understand why all you bikers get such a bad rap. What club was it you said you fellas were in? Mel’s Angels? Well she must be a really sweet lady. I really like the colors on these. Bright green! Such an odd color for aspirin. So…so vibrant. Is that Mickey Mouse on there? Are these kids aspirin? Take another? Well the headache isn’t that bad but I guess if they’re just kids strength. They sure are hard to swallow out here in this dry spell. You got water in that canteen? Well bless yer stars again friend. WOW! I think that water must be expired or something! It really burns going down! Oh its water from some cactus flower? Wowee, pure desert water. Well it got the job done. Where did you all say you were headed? Sturgeon? Some fishing thing or something? Well I hope you fellas catch some big ones. Hmmm boy… I think the headache is gone. I feel a bit like a balloon right now, really light and floaty. Kids aspirin? I hope its OK to take when you are an adult. I’m an adult guys. Right? I’m driving a big van over there. Whoa….its really far away. Did I park it that far away. All the way over there under that big tree? That tree is a bit…that tree is purple I think. Wow, a purple tree. Thats, um…ah…a purple, no its red. Its a big red tree. Ah…wow, whats uh…I feel….ah….does that tree, is that tree is it dancing over there on my bus? I drove a bus here with all the kids. Where are my kids? SusAAAAna! Get here! Get over here! Where is she? Guys, wow…whoa yer all so tall. Did…why are you talking so slow? I don’t…um I need to sit. Could I look at Mickey Moose again? Ahahaha, mooses. Its moose. A moose. I need a sandwich for my turkey. A big John Goodman turkey. What if John Goodman had his own place? Like a big turkey shack. I’d eat there. Oh….I need…Oh boy. Ahhhh, these birds are flying so low! SWAT THEM AWAY! GET AWAY FROM HEAD! They want my eggs, the eggies in my head..Good thing I got my bike helmet….why are you all laughing…stop it! Slow down the noise! So loud!!! I really need this time to calm down and think. Thats where the problems are. It’s all this total junkyard dog stuff that the CIA is always shoving down our throats and we dont have any trust from them cuz they want out of the jobs they sold us when we and the 9/11 attacks and charlie and rosie and the king for so many ages and filling up the blackhorse for this and all the other times we couldn’t get together enough time for the mountains and and and blackhawk and the buzzards always picking down pecking at my eyes so so i i dont want to get my acts together and he never told me to come but i just wanted to be a clown for the party and they all laughed and i ate a lot of cake we didnt know why but they said he was sick and he got put in the ground crying for this and that and that was why we had to hold back trying to get this for the game to build out that spacepark so why why is that…Ahhhh I get whats this you guys…Im…whoa…whoa…that spirder! Get that….Agh! Get him…..thats oh get it off! GET IT OFF! ITS IN MY SKINS!! get it out! Pull it out! Gimmme that spork! Grrrrrrrrr GET OUT BUGS! GET…..OUT……BUGS!!….They need to get out OUT OUT OUT!!!! Outtttt…tuh tuh tuh tuh tuh tuh! my eyes are getting black so juz hol me upso i can walk pleaz and my noserunning and sweating itchyhghnnnnn…..hgggnnnnn…hgnnnnnn
“Damn it, Red. You gave him my good stuff! That’s all the way back in Tulsa for more!”.
“Sorry Mav…just wanted to watch the little guy freak out”.
“Idiot. Put him in the dumpster. He’s dead.”
Stubborn. That would be the entire collective description of Theo Meckle. Certainly, no man is simply one thing, but Theo’s character and way of life was so overwhelmed by his headstrong nature that it was hard to believe that he could be anything else. This did him no favors as he pushed through the deep Antarctic snow in such a long act of suffering.
He had taken the job through Raytheon Polar Services, fulfilling a need for a new helicopter pilot at McMurdo Station. Allotting thousands of hours of air time, he was no slouch in the sky. He had been in some pretty nasty soup before, and that big white wasteland wouldn’t throw anything at him he hadn’t seen before. For him, it wasn’t about the adventure or experience, it was simply the furthest B from point A. “A” was a failed marriage, an estranged son and a smattering of family that had all but written him off entirely. He wasn’t a total bastard like one might expect, the problem was he just wasn’t much of anything, a ghost that had retired from haunting, resigned to floating around the house not frightening much of anything.
He had signed on for 3 years, and he was nearing the last few months of his contract. Men like Theo don’t really keep friends, but they do keep to themselves, and he had been pretty successful at both. Most of the crew knew he wasn’t much of a talker after his first couple of weeks off the plane. This might have been a problem if he didn’t fit in so well. The neurotic, the dreamers, the sojourners, the rogues, the philosophers, the drifters, the shamed, they all trickle down south eventually.
Seasoned pilots know all too well that Mother Nature doesn’t give a damn about how many hours you’ve logged behind the controls. Theo was getting the hell beaten out of him in the worst white wash he had ever seen. What was he doing caught up in all of this? He wasn’t some rookie, taking the whirly gig up for the first time. This blizzard wasn’t a surprise either. He knew long before going up that it was a bad day to fly. But some nature photographer had slipped and broken his leg snapping photos of penguins…”those damn penguins”…and he was the only one willing to go get this guy 30 miles out, nursing his busted up knee in a tent on the edge of a bird colony.
Theo could have cared less about the man. It was in hopes of concealing a darker goal that he took to the sky with so much bravado. He couldn’t envision a better way to end it all than to go down in some overpowering storm, everyone eulogizing him as a hero. In truth it was a complete act of cowardice.
Zero visibility, gale force winds, deadly mountain peaks hidden in the blinding whiteness. Perfect conditions for the suicidal. It wasn’t long before his tail rotor clipped the edge of a sawtooth ridge and he was headed for the end. Naturally, his adrenaline kicked in and his muscles tensed, but he fought hard against his body’s will to live, keeping his hands off the controls, preventing even the possibility of a bumpy but non-fatal landing. He wanted to let fate decide.
The chopper hit the slope at just the right angle for a relatively soft landing. It was the subsequent barrel-rolling down the slope and Theo getting tossed through the cockpit bay door that did the most damage.
The small sliver of light blanketed the shaggy carpet with false benevolence. The closet door was shut off to the rest of the house. Behind the paper thin particle board, you would find seemingly innocent contents; long forgotten board games, a box of mismatched wool socks, an old spark emitting wind up toy dragon, some unreturned library books on architecture, things you would expect to find in countless closets, nothing out of the ordinary really. This closet door however served its owner a higher purpose, unbeknownst to him of course. Doors separate, they compartmentalize, they are the front line of privacy and secrets. But this door, this door fulfilled a far more important role. It didn’t keep things out. It kept something in, something beyond dread.
It had been another day of drudgery and despair for him. A man can only take so many let-downs before he faces the truth and hangs up his hat for the last time. It will kill any man’s soul, being in carpet wholesale for as long as he had. True, business was fine, he had just landed the “Crack-yer-back-Practic” deal. The commission was good, he might even have enough saved for the new wall mounted fish tank he had obsessed over through so many winters, a brief tropical divertissement reserved for the most numbing days. It was just the irony of it all that tore into him the most. To sell and profit from the very thing that personifies you in only the most unflattering of ways. In every way, he himself was a carpet, mostly unnoticed and trampled on, slowly collecting the murk and grime of those above him. The irony was not lost…in fact it had been found far quicker than he had hoped. This was something you might expect to find years later as an old man, your mind going, looking back on ones life as you slowly drowned yourself in too many bottles of gin. But for him, it came right at the promised prime of life and there was nothing he could do about it.
The lone house was tucked away on the hill, shrouded in Douglas’ mysterious green fir. It wasn’t much to behold, but to him, it was everything…it had to be. Without it, he had nothing to make his mark, no flag to pitch at the roof of the earth to say he had been here. He was the ruler of this kingdom, but without subjects to carry out his decrees, save for Theo the cat, sole benefactor of the estate.
He fiddled with his keys, so many of them for such little responsibility. The teeth and grooves found their mark and the dead bolt slid open. Theo was there to greet him from the top of the teal suede recliner. “Mraaawr” he said. His back slowly rising, shivering as it stretched out tired old bones and muscles, he hopped down and revved his purr motor and walked an infinite line between the man’s legs. He reached down and itched Theo’s expectant forehead.
He hung his hat on the wall hook, along with his long dead father’s windbreaker, wearing it was his odd way of honoring the “Old man”. Per ritual, as he walked towards the bedroom of his small 1 story home, Theo pit-patting behind him, he undid his belt and pulled it from his jeans, tossing it on the bathroom door knob. He entered his room, closing the door on Theo’s pursuit.
Theo, clearly frustrated, and probably a little offended, bared his little sickle like teeth and hissed, just enough to make his point heard. He sat on his haunches and stared up at the door. His receptive ears twitched and rotated as he focused in on the man changing into his evening attire, a ragged sweatshirt of his alma mater and a pair of sweat pants. His left ear, turning independently from the right one, as cat’s ears are known to do, became suddenly bewitched by a new sound unheard to the rest of the universe, his right ear and eyes soon to fall under the same spell. Why had he not noticed the closet light on before? “Master did not use it for any such thing before he had left home earlier in the day…or had he?” But it’s foolish to speculate on the thoughts of cats. Theo just stared intently at the small crack of light between the door and the floor. It was snuffed out in unison with the man opening the door swiftly on the felines head, catching Theo off guard, startling the cat, sending him ripping off down the hallway toward the T.V. room slash kitchen slash dining room slash overall center of the house.
The man sucked in air between his teeth, less an apology and more a neutral acknowledgment of the event. In an instant something changed ever so slightly in his surroundings. Like a brief yet brilliant thought disappearing without warning, he was profoundly shaken for only a moment. He glanced around, the perfectly secure closet door to his right, nothing extraordinary save for the oddly cool draft creeping out from the darkness at the bottom of the door. It seemed to slip over his bare feet and between his toes like a tiny black hole, syrupy slow, lingering for a moment and then journeying on into invisible space. He got down to his knees, leaning his head to the floor, trying to peer into the crack. His face buried deep into the shag, the enchanted forest of the dust mites. As he stared intently into the crack in the door, the shag itching his slovenly half-beard, he mentally promised himself he would steal a roll of Berber from work. It was absurd to think that he had never upgraded, given the advantages of his trade.
He could almost hear the lenses in his eyes focus and un-focus as they penetrated the blackness, grasping at anything to latch onto. This was pointless. He got up and opened the closet. He fingered for the dangling chain and clicked on the light. Everything in its place, a place for everything. He gave the chain another tug and that illuminating revelation was gone as quickly as it had come.
Theo was bound up high on his throne once again, his tail catching the last bit of sunlight as it said it’s goodbyes before tucking off into other realms. One sliver of a yellow eye watched the man rummage through the cupboard and refrigerator, assembly a King’s Feast – macaroni and cheese.
A can of pressed tuna juice and one box of Cheesy Mac later, Theo and the man are sitting in front of the television, thoroughly stuffed. The man habitually changes the channel, his eyes glazing over as a hefty southern gal hocks festive fiber-optic Christmas sweaters for only 59.99, # 47 runs in for a touchdown, a yellow sponge lives in a pineapple under the sea, “Potent Potables for two hundred”…he leaves it on Jeopardy. If nothing else, his mind is filled with the the trivial. Trebek’s wizened old face lulls him into sleep. He dreams.
The black sludge is thick. Knee deep, he tries his best to wade through it. A bloated dog floats by, a milky blue eye looking out into nothing, tongue contorted, sliding through the slime. Outward in all directions, beyond the edge of the earth, flat and wide, the hellish quagmire coats the landscape. Trees slowly crackling by the licks of an unseen flame hang about here and there, acting as landmarks in the horrible nothing. He pushes inward, the goo sucking at his waste. The sky is gone, nothing but squid ink, rolling about in a maelstrom. A thick bubble swells by his hip, a sinister toad hovers inside it, seemingly not bound to the confines of natural law. It croaks and the bubble grows larger, a horrible boil on the face of an unmentionable beast.
Pop.
Screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming. A banshees chorus. He is sucked into the toads mouth, falling down into a serpentine hallway. Floating, slowly, just above the linoleum tile of a familiar place. He is sitting in a desk. Blurred faces mumbling babble all around him. A twisted creature with skinny bones and jagged edges jerks up and down towards a chalkboard, slithery jet black hair rustling back and forth. The man is tense, feeling that the World of the Waking is close. Everything slows. The bleating of a goat, dozens of them, just beyond the door. They pour in one after another, slowly galloping, some gripping the walls, the ceilings. He grips his desk tightly. No one seems to notice as they draw closer and closer, bleating from within a vast cavern. Suddenly they are there, latched to the throats and faces of old school yard chums. The secondhand spins rapidly like some demonic carnival game. Soon heads are being thrashed violently from bodies. A bloody party, decorated with gore. Someones eye rolls onto his desk and up his paralyzed body, trying desperately to get into his mouth. A faint and disdaining whisper in his ear…”carpet man.”
“GAAAAHG!!!”. He lurches forward in his chair, sending Theo flying yet again. Instinctively, the man grabs for his mouth, relieved to not find anything rolling around inside besides his tongue. Sweat has beaded up on his brow, the ectoplasmic souvenir leftover from his terrible dreamscape. He watches the digital clock change from 11:13pm to 11:14pm. He flinches, half expecting the clock to set off some hidden bomb. He switches off the T.V. and sinks back into the recliner, perhaps half hoping it would swallow him alive.
A stream of drool hangs out of the corner of his lip like an enchanted icicle. The morning has crept in slowly for the past hour, awakening the restful and tormenting the restless. A sunbeam hits the drool and refracts into some perverse rainbow on the wall in front of him.
Theo lays in front of the closet door, staring at the light, which has appeared again, seemingly of its own accord. His yellow eyes, two fiery gemstones, penetrate the door, perhaps through some astral magic known only to him.
The man lets out a guttural snort and startles himself back into the World of the Waking yet again. He quickly wipes away the drool and sits forward. He leans on the edge of his chair and sees Theo, staring intently at the closet door. He notices that the light is on. The diluted grog of the morning is washed away from his body as his alarmed senses kick in. The light shouldn’t be on. He knows that. It can’t be on. But it is. His eyes roll in their sockets, searching for some illusive memory but come back with nothing. He pulls his body up from the chair, not without a bit of struggle however. Theo gives him no mind as he sits down beside him, repeating the same odd dance of the night before, pressing his face down to the floor, looking in beneath the door.
The crack blinks shut. The light is out.
He gets up and flings open the door and pulls on the cord. Nothing. Click. Click. Click. Nothing still. Just a bad fuse. He goes out to the garage and brings back a new light bulb, one of those new eco bulbs, promised to last longer and cost less. The old bulb is hot, like a freshly spewed lava rock. It has been on for some time, perhaps not flickering on and off like he had thought. He gingerly removes it and puts in the new bulb. Click. On. Click. Off. He shuts the door and gets ready for work.
The frenzied rats scurry forth out from their nests, off to the race, hi ho hi ho hi ho. Traffic jams and middle fingers, tiny little office shaped prisons, and then traffic jams and middle fingers all the way home, hi ho hi ho hi ho.
He closes the door behind him, Theo greeting the can opener as he hangs his hat and coat.
He fills up Theo’s water dish and fixes himself a plate of Oreos and a glass of milk. He’s a twist first, dunk second kinda guy. As he makes a mess of himself in his chair, spilling crumbs everywhere and leaving droplets of milk in his beard, he flicks on the television and watches some old spaghetti western. Asleep.
Night has come again, a great dragon specter pulling a vast cloak over the sky. Theo is back at the closet door, like the great Cerberus protecting the very gates of Hades. Something stirs in Hades, the light is on.
The man isn’t climbing out of any sort of nightmare this time, just the stupor brought on from too much milk and cookies. He rubs his beard, scritchy-scratchy. He flicks off the T.V. Nothing but the nefarious glow of the closet casts light in the otherwise pitch black house. His stomach turns ever so slightly. He already solved this problem. It was a bad bulb. Theo looks at him in the darkness. “Marrr” he says. The man goes to the door and turns the knob. It’s terribly cold, the cold that burns one’s flesh. His nerves send up confusing signals to his brain, cold or hot it doesn’t matter to him, it hurts, terribly. He can’t pull his hand off. Frozen, instantly bonded in place, fused together now, the doorknob a part of his body. He pulls harder. He can feel the skin on his palm stretching, tearing, peeling. His flesh is being torn asunder, a horribly macabre wrapping paper. He doesn’t have time to utter any panic, there is no one of help to hear him anyways. He puts a foot to the door and braces himself. It’s such an odd sound, the popping and dislocating of bones in his arm. There is a melody of cold and warm as his blood works its way around his palm. Snap.
He is on his back, poor Theo once again knocked aside, running off someplace. The man doesn’t know what to think. The hurt is tremendous of course, but at this moment he doesn’t find it logical to scream or yelp. If there was anything that was going to escape his throat, it wouldn’t find the wind to travel on now. He only has a moment to even try to comprehend the awesome terror that lurches forward from the open closet door.
The mirroring of his eyes told the briefest story before they were so violently torn to pieces. Such an alien crunching sound, slurping and gnawing.
Theo cowered hidden beneath the couch, his hyper acute ears relaying every gruesome detail, but explaining nothing.
The End.
So it begins.
