Authors: Jamie Wahl
Michael stood there for several seconds, looking at his bag. Then he found the door.
The alley was still deserted.
Randy was right. I should have punched him.
He was smiling from ear to ear as he walked toward the street.
A strange sound from behind made him jump.
Michael turned and looked into the gap between buildings. There was barely enough space for a small car to pass through, and it was strewn with garbage and discarded pieces of past sets that leaned against the walls. There wasn’t much light. He strained to see what had made the sound, but all he saw was two large dumpsters and a couple of drifts of filthy New York snow. He turned to go.
There it was again. It was like a scratching…then a whimpering sound. Michael’s stomach churned and he spun around and looked again.
Something moved between the two dumpsters. He peered into the alley, edging closer.
With his eyes focused ahead, his foot caught on something and he fell, landing hard on his forearms. Bits of ice and dirty snow stuck to his jacket. He rolled onto his side to see what had tripped him.
It was a shiny green high-heeled shoe.
“Ma’am?” he asked urgently as he got to his feet.
There was no answer. Feeling like he was not ready to see the rest of what might be behind the dumpster, he thought of running back into the theatre for help.
She might be hurt.
He pressed on, feeling around in his pockets for his phone. He rounded a trash pile and saw something that made is stomach lurch.
There was a small stream of dark liquid running out from between the dumpsters.
Michael’s heart beat wildly. He felt entirely unprepared for what he was about to see.
I’ll go back for help
, he thought numbly, already half turning.
An enormous shadowed form rose from between the dumpsters. He could feel eyes staring right into his. Michael may as well have been made of stone. In three huge strides the figure closed the distance between them.
But I was just safe inside
, he thought stupidly.
I was just there.
“Help!” he whispered.
The figure seemed too tall to be human, and too wide to be real. Michael watched in slow motion as an enormous fist was raised. And then he was flying across the alley, pain racing through every inch of him. He hit the old brick building with enough force to drive the breath from his body. Light burst across his vision, for a moment it seemed the alley was full of fireworks. He landed face down on the filthy street.
Strong hands lifted him off the wet pavement. The world was spinning in grays and blacks. He saw a second man kneeling near the dumpsters, the dim light shining on his leather jacket.
Then he saw her.
Stark white. Body twisted. Eyes open and blank. Hair cascading over the trash, streaked with red. There were two horrible gashes cut into her neck, from which blood still seeped out in weak gushes.
“Hey!” The man in the jacket stood and gestured back down the alley. Michael thought he heard the theatre door open and shut, and voices on the street.
Michael stared up into the broad face of the man who held him a foot off the pavement. His dull eyes swung in and out of focus. A nasty smirk played across his face, and he threw Michael between the dumpsters. There was nothing Michael could have done. He landed horribly on top of her still-warm body.
Michael screamed, scrambling to get away from the corpse. A searing pain stabbed his ribs and ran all the way down to his toes.
“Shut him up!”
The other man leaned over him, a mass of brown curls silhouetted in the dim light. “He’s scared out of his mind.” He looked at Michael in disgust, his dark eyes taunting. The man’s mouth was crimson with blood. It was splashed across his cheeks and dripped from his strong chin. A red drop fell from the tip of his nose and splashed on Michael’s chest. Michael’s stomach lurched. Fear trapped his voice in his throat.
“Yeah, he’s a real winner.” The larger of the two looked Michael over and smirked. He was Italian, with broad shoulders and a thick body. He wore a gray T-shirt and jeans. He looked like a normal guy and the devil himself at the same time. He picked up a two-by-four from on top of the dumpster and raised it above his head. Michael never had a chance of escaping.
Michael was having a dream. It was a hazy wash of images, all gray and black and spinning fast. He heard the sounds of the city at night like they were on the other side of some vast wall. There were lights and moving doorways and a feeling of floating. Someone had just been hovering over him. He felt cold hands on his chest. Everything turned red….
The first thing he was aware of next was pain. Intense, pulsing pain in his temples. Terrible images flashed lightning-quick through his mind.
It was just a dream
, he told himself, trying to still his breath.
God, my head is going to explode
. He pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to dull the searing pain. H
e shivered.
Why am I half naked?
He lay there on his bed in only his Spiderman boxer briefs, his pale, scrawny body frigid and aching. He struggled to remember undressing. Then a much more troubling question came to mind.
How did I get home
?
Michael stood and looked around his apartment, trying to figure out what had happened. He remembered lights. Fireworks?
He threw a blanket around his shoulders and walked numbly to the open window. He stared at the latch. He had never been able to get it to budge, yet there it was, unlocked. Little flakes of rust peppered the worn hardwood below the window. He shut the window. He stood there staring at the floor as if the displaced rust would animate and tell him how it had gotten there. Glancing about the room he saw nothing had been stolen.
What in the world
…
?
He remembered the show. Tom’s forgotten line…Charlotte’s smile…Randy in the alley…then….
Nothing.
He rubbed his eyes again and shuffled to the bathroom. For how he was feeling, he was sure he must have been knocked unconscious. But, looking in the mirror, there was no injury. Just his normal, Irish-white skin and lopsided mop of brown curls. He felt slow and stupid. He just stared at his eyes in the mirror.
Eyes
.
A horrible flood of memories rushed past.
There had been a dead woman. He had seen her. He remembered her ashen face, eyes reflecting the dim, flickering street light but taking nothing in.
No. It didn’t really happen.
The alarm by his bed buzzed, and each blaring, ugly noise seemed to be echoing through every inch of his body. Michael walked stiffly toward the nightstand. He flipped the button to off. The pain in his head eased greatly.
It’s just a headache.
It was just a dream
, he told himself sternly.
Then he saw the time.
9:42 a.m.
"Ah, crap!"
Michael frantically rummaged through his many piles of semi-dirty and very dirty clothes, looking for jeans that smelled sanitary. He found a pair under the bed and threw them on. There was a gray Beatles t-shirt on the nightstand and one gray and red wool sock halfway to the bathroom. He spotted a black dress sock near his shoes by the door. Jacket. Scarf. Keys. He slammed the door behind him and raced down the hall for the stairs.
"Ah...bag!" he shouted, getting his keys back out of his pocket and rushing through the door again.
Where is it, where is it
? His cell phone rang from somewhere in the bathroom. It was in the bag hanging on the doorknob. He fished it out and threw the bag over his shoulder.
"Hello?" he yelled.
"You are so dead," said Randy.
"I know! I know! I slept in. I'm leaving right now. Has it started yet?" Michael asked in a panic, racing down the stairs.
"No, but you've only got a few minutes. He already asked me where you are. I don't think he'll let you in late. You better run."
"I'll be there as fast as I can," Michael said, taking the front steps three at a time and running out onto the street. He swallowed his nausea at the thought of having to tell his mother he took a zero on the midterm and tried too hard to stop thinking of what he could barely remember.
Michael rounded the corner to the mathematics hall at exactly 10 a.m., chest heaving from his sprint through the streets.
“Hey, Michael,” said Elvis, the school’s head janitor. He was standing in the way, calmly ringing water out of a mop. “You kids get so worked up when the tests come around…third hall of vomit this week.”
“Sorry,” Michael said, rushing past, nearly out of breath.
The freshly mopped floor glistened in the mid-morning light streaming in through the tall windows that ran the length of the hall, and the brilliant orange “Caution: Wet Floor” signs gleamed like torches along the black and white tile.
Dr. Rogers stood at the end of the long hall, in the doorway to the last classroom, with a hand on the handle of his classroom door and his eyes on his watch.
“Dr. Rogers!” Michael called, one of his hands pressed against his chest, attempting to ease the wheezing sound his lungs made every time he exhaled.
The old man looked up, his face a grumpy scowl.
“Mr. Wallace,” he said, looking back down at his watch, “You have 29 seconds before I close this door.”
“Yes, sir,” Michael said as he tried to step with grace down the wet hall. His nearly tread-less sneakers were useless. He wobbled horribly with every step, and grabbed the nearest window sill for support.
“Always late, Mr. Wallace,” Dr. Rogers sneered at him. The Professor’s 80 years had twisted his flat, gaunt features into a nasty collection of wrinkles.
I’m doing the best I can
, Michael thought bitterly. He was basically ice skating now. He thought about taking off his shoes.
“18 seconds, Mr. Wallace”, Dr. Rogers said with glee.
Michael abandoned all attempts at pride and pulled himself down the hall by the window sills, his long legs looking angular and ridiculous as he tried to steady himself. Several people in the classroom could see him now and they were gesturing to others to come over.
“Go, Michael, go!” Randy shouted from the front of the queue.
Michael‘s cheap sneakers lost all traction, and he fell spectacularly onto his back, elbows smacking the wet floor and bag spilling its contents in every direction.
“Come on, man!” Randy shouted, “10!”
Randy’s energy was infectious. The other students chimed in. “9!”
Michael tore off his shoes and got to his feet. Charlotte sprinted out of the classroom gracefully and started shoving things into his bag as he got his balance.
“You’re hopeless,” she smiled, and replaced
Advanced Accounting
. The harsh winter sunshine streamed through her long hair and gave her an actual halo of brightness. Michael was momentarily stunned as Charlotte handed him his shoes.
“8, 7!” the class shouted.
Michael stared down at his mismatched socks. He hopped unabashedly on the wool one. Charlotte shoved a handful of pens into the bag and held out an arm for support.
“6, 5!” they said excitedly as the odd pair hobbled through the classroom door.
“Thank you,” Michael said, his face bright red.
“Sit down!” Dr. Rogers shouted. Michael hurried across the classroom, leaving wet sock prints on the burgundy carpet all the way. “And you, too, Miss Birdwell,” he snapped at Charlotte.
“All of you, get back to your seats,” he began, “It is time for your midterm exam. As I said before, there is no curve. If you studied,” he said, his eyes sparkling sadistically, “you’ll be fine”.
“Any cheating will result in the harshest punishment the dean will allow. Mr. Wallace!” he shouted.
Michael stood immediately, a sudden surge of nausea making his knees buckle. “Yes, sir?”
“Pass these out,” he held out a heavy stack of tests. Michael rushed to take them from him. “Ms. Birdwell!”
Charlotte joined Michael at the front of the class.
He handed her the other half of the tests and pointed to the opposite side if the room.
Charlotte smiled at Michael. Michael smiled back. Randy coughed loudly.
“Go!” Dr. Rogers shouted, marching over to his desk. “The test begins now. You have two hours.”
Michael passed out his half of the tests as quickly as possible. He could feel his blood race each time he and Charlotte met in the middle of the rows. He didn’t dare look up at her.
When Michael returned to his seat with his test, his nausea increased. He took off his scarf, feeling very dizzy. He steadied himself and took off his jacket, too, laying both of them on the back of his chair.
He stared down at his paper. The whiteness of it seemed like a spotlight to his pounding head. He sat and tried to focus.
Remember the formulas. He picked up his pencil to write the formulas on the margin like he always did. His vision seemed to swim in and out of focus. He stared hard at the paper.
I can’t believe I’m here, trying to do this after what happened.
No. Nothing happened. Think about it. You’re not hurt. What you think you remember couldn’t have happened. Focus on the test. Deal with this after.
He scratched the first mark on his paper and almost cried out in alarm at a deafening sound. He looked up, startled. Everyone was glued to their papers. No one had even looked up once. He felt that his head would split open from the sheer volume of it.
Then it stopped. Everything was normal again.
What the hell
? Everyone was working at the problems, unbothered.
“Mr. Wallace,” called out Dr. Rogers, “Keep your eyes on your paper! Do you really want to press your luck?”
Michael returned to his test. He picked up his pencil and began to write. This time he really did cry out, and covered his ears with both hands, shutting his eyes against the pain. But he couldn’t shut out the sound. It was an earsplitting scratching noise. He tried to think through the pain; it was like a million rats in the walls or- or pencils on paper.
Michael could hear the pencils moving on the paper louder than any percussion band.
He opened his eyes. Several students were staring at him.
“Mr. Wallace!” Dr. Rogers called angrily.
Michael couldn’t help it. He yelped again. He wanted to escape the sounds
—
the pencils, the phones vibrating, the buzzing of the iridescent lights overhead, and the shouting professor. Every movement from every chair was clear as a bell and horrifically magnified.
He saw Randy get to his feet in the next row.
“Sit down!” yelled Dr. Rogers.
Michael got to his feet and stumbled down the aisle toward the closed classroom door.
He rushed past everything- all he could think of was getting away from the sound.
“Michael!” Randy shouted in alarm.
“Are you okay?” the nearest student asked.
Then it started to ease off. He could hear everything alarmingly well, but it wasn’t deathly loud. For a moment everything was back to normal. The sound swam in and out of his head like he was under water. “It’s…” Michael choked out, bent over by the door, “…migraine.”
That was all Michael could think of. When he was a boy he was plagued with migraines every month, sometimes every week. They stopped him from getting out of bed, they made him throw up. This was nothing like that. This was a thousand times worse than that, but it was all he could think of.
His head now buzzed with a new sensation. It was like being led blindfolded into a candle store and being knocked down by all the smells unexpectedly. He doubled over with nausea and he threw up right there on the carpet. Then he fell over, trying to hold his stomach and his head at the same time.
Randy was at his feet in a moment, and even Dr. Rogers was hobbling over.
“Get him to the doctor,” he said to Randy after a glance at Michael’s ashen complexion.
“Yes,” Randy said urgently, lifting Michael to his feet. “Wait—Charlotte! You still have my keys!”
Michael saw Charlotte running toward them from the top tier of the lecture-style classroom, rifling through her bag. In a panic, she threw Randy his keys.
Randy was almost fully supporting Michael, and the keys were coming at them. Charlotte yelled “Sorry!” even as they flew off the mark toward the back of Michael’s bobbing head. Michael braced himself-
Then he caught them.
Everyone looked at him blankly; mouths hanging open. Michael was slumped over on Randy, yet still, unaccountably, tightly gripping the keys. Michael was as shocked as anyone. He stared at his hand for what seemed like minutes.
The spell was broken as Michael threw up again, little chunks of pineapple dribbling down his shirt in a stream of stomach acid.
Randy rushed him out the door, as Dr. Rogers yelled at the rest of the students to get back to work.
Randy shut the door, and the sound slammed into him like a bus.