CHEWING
“Turn off the damn lights” he yelled, for the second time within three minutes. Seemed longer than three minutes.
“Sssshhhh.” It was more jarring than the lights had been, more unwelcome to a mind that still considered itself to be sleeping soundly. “I heard it again.” She didn’t seem really terrified. She was curious, eager, looking for a challenge. Looking for anything to shake up the boredom, really. Maybe there was some fear, but it was swallowed up by all the rest.
Violating the express wishes of every muscle in his silently screaming body, he sat up. “It’s the birds. They’ve got their nests on the walls. They’re probably feeding each other. Or screwing. If birds - do they do that?”
“Yes. But that’s not it. You didn’t hear what I heard.”
“I did.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I heard it the first couple times. And last night.”
“If you heard what I heard you’d be more awake.”
The muscles in his body that weren’t screaming out before did so now, as he stood up. Dark splotches filled his vision for a moment as the blood rushed to and from his head, his sedentary body racing turtle-like to figure out what to do with this unexpected activity. “Look,” he said, attempting to clear his head by shaking it back and forth, “if it’s keeping you up, I’ll go find it. Point me in the direction it came from.”
She pointed nondescriptly.
“From the wall?”
“Well…from that way. Other side of the wall.”
“There’s a closet on the other side of that wall.”
“Then check the closet.”
She had never been paranoid. He’d never even thought of her as being the slightest bit crazy. Perhaps most surprisingly, he’d never engaged in the “my wife is crazy” conversations that were so common at work and at bowling nights - conversations that didn’t even require factual spousal insanity as a prerequisite. Maybe after this, he’d have subject matter to finally be able to join in.
Regardless, he would oblige. At the least, he could make her aware of her own breach of sanity. What further mental collapses such a paradox might cause didn’t cross his mind.
He walked out of the room. She watched the hallway light turn on, and saw his stumbling shadow diminish behind the intervening wall.
She was mainly curious to see how he’d react if there was a burgler in the house, or an ogre, or an extraterrestrial. From the sound, she couldn’t be sure which it was. She’d never had anything but confidence in him. Absolute faith. Which is why she felt comfortable - pleasant even - as she watched him disappear down the hallway. Whatever was in the closet, or in the attic, or knocking from inside the wall, he’d deal with it.
She rolled over in bed, and switched off the light.
Down the hallway, his lumbering footsteps transported him through the kitchen and into the living room. He fumbled for all the light-switches along the way, still not certain whether he was awake enough for this sort of strenuous movement.
The living room was empty. The front door was locked. There was no sound of knocking. No eyes glaring at him from the dark corners behind the couch. The room was completely silent. That was, silent except for the chewing noise coming from inside the closet.
He was probably just dreaming. If he was dreaming, then he had nothing to lose by opening the closet doors and checking out the chewing sound. That was the great thing about dreams - the worst that could happen is waking up, sometimes on the floor or with a wet bed.
“Hell with it.” He muttered out loud, not realizing his mouth had even opened. And the chewing noise stopped. The little bastard - it had heard him! And now it was going to hunker down in the corner of the closet, silent and still, and go undetected until the next time it woke his lady with its chewing and knocking. His mental picture of the little fellow was clear as day: a monkey-like creature with canine teeth jutting out from its ugly little hairless face. Brown in color, with huge black eyes. It almost looked kind, sympathetic - the kind of creature you’d toss a crust of bread at in a park, before quickly realizing your mistake when you find out it really wants to eat you.
Nonsense, of course. He’s heard cockroaches make that sound when they ran across the floor, clicketing and crunching. It was just a cockroach, or maybe ten. Maybe a cockroach party.
He didn’t realize it, but five minutes went by while he stood before the closet door, contemplating small monkey-monsters and cockroach family reunions. Then it hit him like a hammer to the face: of course! The flashlight. He’d need it to search the corners of the closet, no matter what the source of the noise.
He walked back through the kitchen and down the hallway. His body was alert now, his feet no longer shuffling. He didn’t realize it, but he was tiptoeing. Somewhere in the depths of his subconscious, the part of his mind responsible for wetting the bed to supplement the gritty realism of certain dreams, he was paranoid, scared of being heard by - whatever was in the closet.
The light was off in his room. Her light snores were softly drifting from the bed.
“To sleep at a time like this” he thought. It seemed like anger, but he would have denied any such feelings, if there’d been anyone around to accuse him. But there wasn’t. It was just him, alone on the edge of a dark room, inhabited only by his sleeping wife.
He couldn’t turn on the light. That would wake her. And she’d be angry, no doubt. Any angry conversation would alert the chewy monkey, who would likely disappear for good. He couldn’t risk scaring it away.
So he tiptoed into the room. He knew the flashlight was in the dresser drawer, on the bottom, nearest his side of the bed. He doubted he could find it purely by muscle memory, but some fumbling around would no doubt yield successful results.
He stubbed his damn toe. It took a long moment for him to experience the consequential pain. The realization that he had stubbed his toe took no time at all. The realization pain would ensue took a little while longer, settling in like a dark storm cloud promising nothing but unpleasant weather. And the pain itself took its good old time, but hit with a vengeance.
“Ow.”
She breathed in sharply. He held his breath and bit his tongue. He was sure his big toe on the left foot was split down the middle (it wasn’t). Blood was likely pooling around his feet (it wasn’t). The damn bed leg. So much for muscle memory.
He heard her breathing soften again, followed by the light rustle of sheets. She was safely out again.
Clenching his teeth, he put forward the tremendous effort to take another step. His toe throbbed, and the throb rippled through his foot and into his leg. He’d never felt anything so painful in his life.
He reached the dresser without further incident. Thank God. He reached for the lowest drawer, and dug around blindly for a few intolerably long moments. There it was. The flashlight. Why hadn’t he just brought it with him in the first place? It would have saved his toe, which was no doubt beyond all help (it wasn’t).
In a matter of moments - long, halting moments marked by a tiptoed limp - he was back in the hallway. He switched on the flashlight. It worked. Again, thank God. If this was a dream, it wasn’t the awfully horrific kind, where the flashlight flickers, or doesn’t work at all.
He moved on. Through the kitchen, into the living room. He stood face-to-face with the gateway to hell, that was, the closet door.
The chewing had resumed behind it. This reawakened the machine of his imagination, painting pictures of the monster that was lurking there. Not a monkey-thing, anymore. That was a silly fancy. Now it was a cat, with a human face. That is, a cat with dextrous paws and opposable thumbs, its face the face of an old, shrewd businessman who’d just as soon eat your soul as play golf with you. The catman was no doubt feasting on a mouse, or a small child from down the street.
He reached for the doorknob.
Then it occurred to him. He wasn’t dreaming. Not that he’d seriously believed this was all the product of his resting mind (which might have been cause for concern, on its own), but there had been a sliver of hope that this wasn’t exactly, well, real. Him, a respectable kiosk security guard, with a 110 bowling average and a highly cultured taste in popcorn (he could tell the butterscotch from the caramel every time), facing down a carnivorous cat-monkey? That was below him. The injury to his toe was bad enough - he’d be calling in sick, and the doctor would surely write him a note once he saw the damage (he wouldn’t) - but what if the creature gouged out an eyeball, ripped off a testicle or gave him cat-scratch fever? The possibilities were endless and ugly. Bed was a safer place to be. After all, the thing seemed perfectly content in the closet. It hadn’t made its way to the bedroom before, so it likely never would.
He’d made his decision before he realized he’d made it. He was going back to bed. A huge swell of relief came over him. The kind of relief that can only be compared to a woman giving birth and finding her child isn’t a mutated monstrosity, or when a man discovers that his genitals are still in working order after a fling with a vacuum hose. You know what it feels like.
His steps, though still laborious under the pain of the big toe, which he still hadn’t the heart to glance at, knowing full well that it was smashed beyond recognition (it wasn’t), were nonetheless light and carefree on the way back through the kitchen and into the hallway. Life was good. A warm bed was waiting. The monster in the closet would recognize his act of mercy and thank him for it.
He managed to make his way into the bedroom with nary a sound. The flashlight he placed gingerly on the dresser - he would return it to its rightful place come morning light. His rear found the mattress with practiced ease (here the muscle memory served perfectly well.) With a relaxed exhalation, he rolled into bed.
The muscles in his body sighed with collective happiness. The bones creaked one last time before settling in for the night. Darkness turned into emptiness. The vision behind his closed eyes swelled into a massive endless hollow - infinity. Part of his mind knew that he was looking into infinity, and wondered why people made such a fuss about understanding it. Then he was asleep.
Chewing.
Every cell in his body would have screamed, but they were too exhausted. Instead they grunted, tried to stretch, but found themselves too stiff for a stretch to be of any use.
His eyes stayed closed for a moment. They wanted to open, wanted to see why the chewing noise was coming from the bed beside him. But he kept them closed, demanded they stay shut. He didn’t want to know the truth - or at least he wanted to delay it for as long as possible. Damn it, he’d been so content a few moments ago.
A few moments? No, the light leaking through his eyelids told him it was morning. The sun had risen. Had he slept through his alarm? It had been known to happen. Often. So yes, he’d likely slept through his alarm. He would have to call into work with a different excuse than the toe. He should start thinking about that, just as soon as he dealt with the more pressing issue - the chewing in his bed.
Not his first thought, but his twenty-sixth, was “why isn’t she awake? The thing woke her up last night, and that was through a wall. Now it’s in her bed. Maybe she’s just dead tired. Or maybe she is wide awake, but too terrified to move or make a sound. Or maybe the thing is chewing on her. Hmm.”
Part of him knew he’d have to eventually open his eyes. This wasn’t a dream where he could sleep the scariness away - he knew that because of the sharp, stabbing pain that was still in his toe, likely due to the shattered bone and torn nerve endings (it was not due to that).
Like a stagehand laboriously but dutifully pulling open the heavy curtain before the stage (not that he knew anything about that sort of thing - he was a kiosk security guard whose idea of a good time usually involved bowling), he forced his eyelids open.
His wife was sitting on the bed, munching on a bowl of soggy cheerios and reading her book, Finding Your Way in the Dark: A Guide to Self-Discovery in the Age of Social Darkness. She liked that sort of thing.
“It’s about time. It’s almost nine. Work called.”
He was wide awake in an instant. No longer screaming in the agony of forced labor, his muscles sprung to life like elastic. He jumped up out of bed, knocking over the bedside lamp and the flashlight as he did so. The lamp’s bulb shattered.
His wife didn’t flinch, or seem to notice.
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them you were asleep and I couldn’t wake you up.”
“Did you try?”
“No.”
He hurried around the bed to get to the phone. But shattering glass lightbulbs have a way of scattering about over a floor, and his very first step brought his right foot crunching down on a heap of the broken glass.
“Ow.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I need to call work.”
He would deal with the pain. He already had destroyed one foot (he hadn’t), so another was no huge matter at the moment (this one was).
He continued around the bed, tracking smears of blood and chunks of glass. But when he passed the opening to the hallway he stopped in his pained tracks.
“Did you find out what was going on last night?”
She looked at him with eyes that were at the same time sardonic, nonchalant, and condescending. “What are you talking about?”
“There was the noise last night, in the living room closet.”
“Was there? I can’t remember. What time was it?”
Speechless, he took off down the hallway. He was putting on a good show of bravery, anyway, even if his heart wasn’t in it. There was something particularly terrifying about facing the dread creature now, during the daytime; it was like giving reality to a nightmare by bringing it out of dream world.
But face the closet he did, all imagination dead as to what might be inside. Only the fear remained, which was the least fun part.
He reached out a trembling hand for the closet door.
It creaked open.
The creature, caught off guard, sat quickly back on its haunches and looked up at him with guilty eyes.
The damn dog had chewed all the way through his best pair of work shoes.