I woke up sweating. This was the third day in a row I had the same dream and the third day in a row I unconsciously hit the snooze button on my alarm clock until it gave up.
That damn dream....
The entirety of the dream, which seemed like it lasted for hours, was me watching the old man whispering to me. His eyes were sunken, his sparse white hair flowing in a non-existent breeze, his smile seemed to wrap around his head. I sat, perhaps in a chair, as a man that looked more like an excited corpse knelt in front of me and quickly whispered happy hate and soothing sickness at me. An inability to remember exactly what was said plagued the previous two days, much like today, but I remember that the content was as vile as a rotten diseased rat and the delivery was as comforting as a mother's embrace.
I yearned to sit there for my nightly lesson, a yearning that made me uneasy.
For the third day I sat up, ready to rush to make up for the thirty minutes that I was slapping at a button on my alarm clock that I had not touched for years before. I would have to skip something this morning. My shower was skipped yesterday, breakfast the day before. Neither sounded appealing, so another way to shave thirty minutes off my morning or …. call in and say I am having a car problem to buy myself the time.
There is more that one way to gut and fuck an alley cat...
I chuckled at the thought, remembering that saying being less abrasive when I was younger, asking myself why the hell a saying like that even existed, asking myself how many ways there could be to even go about doing something like that, who would even do something like that.
You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you.....
By the time I was done, lost in the loop of my own thoughts, I was already dialing my work.
“Daddy Joe's Pizza, this is Athena. Can I start with your phone number?” The voice sounded defeated.
“Hey Athena, it is Ron, I am going to be late today my-” Something popped in to my head, an alarmed realization that there was a misfire in the system earlier.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, Ron. No one ever says anything about gutting and fucking them. Get it together man.
I gulped and changed course, not so much for work, but for myself... “I think I am sick”, the words mumbled out as a statement to the voice on the other line and an introspective question to myself.
“Okay, do you want to talk to Joe?” Athena asked, her voice sounding further away.
“No. Just tell him I will talk to him later when I am feeling better.” The words spilled out quickly and I hung up. At least my behavior made it sound like I wasn't well.
You aren't well. How many subtle thoughts does it take to snap, Ron?
I walked back to my bed, the center piece of my shitty apartment, and calmly sat down. I needed to start counting thoughts and remembering everything that crossed my mind recently. I already knew that this wasn't the first odd thought that crossed my mind in the last three days, but couldn't remember which ones were normal and which were bat-shit insane.
How does one go about analyzing their own thoughts? It isn't like you are an unbiased third party, and is this going to make you worse or better?
Rocking back and forth I started to analyze my previous days.
•••
The first day I could remember the dream I woke up almost thirty minutes late. After the dream settled, as much as it could, I wondered if my alarm clock was broken and took a minute to test it.
If it is broken I can buy a new one. Go to the store, go in, pick one out, walk up to the register, attack the woman behind the counter with a knife, I hope she has children that will miss her, she wont see it coming, pay for it on that Visa gift card I got from mom on Christmas.
I remember planning out how I was going to buy the damn thing and feeling inadequate that I had to concern myself with how I would pay for something as cheap as an alarm clock. The life of a pizza delivery guy isn't a rich one.
The alarm clock worked fine and I decided to skip breakfast, which for most would be lunch time, quickly showering instead. I remember something happening, something with the mirror in the shitty bathroom of my shitty apartment.
You saw someone standing behind you, for only a second.
I remember jumping and turning around, ready to attack whomever broke in to my apartment and quickly realizing it was only my roommate. The old man that shares my one bedroom apartment.
He sleeps in the bed with you and whispers to you at night to comfort you. He screams beautiful songs after you sleep. Without him you would be alone. Without him you would be weak.
Those thoughts struck me as off at the time, a product of a stupid dream. I left for work, pissed because I was hungry. Mad at myself for oversleeping.
My drive was regular, past the bus stop as the kindergartners were let off to meet with their parents. Normal routine Tuesday, normal boring thoughts while some song played through the one working speaker in my beat up Hyundai.
I remembered laughing as I changed the lyrics to Hotel California and considered writing them down when I got to work. On a receipt perhaps, giving some customer the gift of my distracted creativity, maybe the person would be some recording artist slumming it on a Tuesday evening and I would be famous.
Work was busy though, I didn't have a chance. The funny lyrics that I imagined Weird Al Yankovic singing to the popular tune had faded. Lyrics lost to time...
In a dark shitty bedroom, old man in my bed
Warm sound of his whispers, echoing throughout my head
Up ahead are those children, oh it would be a delight
My car is heavy and the kids are small
Their parents would freeze in fright
Shit, I needed a pen.
•••
I lifted myself up from my bed, analyzing my actions of the previous days and the thoughts that accompanied them was going nowhere and making me feel even crazier. Mundane nothingness being grasped on to my the clutching hands of my mind. Old wrinkled pale hands with yellow crusted nails that barely held to the rotten skin around them grasping at fleeting moments that meant nothing.
Finding a pen, and one of the many delivery slips stuffed in to the pocket of work khakis I had worn the day before crumpled on my floor, I quickly wrote down the lyrics.
Go to work, you are fine. You need the money. Athena and Joe need your help, what if it is busy? What if they need you to pick up the slack? What if the oven malfunctions and the whole building lights up and you are here, instead of watching, instead of smelling the sickly smell of burnt dough, meat, hair, human flesh. The amount of cardboard in there would turn the whole place in to a fucking matchstick.
Reasoning with myself, I got ready.
•••
The drive to work was more annoying than usual. The commute to a job that consists mainly of driving is like underlining the question of “What am I doing with my life” in red ink. Today was worse.
I found myself constantly turning my radio up, my door speaker competing with my roommate that insisted on coming along. He sat in the passenger seat, his white hair rapidly flowing despite the windows being up and the air conditioner off. The old man sat, his torso twisted to face me, one hand on the dash and the other on the headrest of his seat, screaming constantly without pause. My shitty radio couldn't compete, but eventually I found that his screams made a much better tune than the shitty twelve songs the station would repeat. Singing along with him, a low sound vibrating somewhere from deep inside him and my shitty lungs and vocal cords trying to match tune.
Three blocks from the brick and mortar building that I called work for the last six years, I stopped at a red light. A family in a minivan sat in the lane next to me, and self conscious I stopped singing. My roommate continued to stare at me, unblinking, screaming his tune. My face flushed red, worried that they would look over and see two guys in a car singing loudly and a feeling in my gut crept up and about choked me as I waited for the red light to turn green.
You don't have a fucking roommate Ron.
I slowly looked over and realized the seat next to me was empty. I was alone in my car, a pile of week old dispatch sheets sat in my passenger seat. Looking up I saw the old man sitting in the back of the minivan, next to the little blond girl that was sleeping a moment ago in the back. His face stared at me through the window, still screaming. The van started to move forward and I became jealous.
What makes that little shit so special?
Gunning my car I passed the van, honking and flipping the family off.
If you cut them off and break they might crash. He can't ride with them if their Grand Caravan is a heap of mangled metal and flesh on the side of the road.
Behind me they turned right and disappeared. My roommate going along with them to dinner and a movie, or whatever non-pizza delivery related event brought them out. I understood, nothing about my job was glamorous and can't blame a man for wanting to enjoy an evening on the town.
As I pulled up to Daddy Joe's my roommate was waiting out front by the large glass window that was covered in weekly deal decals and a large sign that read “We Deliver!”. He had stopped screaming and now flickered in and out of reality with impatience, keeping to the corner of my eye as punishment for forgetting the night he moved in.
I could feel the sting of a blood vessel bursting off center of my left eye, in the place my roommate flickered, as I thought about the night he moved in.
•••
Four nights ago I was laying in bed lonely, like usual. Thirty years old, alone, minimum wage plus tips ensuring me a steady supply of cereal and a small apartment. That night I told myself that if things didn't change in another year I would kill myself.
At some point before drifting off to sleep I lightly spoke a depressed phrase to the emptiness around me, “If someone else wants this life they can have it”.
I woke up to a slow rhythmic knock on my door... or was it my window? I can't remember if it was even something in my apartment or in my head.
Slow rhythmic knocking on glass..
Rap rap rap
Out of my thoughts I snapped and realized that Joe was standing at the driver's side window of my car and I quickly cranked the window down.
“Thought you were sick buddy”, Joe's gruff voice and use of buddy did nothing to hide his accusatory tone.
“Feeling better, decided to come in”
I cranked the window up and swung the door of my car open, about hitting the giant of a man that owned and operated this fine establishment in the gut, and got out.
Holding my door open as I stood there, I saw my roommate slowly crawl over my seat, his stare locked on to me, and crawl out in to the parking lot. He crawled off behind me, hair rapidly waving as if in a hurricane. At some point while I was zoned off he must have gotten in and sat down in the passenger seat again.
Joe didn't see him Ron, why didn't Joe see him? Is it because he isn't real, or is it because Joe is a fucking idiot who doesn't deserve to see him? Does Joe even see you?
“Alright buddy, if you are feeling fine I will clock you on” Joe walked away towards the glass door that had Daddy Joe's Pizza written across it, “Don't forget your topper”.
•••
“Daddy Joe's, this is Ron, can I start with-” Before I could finish the sentence I could hear the screaming. It reminded me of a chorus of women with burning hot coals being pushed down their throats. Every scream was a tally mark, broken by a sick gurgling noise. The tallies formed a phone number than I punched in to the outdated computer system in front of me.
“Would you like to hear our specials?”
The sound of frantic murmuring on the other end relayed a “No thank you”.
The orders were hard to take because the customers wouldn't slow down and take their time. Screaming, gurgling, moaning and weeping their orders in some primal language over the phone. I preferred the static of the day prior, it was easier on the mind. Not only that, my roommate leaned over the counter and held his smiling, unblinking, sunken face inches away from mine the entire time I was taking orders. In between calls he would whisper inhumanly fast about all of the things we would do together.
“Ron, you are dispatched!” Joe yelled from the counter where we bagged and organized our deliveries. The stacks of blue heat bags underneath the counter reminded me of neatly stacked corpses and I wondered why we waste so much space burying our dead and smiled.
I bagged my orders and grabbed my slips and walked to the door. “Driver out!” I shouted, and looked back at Athena who was slapping dough near the counter.
The sockets where her eyes once were stared back at me and she opened her mouth to scream.
“Buckle up and drive safe!” Echoed through the empty halls of my mind as I watched her body fall to the floor.
“Thanks! I will!” I shouted as I bounced out the door to go on my deliveries.
•••
The day went on beautifully and I questioned why I was so alarmed in the morning. My thoughts seemed organic and natural, nothing out of the norm, and I was unable to pinpoint anything abnormal that would draw me to analyzing my own mental state.
My roommate proved to be very popular and I found him at every delivery mingling with the people inside. He recognized me and would stare at me from the opposite side of family's living rooms and in the upstairs windows. Despite the fact that the customers and I had a mutual friend, tips were average and I kept my interactions professional. If I really wanted to I could always stop by some time later and visit, using my roommate as an icebreaker.
A fucking ice pick is a better icebreaker.
As night fell the deliveries slowed down and my roommate road with me once again. He crawled back and forth in the back seat of my car, quickly whispering. Every time I would look in my rear-view mirror he would be looking at me, rapidly grinding his jaw as he smiled at me.
“I am sorry I was jealous when you went off with that family in the van” I spoke softly, feeling genuine remorse. “I get you are popular and you have more friends than just me”.
I talked as he climbed out of the back window, somehow, and was now on the hood of my car, blocking my view as I drove down the empty highway. He held on to the hood and wrapped his torso around to my driver side window and, with a slow steady rhythm, bashed his face against the window next to my head.
Thump
“If you want to hang out with other people..”
Thump
“I understand. It is just these last few..”
Thump
“days have been amazing. Having someone that..”
Thump
“cares and understands.”
Thump
He isn't real Ron, you have either lost your fucking mind or are possessed, possibly both. Your grip on reality has slipped and you are falling.. falling..
Thump
falling...
Thump
falling...
Bump
My car jerked up and down hard and my roommate began screaming at the window in some strange form of ecstasy as he stared in at me.
I let the car continue to roll, happy that he was happy for the moment, and looked behind me to see what exactly I had ran over.
I hope it was a fucking old woman, or a nun, or a child, or a stroller, or a wayward baby crawling across the street splattered unknowing the joys in life that it lost and...
It was a dog, possibly a golden retriever. The body laid on its side just beyond my trunk and it lifted its head in a dying daze.
Start screaming, when the owners come out run them over too. Fido and Steve and Megan and little Robby and baby Casey all laying neatly organized like broken silverware in a five star restaurant in hell.
My roommate was sitting next to me, begging me with his sunken eyes to make a scene. Behind the milky pupils of his eyes I could see the flames of his desire, the flames of my desire... the flames of our desire. His jaw, or what was left of it in this light, was grinding so fast with anticipation that I could feel the grit of teeth in my own mouth. The noise from his grinding and his slow whispering became deafening as I looked at him.
It was because of this I did not hear my driver's side door open, nor the shouting, and it was only when I felt the hand on my shoulder that I turned my face. A large fist moved towards my face so quickly that I heard the noise of my nose crushing and saw the sparkles of pain before my eyes registered that it had made contact.
•••
Looking at the clock it was six twenty-eight, the second day in a row that my alarm clock failed me. This coincided with another dream of that old man whispering to me. A fuzzy memory of me waking up and seeing him laying next to me blended with memories of sitting in a chair and patiently listening to his message like an eager student with a charismatic tutor.
The day before seemed odd in retrospect as I took in my surroundings. I felt haunted by the man from my dreams, ideas came and went that felt off.
One man's junk life is another man's treasured vessel to vomit his sickness upon the world, so let go of your shit and share you useless pile of lonely shit. I have waited forty years to have the chance to hate again, spat on the feet of Satan himself and wondered the endless plains of nightmares laughing at the benign shit that scares the souls of men like you.
That saying has been around forever, must be something to it.
I had skipped breakfast the day before and was miserable until lunch. At times I was shaky, as shaky as my roommate gets sometimes as he stands in the corner of the room watching me.
You don't have a roommate man, get it together.
A gamble had to be made. I had sweated quite bad in my sleep and there was a very good chance I would smell like a bucket of bile and vinegar by the end of my shift, but maybe with enough deodorant I could hide it. The shower has to be skipped today.
Grabbing a pack of crackers and peanut butter I sat down for a quick breakfast on a small chair next to my mini refrigerator. As I repeatedly spread peanut butter on my crackers and ate each one, I watched my roommate crawl out from under the sheets of my bed and playfully drag himself towards me. His hands twisted unnaturally as he grabbed on to the carpet below and pulled his weight, head cocked up to watch me eat, he drew nearer and nearer with each cracker.
I should work out.
•••
I came to and the world started to rush up like a freight train. My pride hurt more than my nose.
Knocked unconscious in one punch. You should work out.
Quickly I realized that I had been dragged out of my car by a rather large and angry man with a dark brown beard. He lumbering over me, holding me by my polo shirt collar.
“You killed my fucking dog and almost hit my girlfriend!” Spit landed on my face as he screamed his anger out at a the bleeding pizza guy below him. I was in no position to do anything except give up, and looked around for my roommate to help.
Sitting in my passenger seat my roommate was watching, breathing heavily, grinding his teeth and smiling. It comforted me that he would watch, that we could share this intimate moment.
My head started to shake back and forth with the angry man's arm, “Are you fucking listening to me asshole? I am going to beat the shit out of you”.
I looked up to him and half smiled, feeling the warm blood run down to the creases of my mouth and said the second thing that came to my mind.
We will kill this fucker and his girlfriend. We will gut the whole damn world, we will summon the lost souls of hell and share in the wonder of plague and famine caused by pure hate. We will eat this fucker's dog as we fuck his corpse.
Then....
Give up.
“I give up.” I muttered slowly, and saw his fist raise once more.
•••
I wish the horrors that awaited me were unspeakable. I wish that what lies beyond, in the depths of the shadows that surround us and the darkness of night that blankets us - or maybe the depths of my own depravity and mental illness that waited until I was thirty years and four months old - was enough to break my mind. Instead I became whole and had to watch. Not only watch what I did to that man, what I did to his girlfriend, the dog's corpse, the old couple that lived next door that opened their door when the screaming started.
Like the screening of a movie, I repeatedly jumped at the surprises of my own body's actions. Watching as I crept around the corner of another house and surprised the woman inside. Her scream was unexpected and, if I had any control left over any of my physical form, I would have shat myself when she turned wide eyed in terror. Every time I jumped in this rapid act of terror it was only my soul that flinched.
I watched as I took her scissors, the ones she had kept on her kitchen counter this sad night, and carved in to her body after my hands crushed her windpipe. The feelings made their way through a one way connection, a connection I would have severed if I could. Her skin was soft in my hands, but springy and tight as my hand pushed the tip of the scissors in to her thigh.
He doesn't fucking blink and I can't close my eyes!
For the first time in days my internal voice and my mind were working together.
He, me, we.... It all depends on perspective... gathered the blood in our hands and began to draw strange shapes and words on the white wall of this poor lady's kitchen. Symbols and letters that made art out of gore.
And then I saw them.
Flooding from every shadow in this poor woman's house were the dead. Each new mangled face screamed as it crawled from one dark corner or another, pouring out like roaches.
Roaches with human forms and violent histories. Roaches that can't let go of this world and angrily waited for an opportunity to live once more. Selfish roaches with agendas broiled from years of watching the living ignore them.
We walked to the poor woman's bathroom, and for a second I forgot about all of this and thought a normal thought reserved for normal people in normal circumstances.
Who the fuck puts a wall mirror in front of the fucking toilet. That must be so uncomfortable.
My body sat us down on the toilet, the seat cracking from the force of us plopping down, and I saw what I had become in the mirror. I saw the man that had tricked my mind in to believing he belonged. Tricked my mind in to thinking those thoughts were normal and mine.
He began to whisper, staring at us in the mirror. Vile words delivered in a soothing tone that continued on for what seemed like hours.
•••
I woke up, the dream of the man whispering fresh in my mind. My clock had failed me again. The cage of my mind rattled as I sat up and felt comfort that my roommate was standing in the shadow of the corner of my room.
You don't have a fucking roommate.
Submitted June 24, 2019 at 01:10PM by Odewise http://bit.ly/31SFOFh
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