Chapter 7: A Thing I Call HIM, Chapter 8: A Beat (And Two Notes From Dr. Elemis Pott)

Thing One:  I didn't post my next chapter yesterday, so now you get two chapters.  

Thing Two:  I just realized that out of 18 plays I've been in, 8 of my characters were dudes.

That is all the importance I have to say today.

7
A Thing I Call: HIM

The mug is almost empty.  I swirl the thin layer of cream and the thick black sludge at the bottom, mixing it and slurping the cold remains.

The digital clock on the dresser beside my bed glares in red letters: 2:13 AM.  It’s Wednesday…I hope.  Four hours to go.  Go.  Slow.  Blow.  Crow.  No.  None of the rhymes seem to want to make themselves into poems tonight.  I have to wait for the poems to create themselves.  The notebook lies open on the bed, the stanza cut off mid word.  I tap my pen against the glass rim of the mug.  The poet inside me must have gone to sleep, deciding I could get through the night without him.  My mind slurs.  Like the sludge at the bottom of the mug.  I lean my head a little too hard against a protruding brick corner in the wall.  My cold bare feet that hang off the end of my bed and I adjust my position against the springs in my thin mattress.  They squeak beneath me. 

My head weighs heavier and heavier.  I sink, as if a large hand were shoving me under, warmer, deeper.  I have to stay awake.  HIM will come.  I have to stay awake…

I’m in darkness.  Why darkness?  I must have flipped the switch.  The only light comes from the cracks between the door and the frame, and a strip of yellow light glows between the door and floor.  The door is shut.  Why is it shut?  Did I shut it?

I don’t hear the zapping, explosion Sci-fi sounds of Mom watching movies upstairs. The house doesn’t creak, the pipes in the basement aren’t groaning.  Everything holds it’s breath.  Expect for the foot steps.  They’re heavy against the hollow wood stairs, without rhythm, as though he were stumbling and struggling to keep his legs steady. 

I hate when things are off rhythm.

It grows louder, nearer, till his feet touch the muted cement ground.  Two shadows flicker in the light beneath the door.  Breathing.  Like my breathing, only wet, salivating, drooling, craving.  He bangs on the door twice, interrupting the rhythm of my heart beating.  He bangs three more times.  Harder.  So loud I expect to hear the crack of wood splitting.

I can’t move.  I’m paralyzed to my bed.  I can’t even look away, my neck locks, forcing me to face the door straight on.  I can’t blink.

He finally speaks, “Domino?”

The voice of a corpse.  My voice. 

“Domino, let me in now.  I have someone.  I found her.  Would you like to see?”

The scream lodges in my throat.  I try to close my eyes but they open wider.  I try to run but my muscles restrain me.  The door knob twists, the metal squeaks.

No.  No.  Go away.  Go away.  Why didn’t I lock the door? 

“I have your friends, Domino.  Would you like to join them?”

By the time I’m submerged in the cold water of reality and my eyes open, I can no longer scream.  Actually, I could still scream, and it would probably feel good.  But Mom is upstairs, she would hear.  When I was 5, I would scream because I knew she would hear and come downstairs to be with me.  Now I can no longer use that method to get attention.  Because I don’t need attention.  I just to need to stay awake.  To stop shaking.  Maybe I can drive the fear away.  I if I just dig my finger nails a little deeper into the back of my hand…

The light, though dim and orange, stings my eyes and I squeeze them shut, and blotches appear behind my eyelids.  I move my quivering muscles, reach towards my desk, set down my empty mug, and grab my head phones.

The rhythm begins, and soon my heart beat pulses to right tempo.

8
A Beat

Everything a beat, really.  Time has a beat.  Our hearts have a beat.  Cogs turn.  Blood flows.  We walk to it, tap our pencils to it, blink to it.  Breathe in.  Out.  In.  Out.  Tick.  Tock.  Thump.  Thump.  We’re like the characters in a grandfather clock, everything so perfectly aligned, every cog that moves to move another cog, down the maze of machinery, resulting in something potentially beautiful.

But what if something went off?  What if something threw off the beat?  One little pebble caught in the expanse of machinery, a dust particle in a computer.

What if time forgot what it was doing?  And days began to have no pattern?  For example, what should have been October 22^nd   becomes October 25^th. 

But no one knows any different, and everyone remembers those days in between.  Except you.