7-2

The dog seemed fine. He followed Chad to the car and got in by himself. Before they left the parking garage Chad readjusted his mirror to keep an eye on the dog.  It looked around nervously when the car stopped, but otherwise sat silently in the back seat with its head down.  When they arrived the dog hopped out and trotted towards the apartment. Chad hung back a bit.  The muggy air made the sky look like a low, dark ceiling, and the light reflecting off the leaves made them look like rubber. It felt like a movie set.  Though the dog's hair looked grey under the bleachers, it shined black here under the dark ceiling. Come to think of it, the wind wasn't blowing anymore either. Was it time or distance that killed it? They walked into the open hallway and took the stairs up to his place.

Chad turned on the kitchen light but left the living room dark. He'd hit the lamps in a minute. He gave the dog a closer look, feeling his joints and paws, checking his teeth and eyes. The matted hair along his stomach and chest gave him a stalky look though Chad could feel he was really thin. He needed a good bath and a haircut, but, for now, Chad settled him on some blankets and set out to make dinner for them both.

“You give sick dogs chicken and rice,” he said out loud, “so it must be good for scared dogs, right big guy?”  The dog looked up at Chad without moving his head.  “Just hold tight and I’ll hook you up,” Chad told those sad, tired eyes.  He’d go get dog food once they got settled in. He measured out the water into a pot and put it on the stove to boil, then pulled some leftover chicken out of the fridge and began separating it from the bone. Behind him the moonlight seeped in through the patio doors and bathed the sleeping dog. Suddenly he jerked up his head and sighed a sharp whine. Chad whipped around, dropping a chicken leg to the floor. A shadow passed by the living room floor. He opened the sliding glass doors and looked around. Nothing. He leaned against the rails and looked out into the night. Everything was still, including the lake and road.

"Just a bird," he assured himself. He slid the doors back in place and locked them. He froze. Something fell in his room. The dog was backed into the corner. He walked across the living room and clicked on the hall light just in time to see the bathroom door close. "Ok," he thought without moving his hand from the switch, "someone's in the house."

He listened for a minute, the silence sinking his heart deep inside his chest. A sudden bark jolted it up into his throat�"he didn't realize the dog was right behind him.  “It’s okay,” he said without looking back. He drew in a deep breath and felt himself take a step forward. Then another step.  The lights were off in the bathroom but that didn’t explain how dark it seemed; there was a streetlight just outside that window, after all.  In fact, the darkness seemed to creep from beneath the door instead of the hall light disappearing under it.  He focused on the doorknob�"nothing strange or abnormal there, just a simple doorknob.  He reached forward.  With his fingertips barely resting on the cold, polished chrome, he felt the knob turning.  His hand flung back before he realized why and he inhaled a sharp scream.  The doorknob gave a metallic squeal and he fell to the ground, drinking in the air in tiny sips like a terrified mouse.  The bolt scraped across its metal counterpart as the door began to creak open, leaving a solid black shadow across the floor.  Chad scrambled backwards and managed to get on his feet just as the door exploded open, hitting the opposite wall with a huge crash and bathing the apartment in darkness.  He was back on the floor.

 

He opened his eyes wide just to make sure they were really opened�"the apartment was pitch black.  He felt his heart repeatedly hitting his rib cage, but he didn’t hear it.  He didn’t hear anything, actually.  Had he hit his head?  He crawled backwards on his elbows and slammed his head on a wall.  “Did you hear that, idiot?” he thought to himself as he rubbed his aching skull, “you must have made it to the living room.”  Without daring to get up, he ran his hands across the wall.  The inlaid square paneling on the door made his heart leap�"now he could get out of there.  He remembered the dog.  “Hey, big guy, you around here?”  He reached his arms blindly in front of him in a futile gesture.  He didn’t feel anything.  “I’ll be able to see him once I get the door open,” he decided.  He reached up and found the handle, feeling it tentatively to make sure it wasn’t moving.  But it wasn’t the front door�"it was the bathroom door.  He was inside the bathroom. 

 

He leapt to his feet, scrambled to turn the small lock on the knob and ripped the door open.  Suddenly everything was bright and orange and the dog was barking and there he was, flushed in orange from the light and on his back on the floor.  “Whu, what?” he managed.  He stepped forward but the Chad on the floor didn’t move.  It just lay there, posed stiffly with his arms at its sides.  And it was wearing his suit.  He had only worn that suit once to his grandfather’s funeral.  It was the kind of thing you couldn’t really wear again.  Was that really him?  His mom walked by.  She looked so… “wait,” he said looking around at all the people, “no, wait.  What is this?”  He walked backwards into the pulpit.  This was a wake�"this was his wake.  That person that was him was dead.  For the second time that night he opened his eyes as wide as he could just to make sure they were really opened.  They were.

 

He moved closer to the body.  Its cheeks were sunk in and the bags he usually had under his eyes were hollow.  The hands were posed like a Barbie’s, fingers together and flat, but with enough curve in the middle for a hint of anatomical correctness.  It looked dead.  He wondered if his mom had picked out the tie�"it was plain red, no swirls or patterns.  His favorite ties were the old looking ones with prints you might find on a hotel lobby’s carpet.  He looked back up at the face to see its almond eyes were peeking open.  He stepped back from the coffin and suddenly the eyes they shot open at him.  They were wide and black and empty.  They weren’t his.  It sat up without moving its arms or curving its back.  Chad stumbled backwards and fell on the floor.  The coffin towered over him as a long, thin leg slid over the side, followed by a hand and then the entire body toppled onto the floor, its arms and legs tangled into a horrific mess.  It missed Chad by mere inches.  He jumped up and continued to stumble backwards, unable to process the grotesque pile on the floor and unable to look away from it even long enough to blink.  It stared back at him with unmoving, wide eyes�"impossibly wide.  He tripped over a low ledge and felt a sheet of plastic wrap around him.  He struggled, flailing his arms and pounding his legs against the ledge.  He had to get out, to leave this thing on the floor and to breathe out this heavy plastic that penetrated his lungs and muffled his cries.  He found an opening and tore through.  It all stopped.

 

He knew where he was�"he was in his bathroom.  As he lay tangled in his shower curtain, he realized the light from the street lamp was back on or here or whatever.  His heart fell to his stomach when he remembered the blackness in the bathroom earlier, but he felt like things were normal now.  Maybe he hit his head harder than he thought.  It was kind of scary to be hallucinating, but not nearly as scary as not hallucinating.  So, there he was, in his bathroom, his shower curtain tangled around his calves.  The dog was standing in the doorway, watching.  He turned away and Chad realized the fire alarm was going off.  He got up carefully (the tub felt slick, maybe from his shower this morning) and ran to the kitchen, expecting to see thick smoke from the rice burning all over the stove and the water in a boiling fit, but nothing was on the stove.  He opened the fridge and there was the leftover chicken.  The pot was under the oven, and the rice still in the cabinet.  The dog sat in the corner�"even the blankets he left out for him were gone.  The alarm he heard was just his phone alarm on the counter. 

 

“This is f*****g s**t,” he said to the phone as he unlocked it.  His phone died earlier at the game.  Had he even gone to the game?  But the dog was here, so he had to have gone.  He looked at his shirt�"he was wearing the “beat Bloomingdale” shirt he bought from Judy last week.  “S**t,” he half laughed to himself, “guess I’ll start on dinner.”