Dave

DAVE

A short story by Michaela Catalano

He stands on one side of the door. On the other side, the man with three eyes is rolling one of them, Dave can see, his almost normal face bulging through the fisheye of the narrow peephole.

"Look, dude. Just let me in, all right?"

"No. Are you kidding me? Get the fuck off my porch."

"Man, what are you afraid of?"

Dave doesn't even dignify this with a response. He removes his eye from the hole and leans his back up against the door's cold wood. Sweat runs down his brow and into his eye. He curses.

"Come on. It's cold out here, man. It's snowing. I don't even have a jacket. Look at this shit. Let me use your phone. This is ridiculous."

"Use somebody else's goddamn phone.”

"There's nobody else for miles. My car's busted. I walked like a mile in the fucking snow before I saw your house. Let me use your phone."

"It's not snowing. It's July. It was 85 out today, you crazy fuck."

"Jesus! Are you okay in there?"

"What do you mean, am I okay?"

"I mean, July? Really? It's December. It's December 13th. It's fucking snowing, man."

Dave is quiet for a while. The man with three eyes is obviously lying or insane. He looks out the peephole again. The man is standing on his porch, arms wrapped around his waist, shivering. Snowflakes shimmer in the afternoon light before collapsing into the white waste surrounding the house.

"Well what do you want me to do about it?"

"What?"

"So what if it's December. How is that my fault?"

"How is... what? What are you talking about?"

"Don't blame me just because it's snowing. I don't control the weather, asshole. I'm not the Weather God."

"Nobody's saying you're the... Weather God. My car is broken down. I need to use your phone."

"Go to somebody else's house!"

“There’s. Nobody. Else. For. Miles. We’ve gone over this. You live here, man. Listen. I don’t understand why you won’t let me use your phone.”

“You have three eyes!”

Nobody says anything for a while. Dave is leaning against the door again, although he doesn’t remember moving. The man with three eyes sighs. Dave slumps down onto his ass, and in the process bangs his head, producing a loud thump.

“...Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“My name is Greg.”

“What?”

“It’s my name.”

“I don’t want to know your fucking name.”

“Well, now you know it. Listen. I could die out here. It’s really, seriously fucking cold. I just want to use your phone and call somebody.”

“I’m not letting you in my house. You have three eyes.”

“I don’t have three eyes, man. Are you high? Is that what’s going on? Because that’s cool, whatever. I just need to use your phone.”

“I’m not high. I’m high? You’re the guy with three fucking eyes!”

“I don’t have three eyes, man. Just look at me.”

Dave groans, struggles to his feet and lowers his eye to the peephole yet again. Greg is staring pointedly at the other side of the door. His third eye twitches shut and opens again mischeviously.

“You winked at me!”

“I didn’t wink.”

“You did it with your third eye!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

“What, are you trying to psyche me out? D’you think if you keep saying you don’t have three eyes I’m just gonna believe you? I looked out the door, man! I saw your eyes. All three of them.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you think you saw. I’ve got two eyes. I’m just like you. I’m a regular guy. I’m from Chicago.”

“Where the fuck is Chicago?”

“What do you mean, where’s Chicago? It’s in Illinois.”

“Illinois, where?”

“Uh, America?”

“What the fuck is America?”

“The country we’re in? Right now?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god you’re fucking crazy. We’re in America. We’re American. This is... I’m going to die out here. You’re gonna let me die. It’s fucking freezing and I’m gonna die because the only house within miles is home to a FUCKING PSYCHOPATH!”

It’s quiet for a while. Dave stands there thinking until Greg starts beating on the door with his fists, then steps back. The door shudders and groans. Greg is yelling and knocking and bashing his hands and feet against the door.

“LET ME IN! LET ME IN! JESUS PLEASE LET ME IN!”

Dave ignores him. Eventually Greg stops his assault and begins to sob. This goes on for a while. Dave sighs.

“Will you promise not to do anything but use the phone?”

“... What?”

“Promise not to do anything but use my phone and leave.”

“Christ, of course. I promise.”

Dave opens the door and Greg walks in. As he moves in, looking for the phone, Dave notices that he has four arms. He’s not quite sure how this fact slipped by him before. Greg picks the phone up off the wall and dials.

“Hey, John. Yeah, it’s me. No. No, listen, my car broke down. Yeah. Some bumfuck place out off the 78."

There is a halo of hot light forming around Greg's body as he talks. Dave watches it, his mouth slightly open. The space above Greg's head is twisty and blurred with heat, the ceiling's wood boards beginning to smoulder and blacken.

"Just go northeast for a while, you can’t miss it. Only car for miles. I’m gonna run back there and wait. No, I’m calling from somebody’s house. My cell’s dead, that’s why. Shit, I know, you don’t have to tell me. All right. All right. See you.”

He turns to Dave. A narrow, ragged hole has burned its way through the ceiling, and standing beneath it, Greg shines with gray winter light and his own blistering aura.

“Thanks, man. You’re a livesafer.”

He reaches out his hand. Dave takes it. It feels cool and dry. They shake.

"No problem."

Greg walks back out into the snow. Dave stands in the doorway, watching as he slowly fades into the distance. His arms are opening as he walks, multiplying and spreading out in a fan, four becoming six and then eight and then ten and then twelve, flakes of white turning to rain and plummeting as they brush up against his radiance, the wet furrow of melted snow in his wake glittering under the dull and distant light of the evening sun and the seven pale circles of early moon.

Dave shuts the door, locks it, slides the deadbolt into place, opens his closet door and picks up a bucket. He stares up through the hole in his ceiling for a while, letting the snow settle on his cheeks and in his hair, then sets the bucket beneath the hole. He sits down on his couch, fishes the remote out from between the cushions, leans back, and turns on the TV.

Unknown Story Prototype

This was an attempt at a short story that, after I spent some time fleshing out the characters and situation elsewhere, has burst, gray-goo-like, into what could easily become a novel if I actually write it somehow. In the main work, this would be set early on (probably within the first few chapters), and eventually will be rewritten in first person (probably).

A final note: "Unknown Story" is not a placeholder, it is the actual, deliberate title, since the story (and future novel) are set (mostly) in the world of the Unknown Armies tabletop roleplaying game.

---------

Through the warm niches of flesh

And through the glittering chemical light

Through the blade, kiss and caress

And through the warm scents of the night

Through the terror of chemical darkness

I have scrambled in my frantic flight

alymysto - essence

-----

Doug came home early from work that night, and she should have been home, but he didn't see her anywhere, and she didn't respond when he called her name. When he came to the bedroom door it was shut and there was a low sound from inside that he couldn't place. He felt a weird nauseous thrill when he thought about it. Hadn't he seen this a hundred times in movies, on TV? He'd open the door, saying something like "Honey, I'm home," except that Doug never said things like that, and she'd be there, flushed and pink on top of (under?) some strange man, or worse, some not-so-strange man.

Then he shook his head. Stupid, paranoid. She wasn't like that. Why did he always have to think the worst of everything, she was saying in the back of his mind, in that too-calm voice she used when she was angry. Stupid. He reached for the doorknob but something stopped him. There was something weird about the door. The wood was the wrong color, he thought. Just so slightly. Just the faintest shade darker than he remembered. He shook his head again, but it still seemed off. Then he thought of her. Not this again, she'd say if he told her, please. Just let it go. You know how you get.

Well, she was right, wasn't she. He did know how he got. When he opened the door he saw she was curled up sleeping alone. The window was open and the afternoon light was blowing through, tousling the curtains, which seemed to hang a little bit less straight when they settled. Her clock radio was turned on, that was the noise he'd heard. He sat on the side of the bed quietly, watching her slow breathing.

"Well, good evening, listeners! This is Radio 4, reporting on the day's events. Late this morning, a dog was hit by a car in La Mirada. The dog's name was Buddy. He was small and brown and once somebody loved him, but the car came from clear skies like God's own cruel thunder. Buddy spent three hours panting and bleeding in the shadows of a filthy alley. At the last moment, he thought he saw a red ball rolling across the mouth of the alley, and he dragged himself out, but the ball was gone and the sun was hot and Buddy died there on the sidewalk at 3:40 PM. A man in a suit saw his body and he smiled. He kicked that little dog back into the alley, into the dark."

Doug stared at the radio. His mouth was half open and he wasn't sure what he was feeling. Clouds shifted in the sky out the window, and the curtains moved again, lashing quietly inward. The wind was cold on Doug's skin. The voice on the radio turned into two voices. They sounded like a young man and a young woman, laughing in that professional way.

"Well, Abe," the woman said, “I think it’s time for tonight’s forecast!”

“Absolutely, Janet,” the man said. “Tonight’s forecast is shallow sleep for many, red hands for a few, and a man with stars reflected in his eyes.”

“That’s right, Abe,” the woman said, laughing. “His eyes go on forever. Walls are as air before him. Blades are turned aside, shields fall to rust beneath his gaze.”

“They sure do, Janet,” the man said, and a sound effect played loudly, jarringly, the sound of a cartoon spring and a tinny giggle. “There were dreams after all. God help us, there were dreams. He moves among the legion, and they see him not.”

The broadcast cut short as the clock’s alarm went off without warning. Doug swallowed a gasp. It hurt. He fumbled with the clock and shut off the alarm. The time was 4:44 PM. Beside him, Scarlet was stirring.

“Hey,” she said, voice thick with sleep. “What time is it?”

“Four-something,” Doug said. “How come your alarm was set for now?” She shook her head, looking confused, then yawned.

“God,” she said, “I just laid down for a second. Dunno how I got so tired.” Doug turned and leaned against the bedframe, put his hand on her head, ruffled her hair. She sighed and rolled over, laid her head in his lap, looked up at him. “I dreamed I killed you,” she said. “You came through that door with a long piece of driftwood in your hand, and I tried to wave at you, but there was a gun in my hand and it went off. I dragged your body outside to hide it in the woods, but then I remembered we lived in the city, and I was dragging you along the sidewalk, crying, but nobody seemed to notice.”

Doug put his arms around her, and she shut her eyes. He sat there for a while, holding her, stroking her dark hair until she fell asleep again, then got up, gently laying her head back on the pillow, trying not to wake her. He went into the kitchen.

The fridge was almost empty, and he ended up just microwaving a couple of cheap TV dinners. He sat down at the table when he was done, waiting, and after a minute she came in like he’d known she would, rubbing the quiet from her eyes. They ate for a while.

“How was work?” she asked him suddenly.

“Stupid,” he said. “Some fuck tried to lift a bag of cheetos. He looked like he was forty, and he ended up down at the station for a bag of fucking cheetos."

"Was he homeless?" she asked.

"Didn't look like it. He had on a pretty nice suit and expensive looking shoes. Shiny." He looked back down at the plastic rectangle, picking at the remaining half of a cheese enchilada. "How about you? How was work?"

"Stupid," she said. "Just stupid."

"Aw, don't say that," he said. "Come on, tell me." Something clicked against his fork and he pulled it free of the tortilla. It looked like a chicken bone.

"Really," she said. "I can't get anything down at all. I can't even finish the chapter. I keep having these nebulous great ideas and then when I get to the keyboard, I can't find a place for them." She twirled her fork through the crust on top of her little compartment of beans.

"You'll get it," he said. "You've done it before."

"That was ghostwriting," she said. "It's not the same at all. There's no soul. Anybody could do it." They spent the rest of the meal in silence, her looking down, him feeling as tired as she looked.

After dinner she went in to write and he sat down to watch TV, but there was nothing on, nothing but news and re-runs of shows that weren't funny the first time. He might have spent the rest of the evening there, except she came out of the bedroom after an hour and a half. He heard her footsteps behind him and an image of her holding a knife to his throat flashed through his head before he could stop it. He steeled himself to turn around, and when he did, he saw that she wasn't wearing nearly as much clothing as he had expected, and they went back into the bedroom together.

After that there was not much left to do, and she told him she still couldn't write anything, so they just laid in the dark together, talking.

"You know what?" he said. She shook her head. He could feel it move against his chest. "I found a fucking chicken bone in my enchilada. My cheese enchilada." She laughed, and he smiled at her through the darkness and she moved in tighter and he forgot about everything for a while. He was about to fall asleep when he remembered the alarm was set all weird, and he fumbled with the clock radio in the dark, navigating by its dull red light. But when he checked, he saw that the alarm was set for 7:00 AM like it was supposed to be, like it had been all along.

At last he fell asleep, and in deeper corners of the night he dreamed long and low. He moved upon the face of a body of rushing black water below a dull felt sky and a laughing moon, and in the darkest curves of the current he could see the stars.