Chapter Two - 2:27 A.M.

Kyle meets Simon for the first time.

2:27 A.M.

 

          CLICK!

          My eyes opened to an illuminated wall-- a poster of Kathy Bates from her Misery days, holding a sledgehammer with the warning: "You Should Be Writing. No, Seriously" typed in Courier font to her left, hung on it as if it were a rosary in Van Helsing's rec room; only his was for warding off vampires and mine, distraction-- Youtube mostly. Amy had found the photo online and had it blown up and framed for my 29th birthday. She was good that way and it was the one thing of hers I'd kept because even though she had bought it for me, it reminded me more of Annie Wilkes than the four years we were together. Whenever I looked at it, I was back to writing. It was a gift that later, I think, Amy regretted giving me.

          When I woke up for the second time that morning, though, I had no intentions of diving back into my book. I was tired. Tired, but mostly, annoyed by what the motion detector in my backyard considered motion. My fingers slid behind the window curtain, pulled it to the side, and again, exposed nothing but vacant driveway. The way my garage door was cracked open, just enough for Geezer to let himself in and out, made the driveway that ended at its mouth look like the long tongue of a monster that had passed out from eating too many of the neighborhood children.

          "The hell?" I'd asked myself the question while giving the backyard one last thorough looking-over. A small white gate separated the garage and its cement tongue from the rest of the backyard, but it had been too dark to see what lay to the left of it. Had the light from the motion detector been bright enough though, it would have revealed a patch of grass with a splintery gazebo at its center. Both the grass and the gazebo that sat on it were losing their fresh coats of green and white respectively; returning instead to a dilapidated brown that had likely began its degrading process around the same time Amy left. Funny how she had been the reason why so many of the things in our relationship stayed alive; everything except for our actual relationship that is... but, perhaps, that was my fault. Perhaps, our relationship had been the only thing she'd left me responsible for-- all I had to do was pay attention to that, but I didn't. I couldn't. Writing had been the other woman that wrecked it all for us. Writing; the jealous, needy b***h who'd wound up winning my attention in the end. Just as she always had.

          Before I could let the curtain go and reattempt sleep as if it were an arcade game requesting another token to continue, something green had escaped from underneath the garage door that flashed down the driveway in a hurry. Judging by how fast it had left my sight, it was probably a tennis ball-- something small and designed to roll with the speed of a cockroach on Red Bull. A few seconds later, Geezer followed suit, storming out of the garage with the urgency of a fire truck on pursuit of a wild fire. Had there been traffic signals to mind, Geezer would have disregarded them and left a six-car pile-up in his wake. By that point, I didn't need my glasses to enhance the clarity of what I'd just seen-- they were wide open with the realization that I was, or at least should have been, home alone.

          Maybe it's Steven. Maybe Steven left his last condom in a pair of pants that were in the dryer out back and he decided to grab it before heading over to his girl's place for some after hours squid, I remember theorizing as I heard Geezer crash into the gate, likely with the tennis ball slipping out from his jaws. When I looked over at the cable box and saw what time it was though, I immediately debunked my own theory. Steven wouldn't spend thirty minutes looking for a condom. He'd just as soon leave without one and convince his partner that foreskin was a biologically natural version of that over-the-counter, over-priced form of contraception. The women he had tendency of hooking up with would probably buy it anyway... along with some diapers and a pack of mashed carrots a year later. 

          Well, then, what the hell did you just witness, Kyle? Maybe Geezer was playing catch with himself?

          "Yeah, right," I'd said out loud to a quiet bedroom, continuing the conversation I was having with myself, outside of my head. Geezer wouldn't chase a ball I threw, let alone one he threw himself... unless maybe it was covered in turkey gravy. I waited a bit for Geezer to return to the spotlight and when he did, he came trotting back to the garage, proudly chewing on a ball that had failed to make it past the front yard gate. I watched him slip underneath the garage door with it and then get swallowed up by the shadows underneath. That's when a chill traveled up my spine-- the light in the garage was on. Turned on after I remembered specifically turning it off some hours prior.

          I let my hand go from the curtain and pushed myself off of my bed, staring at my bedroom window as if it had been my television screen the morning of September 11th, 2001. The feeling I had at that moment was much the same. Disbelief that I had seen what I had seen; the first layer of a horrific onion that had been pulled away to reveal many more lying underneath it. I shoved my feet under my bed, blindly finding my slippers, and grabbed my glasses from off the night stand. Once I put them on, I looked around my bedroom for something that would compensate as a weapon. A butter knife, resting in one of the empty cups I'd used to stir the coffee in it with-- one that would have been washed and in the kitchen drawer by now had Amy crossed its path-- was all there was. I immediately grabbed it and headed out the back door.

          When I opened the door, the night hit me the way I imagine the ocean hit the passengers of the Titanic. It was uncommonly cold for a night in Southern California and was more painful than brisk. My breath escaped from my lips in thick clouds and my skin immediately dried out to flakes. The sky was crystal dark-- upwards of a million stars scattered across its black canvas and glistening as if they'd been covered in radioactive frost. When I looked at the garage, the light that poured out from the motion detector above the door looked like the abduction beam of a UFO. While it looked warm and inviting, the force that it drew me in with was anything but. The force was ominous and when accompanied by a breeze that crept up behind me, it felt like I was being led to the garage by gun point.

          As I made my way towards the door on the side of the garage, I could hear a couple of things that were faintly disrupting the quiet: one was Geezer gnawing away at his tennis ball-- a sound that reminded me of a garbage disposal taking on something it couldn't quite break down-- and the second was the radio inside of the garage. I used to leave it on to keep Geezer company at night, but after his hearing got compromised by an infection, I'd turn it off before going to bed... which I had at around 10:30 the night before that early morning. One of Led Zeppelin's softer tunes was coming out of those speakers. It took me a while to recognize which one it was-- I'd even stopped breathing to hear it: "Someone told me there's a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair," Robert Plant whined into Jimmy Page's acoustic guitar and a mandolin played by John Paul Jones. The song was "Going to California" and on any other day, at any other time, I would have found peace in the music... maybe even fall asleep to it. At that moment, though, sleep was the last thing on my mind. Death; the eternal sleep we were all, one day, destined to get was what was on my mind then.

          When I looked to my right, I noticed something on the driveway that I hadn't noticed from my bedroom window. There were a couple of balled-up pieces of paper-- scraps of "Simon Says" that normally, would have gotten deleted and sent internet heaven, but instead were stuck in the purgatory of my recycle bin. That was the thing about typewriter's-- the editing process got messy real fast. Maybe Geezer had knocked them out from the bin when he ran over to the fence to fetch the tennis ball? I stuck my head out over the gate and saw that the trash bins were still standing upright. Nope, it hadn't been that. Then I remembered the first time that the motion detector went off that night. Prior to it going off, I'd heard what sounded like one of the lids to the trash bins opening and closing. Someone; someone that wasn't Geezer, had dug through the trash and left a trail of bread crumbs to the garage.

          The silver butter knife I was holding in my right hand at the time, had been too dull to puncture someones flesh. At least with minimal force, but I tightened my grip around the buttering tool, ready to make it happen if it needed to. And I had a feeling that it would need to. Come on, Kyle. WWRGD. What Would Rick Grimes Do? Walking Dead. It's the end of the world. Anything's a weapon. You're a weapon. You don't need this stupid knife, I can remember coaching myself, looking at the knife as if it were useless so long as I was around. Then I remembered that I wasn't Rick Grimes or anyone even remotely cut-up to put an intruder down if needed, and approached the garage at a cautious pace with a ready-to-strike butter knife at my side.

          I stopped just short of the door and waited to hear something other than Geezer and Led Zeppelin out of the garage. There had been no other noises though. I held the knife up over my left arm as I reached for the door knob to give it a turn. Before I did, I gave the bottom of the door a look. The bottom right hand corner of it had been chewed up by Geezer back when he was a puppy, which created a mini, triangular portal into the garage that his flat snout would often press up against when it was feeding time. His snout was nowhere to be found though. Instead, light was shining through the portal-- an empty beam that had cast itself onto a triangular patch of grass just outside of it. Once I gave the door knob a quarter turn, however, shadows crept into the light-- not fully eclipsing what had spilled out from the corner of the door, but flickering into it, like one of those in-between network stations on TV that were all static.

          Someone was in there. I could hear Geezer's dog tag jingle like a wind chime-- only it wasn't wind brushing up against it, it was the hand of someone petting him; congratulating Geezer for returning the tennis ball.

          "Good boy," I'd heard the voice in the garage say, but it wasn't Steven's. And unless my Bulldog had invested in some Rosetta Stone ESL programs while my back was turned, it wasn't Geezer's either. Even with just the two words spoken, though, I could tell that the voice belonged to a smoker because it crackled like blocks of wood in a fireplace... or bones in Hell. The thought of the latter gave me chills.

          I decided to count to three before opening the door.                 

          One.

          Despite how cold it had been outside, I could feel the palm of my hand get clammy around the knob.

          Two.

          I started fingering the knife around in my right hand, practicing the twisting maneuver I'd execute after forcing it into the intruder's chest.

          Three.

          I swung the door open like a sheriff entering a saloon in one of those old Westerns, only, not as impressive, I'm sure. It certainly hadn't startled my guest, who I'd found lying on the floor of the garage with his back pressed up against the washing machine. The intruder had Geezer locked up in an embrace that he was all too willing to accept. Geezer looked up at me with his tongue hanging out of his face like a kid whose playtime had been interrupted by the phrase "dinner's ready."

          "Great guard dog," the man said, giving Geezer a Giddy-Up pat on the butt. The man chucked the tennis ball out of the garage and sent Geezer running out of it again. He looked to be in his late forties, early fifties-- long, greasy strands of salt-and-pepper hair sat on his head like the tentacles of an octopus that were desperately trying to crack an aquarium treasure chest open. My dog had gotten his white fur all over the intruder's black get-up, which consisted mostly of a trench coat that all but swallowed his lanky frame.

          The entire garage smelled like fog-- the kind that haunted houses puked out in heavy doses on Halloween to disguise how crappy their theme park monster's make-up was. Walking into it had been like entering the bowels of a dragon; thick air mixed with a hint of sulfur.

          "Stay right there," I warned him, making sure he saw the knife in my hand.

          When he did, he turned his head the other way and laughed. There was debris in there-- in his lungs-- that had been on its way up to the flat of his tongue, but he coughed mid-laugh, and pushed it back down.

          "I look like an English muffin to you? Put that joke away. You're embarrassing yourself, Kyle." The Intruder lifted himself off the floor with hands that looked like a pair of Daddy Long Leg Spiders-- long, boney fingers on a set of palms that looked drastically ill-proportioned compared to what sprouted from the tops of them. The way he'd gotten to his feet reminded me of the giant wind sock man that stood out front of the Hand Car Wash on Victory and Maple. Though his spider-leg fingers had given him an assist, there was a mostly, weightless way in which he'd resurrected from the floor. By the time his knees had locked into place, the man stood six foot-five or "up in the nose bleed section" as Steven would say of anyone taller than him, which had been... nearly everyone.

          "How do you know my name?" I'd asked, waving the knife in front of me as if it were a wand capable of generating force fields. It wasn't though and the Intruder had a smirk on his face that indicated he knew it too.

          "It's only fair that I know your name. You already know mine," he'd said, walking behind a multi-purpose Complete Gym 3000 machine that looked more like a medieval torture device than a gym. His hazel eyes peered at me through the cables of the Complete Gym like a couple of halos locking in on their prey. A lamp that was sitting on one of my old dressers to my right had been turned on, giving my garage the kind of brightness preferred at most hole-in-the-wall pubs, which was to say, low and dimmed-- the kind of light that made some of its ugliest patrons look like Tens. The Intruder had been an uncompromising Five, at best, and that was "no homo" as my roommate would have emphasized after saying something like that. Even if he'd said something homoerotic like "I'd make out with that guy," he'd still follow it up with a "no homo" as if it were a period to end all his sentences.

          "I'm calling the cops," I threatened, digging my free hand into my sweats and realizing I'd left my phone in the house. The surprise I'd accidentally displayed on my face called my bluff. Note to self, this is why you're bad at poker, Kyle. You idiot.

          "Simon says, you won't," the Intruder said, throwing a balled-up piece of paper at my feet. A piece of it had uncurled to reveal the Courier font of the Underwood typewriter. It was another scrapped idea for "Simon Says." It had to have been. He'd just mentioned, not only the title of my story, but mocked it like one of those a*****e pet-store parrots that were trained to say "Goodbye" by their owners just as you were walking in.

          "Going through my trash?"

          The Intruder lingered behind the gym. The way only his eyes and smile could be seen in the dim light of the garage reminded of the Cheshire Cat.

          "Don't be so hard on yourself. I wouldn't call your story that," he said, sliding his long, boney fingers in between the gym's cables, and plucking them as if they were the strings of a harp. The sound his fingers made against them was like a saw grating across a slab of wood. Had his fingers been that sharp that they could tear through the cables?

          "Who are you?"

          "Who are you?" The Intruder shot back, darting his head from behind the gym cables to the arm-press part of the machine. All I could see of his face at that point was his left eye and part of his crooked lip. He moved like a fly on a wall that had sensed a shoe hovering above it-- fleeing within range; could be heard buzzing nearby, but couldn't be focused on so that it could meet its demise-by-Converse.

          "Steven put you up to this?" I asked, knowing already that the theory was a reach. It wasn't Steven's style. Any effort that required someone else to pull a prank on me for him-- a hired-hand who bore zero resemblance to any of our mutual friends who'd be willing to camp out in my garage at Two in the morning and dawn an elaborate disguise-- just didn't seem feasible. But, then again, neither did the alternative, which was that what was happening, at that moment, was actually happening.

          "Come on, Kyle. That's a stretch of the imagination, don't you think? Even for a writer?" The Intruder sat himself down on the bench of the CG3000 and slipped his arms behind the press bars. His eyes left me as if he'd decided I was no threat to him at all.

          Crazed fan, I'd decided. That's who this guy was. He was my Annie Wilkes, but I wasn't about to let him become my misery.

          "Look, it's late-

          "Quite early, actually," the Intruder corrected.

          "You're trespassing. So, leave. If you're not gone by the time I get back into the house, the police will be the ones to show you out."

          Before I could back out, the Intruder stood up, and stretched in place. I heard what might have been a few dozen of his bones crack in the process.

          "Ahh," he'd sighed. "By the time you get back into the house? You really think I'm gonna let that happen, Kyle?" The Intruder turned his head towards me, stretched his right leg out from behind the tail of his trench coat, and stomped his foot.                    

          I don't even think he'd meant to chase me, but the act was enough to send me out of the garage in a hurry. I slammed the door shut behind me so hard that it bounced back open. Suddenly, the piercing cold of the night was replaced by hot adrenaline. As I ran back towards my bathroom door, I could hear the Intruder laughing behind me-- a thick, phlegmy laugh, punctuated by coughs that suppressed the ash from his furnace-like lungs from ascending to his mouth.

          I flung the retractable glass door open to my bathroom, slipped in, and shut it before the strut above would allow it to close. Once it clicked sealed, I locked the door, and cowered behind it as if it were a shield; watching the back yard to see if the Intruder had followed-suit. He hadn't, but the door on the side of the garage; the one with the tiny triangular portal at the bottom of it that Geezer had carved out when he was a puppy, once upon a time, remained open.

          My breath, heavy then, like an obese person who'd just injected a Twinkie into his mouth as if it were the last dosage of insulin left on the planet, fogged up the glass door. I wiped it clean with the sleeve of my cardigan and watched the Intruder's long, meatless arm stretch out from the doorway in the garage. His spider-like fingers descended onto the door knob, tangled themselves around it, and slowly reeled the door back in until it was closed. It was as if he were trying to tell me something by how slow he'd done it-- like "Don't worry, I'll get you when I'm good and ready. And not a second before. So, go, enjoy your life now while you still got it."

          "What the f**k?" I'd asked myself. And then a few more times, "What the f**k? What the f**k? What the f**k? What the f**k!" I closed another door behind me and walked into my bedroom like a coach who was trying to re-strategize his football team for a second-half victory after losing the first-- frantically, pacing back and forth, while giving Team Nerves an earful of put-downs.

          I picked up my phone and began scrolling through my list of contacts, forgetting entirely what my roommate's name was for a moment.

          "You're a... you're such a p***y, Kyle. Such a p***y," I'd told myself in the dark of my room. I fingered my bedroom window curtain open to the left to get a look at the garage, but all was quiet on the Western Front. Nothing out there, not even the light.

          "It's probably just... it's probably just," and there it was. Steven Lee. "Steven, f*****g with me." I'd went back to my prank-theory again because it made me feel at ease with everything that had just happened.

          "Son of a b***h," I said, practicing the speech I'd give him once he answered. When the ringing stopped, I let him have it--

          "F**k you, bro. Okay, f**k your stupid--

          "Hey, this is Steven. Leave a message and I'll get back to you when I can. Thanks."

          BEEP.

          ... on his voice mail. Suddenly, I got choked up and ended the call. The glow of my iPhone shined beneath my chin as if I were next in line to tell a scary story over a boy scout-made campfire. And boy, did I have one to beat.