Chapter 1

After awaking from a horrible nightmare, Chris struggles to deal with the problems of his everyday life.

July 14^th, 2008

            Chris jolted out of bed with a scream. He put his hand on his chest and gasped for air like a fish out of water. His heart raced at what seemed like a million beats per second. Chris looked around his apartment and let out one last, heavy sigh before he started to function normally again.

            Every night it was the same. The woods… the shadows… the cabin… the old man… the light… Kelly… for the past few months that exact same nightmare haunted him. Chris considered going to see a therapist, but he didn’t have the money or time anymore. He could barely keep himself fed and the rent paid, he didn’t even have a computer or a phone. All he owned was a shoddy old television.

            Chris ran his hands through his hair and covered his face, listening to the ticking of the old clock on the wall. He eventually took his hands off his face and looked around at his apartment. The place reminded him less of a proper apartment and more of a hotel room, which Chris suspected the building originally was. The place was a single tiny room, his bed took up about half the space he had whenever he pulled it out. There was a single, tiny window next to Chris’s bed that Chris always had open to try and circulate some air into the room. The open window let in some unwanted noise as well, but it was either that or suffocating in the claustrophobic space of his apartment.

            Chris’s walls were a bare white. In lieu of an actual bed, Chris had a pullout couch tucked into one of the back corners of the apartment. A foot beyond the pullout bed rested a television that had a small, discolored screen but a massive black frame that jutted out of the wall. What could laughably be called the kitchen was just a microwave, a mini-fridge, and a cardboard box filled with various foods and plastic utensils shoved into the corner to the right of the apartment’s entrance.

            Everything Chris owned looked like it was at least ten years old, and the apartment itself was full of cobwebs, dents in the walls, and squeaky floorboards. It was the kind of place that young children will dare each other to spend an hour in, but Chris actually lived there. The health department really should have had the whole complex condemned by now, but the health department, and indeed everyone else, generally tried to stay away from this part of the city.

            Chris turned his head and gazed out his window; looking into the sky. There was never a time in his life where he had feared the dark, in many ways it was comforting to him. As a child, Chris spent a lot of his time gazing at the stars. Every night Chris would look into the sky and look to see if the stars were visible.

            But this night was just like every other, and the stars were completely out of sight. The light pollution from the city made it nearly impossible to ever see them. Chris sighed and shut the blinds again. He took a look at the clock on the wall across from him; it was only 2:30. Chris plopped back onto his bed. The old mattress was hard and lumpy; it almost felt like Chris was trying to sleep on a huge brick. Chris didn’t exactly expect quality from a pullout couch he picked up off the street, but he still wished he could afford a nice bed. The pillow did little to alleviate the discomfort, for it too had seen better days. It didn’t provide much cushioning between Chris’s head and the mattress.

            Chris closed his eyes; he just needed to get some sleep, that’s all. He needed to get rested up; he was working breakfast at six. Chris tried moving his arms and head in various positions, hoping to find one that would be comfortable, but had no luck.

            Somewhere off in the distance, a police siren started blaring. The noise was a catalyst for every dog in the neighborhood to start barking up a storm. Chris closed his eyes tighter and covered his ears with his pillow. The barking continued in a cacophonous crescendo, more and more dogs joined in until it seemed like every dog in Florida had joined together in a terrible chorus of pain.

            Chris clenched his fists tightly around his pillow; he rose out of his mattress and threw his pillow against the wall as hard as he could.

“WILL YOU SHUT UP?” he yelled. The pillow collided with the old clock on the wall and sent it plummeting to the ground. The clock fell behind the old television Chris had with a crack. Chris moaned and walked over to the television and looked behind it. He squeezed is arm behind the behemoth and waved it around, hoping to get a grip on the clock. Chris felt his hand brush against the clock, but he couldn’t get a solid grip on it.

            “Great,” Chris thought. He turned his head over to the “kitchen corner” and looked at the microwave. The green light shone “2:40” in the darkness. Chris walked over to the pullout bed and started to put it back into the couch.

            “Screw it, I’m not fooling anyone,” he thought, “May as well start the day early.” Chris stumbled over to a switch next to apartment entrance and flicked it on; a very dim light illuminated the room. Chris looked up at the ceiling; two of the light bulbs had burnt out. “Of course they would. Because why not, right?”

            Chris shook his head stumbled into the bathroom next to the entrance, more evidence that the building was just an old hotel. Chris flicked the bathroom light on. The sudden intensity of the light stunned him, causing him to immediately shut his eyes. The contrast between the lights in the main room and the bathroom was absolutely staggering.

            After he let a little time pass, Chris opened his eyes again, blinking like a child coming into the world. Chris’s eyes finally adjusted to the light and he stared into the mirror. Dark circles and bags underneath his brown eyes prominently stood out. Chris stared at his bare chest long and hard into the mirror, he was skinny before, but now you really could count every rib in his body. He bent down and slid the scale out from beside the toilet. Chris stepped onto it and waited for the needle to position itself.

            “Ninety-five pounds. Jesus Christ,” Chris put the scale back into its original location and looked back into the mirror. He looked like a corpse that had just risen out of its grave. The long, messy black hair just added to the effect.

            Deciding now was as good a time as any; Chris turned the knob on his shower and slid off his boxers. He waited a minute before jumping in; it always took the water a while to heat up. Figuring that a two minute wait was long enough, Chris stepped in the shower and nearly jumped out of skin. The water was as cold as the Arctic Sea.

            “Really?” Chris thought, “You gonna do this to me now?” but Chris braced himself and took the coldest shower of his entire life. After his icy shower Chris grabbed a towel and started drying off. He didn’t bother bringing any clothes into the bathroom with him. He often wouldn’t wear any clothes while home. After all, who was going to come barging in at three in the morning? He grabbed his toothbrush and started to brush his teeth. In contrast to his otherwise ghastly appearance, Chris’s teeth glistened a shiny white. It wasn’t that Chris had bad hygiene, his lack of sleep and state of living were just getting to him. Chris had tried over-the-counter sedatives before, but they didn’t work too well. He wanted to go see a doctor, but he had no way to pay for one. Not having any health insurance will do that.

            He then put down the toothbrush and picked up a hairbrush. If he didn’t brush his hair down it went all over the place. The least he could do was try to look nice and preserve what little dignity he had left. Chris straightened out his hair and looked into the mirror; he had to brush his bangs over to the side just to get a good look at himself. Chris brushed his hand down the left side of his head. His hair came a good inch or so past his chin.

            “Probably high time for a haircut,” Chris thought, “Maybe I’ll stop by the barber on my way home today… or should I? Have I gotten groceries recently? When’s rent due? I dunno, I guess the haircut can wait,” Chris lathered on some deodorant and shut off the bathroom light, walking back to the main room of the apartment completely naked.

            Chris walked over to his food box and started digging through various cans and boxes. He unearthed a box of cereal simply named “Oats”. Chris then pulled a plastic spoon and a Styrofoam bowl out of the same box before turning to the mini-fridge shoved in the corner right next to him. He opened it up and removed a half-gallon of milk. Chris shut the fridge and waltzed over to the couch. He plopped down on it and placed his breakfast on the floor. He got up and walked a few feet to the opposite wall, the TV didn’t have a remote. Chris pressed the power button and the TV screen took its sweet time fading in. When the picture finally came, no sound was playing. Chris started pressing buttons and turning knobs on the TV and found that it wasn’t muted. Chris then turned the volume knob as high as it could go, still no luck. Chris threw his hands up into the air and started rubbing his temples. He shut the power off and back on, again, no volume.

            “OH, COME ON!” He yelled as he slammed the TV with his fist. The sound blared at full blast into his ears. Chris jumped, startled from the thunderous sounds and quickly turned the volume knob back down to a reasonable level. Chris then stepped back and took a look at what was on, it some representative droning on about something on C-SPAN. Chris went back to the controls on the TV and flipped the channel, and flipped, and flipped, and flipped.

            Various boring shows flashed across the screen, all equally uninteresting. Late night television didn’t tend to be terribly interesting. It was mostly an assortment of various lousy comedy shows and cop shows. One of the shows that Chris came across was in black and white. Out of curiosity, Chris stopped at that channel to see what the show was all about. It turned out it wasn’t a show at all; the channel was played the movie Night of the Living Dead.

            Chris stopped and pondered before going back to the couch. Pain filled his heart as he sat and watched the film. He munched on his cereal while the zombies on the screen attacked one of the survivors. The film elicited mixed emotions from Chris, it filled him with a nostalgic, almost pleasant, feeling that he hadn’t felt in a long time, but it also filled him with anguish. The movie had a special place in Chris’s heart, but it wasn’t a place he really wanted to visit right now.

            “I really shouldn’t be watching this. I should just go and change the channel,” Chris thought. But he sat there and continued to watch, lost in his own memories and thoughts, looking at the movement, but not really taking any of it in.

            A thunderous pounding on his door snapped Chris out of his trance. Chris got up off his couch and started running to the door. He put his hand on the handle before he remembered that he wasn’t wearing any clothing. He started running back to his bed; he kept all of his clothes in a messy pile, and started digging through his pile of clean clothes

            “UNDERWOOD! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE! OPEN UP!” A croaky old man shouted.

            “Coming Mr. North! Give me a second!” Chris shouted back. Chris dug through the pile of clothes and found a pair of boxers and some raggedy, torn up jeans. He scrambled to get them on, all while Mr. North was pounding on the door and cussing up a storm. Chris buttoned his jeans and sprinted back to the front door, fiddling with the doorknob and locks in a mad attempt to get it open. Chris swung the door open and was greeted by a grumpy old man. North’s face had so many wrinkles it looked like a crumpled piece of paper that had just been unfolded. North might have been a tall man, if not for the fact that he hunched over enough to meet tiny Chris at eye level. The man quivered and shook whenever he talked, like he was always cold. Almost paradoxically, he squinted like he was looking into the sun at all times. The man’s head was bald and round as a basketball, while his chin was covered up by a scraggly goatee.

            “The hell is wrong with you boy? Some people are trying to sleep you know!” North said.

            “I’m sorry Mr. North…”

            “Damn right you’re sorry!” North pointed his finger right into Chris’s face, shaking it at him with each word, “Go turn that goddamn TV down, will you? I dunno what ideas Castro got in your head, but you’re in America now, and we treat our neighbors with some damn respect!”

            Chris sighed, not making eye contact with North, “Yes sir.”

            “Look at me boy! Didn’t they teach you to look at someone when you talk to them?” North yelled. Chris looked up from the ground and into the old man’s beady, dark eyes. The man glared at Chris like a viper glaring at its prey. His lips were pressed together into a frown that drooped to the floor, “Now say it again!”

            “Yes sir,” Chris said with a tinge of fear.

            North didn’t even bother to give a response; he started mumbling as he shuffled down the hallway of the apartment complex. Chris overheard something about “dirty communists” as he shut the door behind him.

            North would harass Chris often, he was one of the reasons Chris tried to stay away from his apartment. Despite this, Chris didn’t hate North, he actually felt a bit bad for him. The man was probably somewhere in his eighties, and he was living in the same hole Chris was, he wouldn’t have wished that on anybody.

            Chris walked back to his TV and turned it down until it was whisper quiet. Chris didn’t have the volume blaring in the first place. In fact, North’s screaming was much louder than the TV was, but Chris complied to avoid seeing the man again.

            Chris sat back down on the couch as the credits of the movie began to roll. He wanted to get up and change the channel, but he had just sat down and didn’t feel like getting up again. The words rolling up the screen sent Chris into another hypnotic trance, and he started daydreaming.

            Chris thought back to the first time he watched the movie with Kelly.

            “You sure it isn’t too scary?” Chris asked.

            “’Course not! Would I lie to you?” Kelly said.

            “Yes,” Chris said, “There was that one time when…”

            “Those times don’t matter. You’ll love it,” Kelly said, “Besides, we need to be prepared. When the zombies arrived, I don’t want you to get eaten.”

            Chris smiled, she had totally lied. Back when they were in fourth grade the movie scared the crap out of him. He had nightmares for days. He sat there and remembered how they used to plan for zombies, like they were actually going to attack. They would make forts out of pillows, blankets, and chairs together, hiding in there armed with Nerf guns. Back then they thought they were invincible, like they were surrounded by an impenetrable fortress.

            Chris put his head down on his couch’s armrest. He felt like he was about to cry, so much had changed since then. He lied down on the couch for a long time, the TV was still running, but Chris completely tuned it out. He lied there and reminisced about days gone by.

            Chris tried to close his eyes and maybe get some more sleep, but couldn’t. He was so tired that he felt like he was dying, but he couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard he tried. He simply couldn’t take his mind off of Kelly; the movie was like a key that unlocked all of Chris’s memories. Chris looked back over at the microwave clock to see how much time had passed since he woke up. It was 4:53.

            The TV played some foreign movie that Chris wasn’t paying attention to. He stood up, walked over to the TV, and shut it off. Chris walked back and started digging through his clothing pile, looking for a shirt. Chris found a plain white t-shirt and threw it on. He stepped over to his window, closed it, and locked it.       

            The diner Chris worked at opened at six, and he was working breakfast today. Getting there meant a long walk to downtown and finding a taxi or a bus to take him to work, Chris figured that he better leave now if he wanted to get there on time.

            Chris stepped out of the bedroom and walked over to his food box. He started to dig through it until he found a box labeled “Puppy Yums”. Chris opened up the box and took out a few strips and stuck them in his back pocket before carelessly throwing the box back amongst the others. He grabbed his wallet and his keys from the bathroom counter before starting on his way out.

            The hallway of the building was just as old and decrepit as Chris’s apartment. The putrid green paint on the walls was peeling off and revealed the brown, disgusting rotten walls it masked. Various insects crawled around on the ground and on the walls. The place smelled faintly like rotten meat. The floor creaked and cracked as Chris walked down the hallway to the stairs at the very end. The building didn’t have any working elevators. Climbing up the stairs to the third floor every day was tedious, especially when he had to carry groceries up, but it was bearable. Chris felt sorry for the poor people that lived on the top floor.

            The stairs were almost as worn down as the hallway, whenever Chris had to use them he picked up his pace a little, standing on the stairs made him uneasy. Like everything else in the building, the stairs were old and wooden. They were in slightly better shape than everything else, but only because they weren’t rotting yet. The stairs creaked as much as the floorboards and they were covered with splinters. Proper maintenance apparently wasn’t on the top of the landlord’s priority list.

            The lobby on the bottom floor made no effort to disguise the fact that the place was a complete dump. There was nothing in the room except for a green, wooden door opposite the staircase and a discolored green rug in front of the door. No furniture or decorations on the wall to try and create a façade of decency. The paint on the walls wasn’t peeling off quite yet, but it was obvious that the lobby was only there to serve as a gateway for the tenants between the ground and their apartments.

            Chris stepped off the stairs and walked over to the door. He twisted and pulled on the doorknob. It didn’t budge. He started to turn the knob again and pulled on the door with all of his strength. He checked to see if someone had locked the door, he twisted the lock and tried again. The door stood completely still. Chris twisted the lock back and tugged on the door again. Chris lifted his foot up and pressed it on the wall next to the door before yanking on it again.

            A young Cuban woman who Chris had not noticed smoking in the corner of the room walked over next to him and raised an eyebrow. Chris’s face turned bright red and he dug his hands deep into his pockets.

            “It’s stuck. Don’t you hate these doors?” Chris asked. The woman rolled her eyes and pushed Chris out of the way. She twisted the knob and pushed the door wide open. She immediately turned around and went back to her corner to smoke. “I… uh… thanks,” Chris said while he stared at the floor. The woman shook her head at Chris as he stepped outside.

            Chris turned left out the door and started walking down the street. A blanket of darkness covered the road. The sun hadn’t risen and no lights shone through the windows. There were street lights lined up along the sides of the street, but many of them were dimming, and a few were even burned out. Walking down the street made Chris feel uneasy, it felt like everyone in Miami was just staring at him as he walked to work every morning. He kept his hand tightly gripped around his keys and wallet in case anyone tried to pickpocket him. Rows and rows of old brick buildings lined the street Chris walked down. The buildings looked like they were at least a hundred years old, their foundation of bricks crumbling and weathered away. Cracks and splits filled the road beneath his feet. Several buildings had destroyed or bordered up windows.

            Chris stopped walking when he reached a dark alleyway between two of the brick buildings and turned into it. He kept walking down the alleyway, passing bums and beggars curled up against the walls trying to get some sleep. Chris reached into his back pocket and pulled out the dog treats as he approached an open refrigerator box turned on its side.

            “Come here girl! I’ve got something for you!” Chris whispered. A scruffy black lab crawled out of the shadows of the fridge box wagging its tail. The dog’s n*****s were extremely swollen, signaling that she was very late into pregnancy. The dog came over to Chris’s feet and sat down. The lab’s hair jetted out all over the place and patches of it were completely missing. She looked like she had just spent hours rolling around in the mud, and she was missing her left eye. Chris smiled and started scratching the dog behind one of her raggedy ears. He extended his hand with the dog treats out to her, who gobbled them up in an instant. Then the dog whimpered and started pawing at Chris.

            “Sorry girl, that’s all I have for you,” Chris got down on one knee and started rubbing the lab’s body. She smelled like she had spent the last week sitting in a pile of garbage, but Chris didn’t care. The dog started to wag its tail as it licked Chris’s face. Chris started laughing, “All right, all right, I’ll be back later.”

            Chris stood back up and he patted the lab on her head. He turned around and saw one of the bums wide awake and staring right at him. Chris looked at him for a long, awkward moment. The bum wasn’t wearing a shirt, and had his face hiding behind long dreadlocks and a beard that went down to his chest. Chris looked at the ground and tried to ignore the bum as he walked past.

            “Oh sure!” The hobo barked, “Give the dog some food!” Chris didn’t lift his eyes off the ground, the bum awoke all the others, “Hey everybody! Check out this a*****e! He’s surrounded by starving people and he decides to give a damn mutt some food!”

            The other hobos all slowly got up and started bickering amongst themselves before they all turned their attention to Chris. A hundred eyes locked onto him, he didn’t even look up to meet their gaze.

            “Think you’re so generous do you? Then where’s my food?” One asked.

            “You think you’re above the rest of us Mr. PETA?” Another shouted.

            One of the hobos yelled something in Spanish, all of the ones who understood him roared with laughter.

            “Why you feeding the b***h anyway? You the one that knocked her up?” The first hobo yelled. The group of bums erupted in laughter again. Chris kept walking down the alley; it suddenly seemed a lot longer than it was before.

            “I just can’t do anything right today, can I?” Chris thought. He finally turned the corner of the building and started walking back down the street he originally was.

            “Sí es cierto! Y no vuelvas!” Chris heard one of the bums yell behind him.

            Chris looked behind him for a moment and sighed. The walk to downtown seemed to drag on longer and longer every day.

Author's Note

Like the prologue, the main thing to check for here is inconsistencies, since this too went through multiple stages. Thanks!

Reviews

[George Wilder Jr.]

This is book, get it published and I would be line to it. This is great. I have enjoyed it. Some parts of it jolted me, and I have tell you, it pretty hard to jolt me, however, writing did. Its a 10