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Down in the Dirt v042

one forty-five

Matthew Josh

    Jim woke up staring at the ceiling and knew immediately that it was going to be one of those nights when he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. What time was it? The extra-bright digital clock to his left read 11:32. He had slept for less than an hour. Jim waited. Maybe he would fall asleep. The trick was to stop thinking about falling asleep. Then he would wake up at 5:45 ready for work and he wouldn’t even remember this moment. The trick was to stop thinking about falling asleep. The clock flashed 11:33. The trick was to stopÉ He threw the sheets off him and stood up. He would change location. That had worked before—put him right to sleep.
    He dragged the sheet from his bed down the stairs and flopped onto the couch. TV or no TV? He grabbed the remote and hit power. David Letterman. That wasn’t quite boring enough, but Jim turned it down as low as he could but still hear it, convincing himself that he wouldn’t watch it. Eyes closed, listening to David Letterman, dog licking cheekÉ Tyler, the dog, assumed that if Jim was out of bed, than it was time to go out. Jim must have forgotten. Jim threw the sheet back and staggered to the door and leash.
    It was almost summer, but the air outside was at least ten degrees cooler than the air inside. Tyler walked Jim around his usual path, marking all of the trees he had marked just two hours ago. Jim tugged him back into the house, hung the leash, and landed back on the sofa. David Letterman.
     Maybe there was something sexier on that would help him fall asleep. That worked, he convinced himself. One of the channels was showing a movie that seemed like it was filmed exclusively in bikinis, but that was the best he could find. It was after twelve. Crime show marathon. That stuck. He had seen them all already, so there was no way he was going to get sucked into the plot.
    Jim thought he might have slept a little. His eyes hurt. He thought of exercising, but wasn’t willing to give up on the chance that he might sleep. He thought of eating, but that too required him to get off the sofa.
    1:00. He closed his eyes and listened to the new crime unfold on the screen.
    His eyes opened. He had slept. He felt like he was still sleeping, and if he went back upstairs he might just fall right back to sleep safely next to his alarm until it woke him up.
    He dragged the sheet up the stairs, flopped into the bed, and looked at the clock. 1:45.
    He slept.
    When Jim’s eyes opened again, he noted that the room was bright, the sun peaking through the curtains. Only, the sun shouldn’t have been peaking through the curtains at 5:45. Most mornings, he could still see the moon as he walked Tyler around the edge of the yard.
    He checked the clock. 1:45. How could the sun be up at 1:45?
    Jim swore, jumped out of bed and grabbed his cell phone. 6:50. He could make it. He should have been in the car a half an hour ago, but he could make it. Into the shower. Tyler followed him anxiously, sure that Jim had forgotten to take him out first. As Jim showered, he angrily cursed the clock. It had a back-up battery, and wasn’t blinking anyway, so the power hadn’t gone out. Still toweling himself, Jim went to the clock and checked the alarm. He had set it. Now it read 1:51. So it was running. Why had it started running now? Jim left the alarm clock alone.
    Fifteen minutes later, he was hungry, but in his car.
    1:45. Jim was sure he had checked the clock downstairs before he went upstairs, and it had said 1:45 too. All day he thought of ways that he would test his alarm clock when he got home, and he rubbed his hands together with glee when he thought about setting a back-up alarm to make sure it didn’t happen again. He congratulated himself for not being tired all day. For some reason his ear was itching. Jim was sure that some bug had gotten on it while he overslept.
    When he laid his head down that night, he was ready to sleep and confident that one of the alarms he had set would wake him up at 5:45. Each clock was precisely programmed to match up by the second. He slept.
    1:30. Exactly. Jim had that feeling again. He found himself outside with the Tyler a few minutes later. It would be 1:45 again soon. What was wrong with him? Why was he sweating so much? Why couldn’t he sleep? He was back in bed at 1:43, staring at the alarm, waiting for it to turn 1:45 and then 1:46.
    The alarm woke him up at 5:45, followed by the alarm on his phone and the alarm he had dragged into the hallway from the office. His stomach ached like he had been doing sit-ups all night. He rubbed his ribs and wondered if he had been awake to see the clock change or not. Maybe he had dreamed the whole thing. Downstairs, the stereo was on, softly playing static between stations. It wasn’t the first time Jim had forgotten the stereo when he went to bed.
    His friends at work got a kick out of his lack of sleep. Tylenol PM, they said wisely. Jim told him that was exactly what he would do, and even stopped at the drug store to get those Tylenol PMs, but forgot them when he found the cereal on sale.
    When he woke up, he knew without looking that it was 1:45, or close enough that the difference didn’t matter. Jim tried not to move, determined to convince Tyler that he was still asleep. Why was he waking up? Nerves. He had known someone who woke her self up every day without an alarm. Biological clock or Circadian rhythm or something. How do you turn that kind of alarm off? He suddenly noticed that the bottoms of his feet ached like they had been rubbed raw. That was silly. If he looked, Tyler would know he was awake. Tyler would get used to these nocturnal outings and he would never be able to break the habit. Maybe Tyler was waking him up at 1:45. Maybe there was a car going home each night around this time that made a lot of noise that he just missed hearing. Why did his feet hurt so badly? The pain was creeping into his calf, begging to be rubbed or scratched or something. Jim was suddenly sure that some disease-ridden rodent or South American killer beetle had invaded his bedroom and was the secret reason behind his failure to sleep.
    He reached up, clicked the light, and threw back the sheet, sure that he was about to uncover a hideous mauling. He envisioned his feet encased in a swarm of small black bugs with tiny piercing mouths. Nothing. The pain faded almost immediately. He looked at the bottom of each foot, rubbing his hands along their dry surface. They weren’t even red. Unlike his eyes—he knew they were red. The rest of him might persevere, but his eyes were killing him.
    Tyler’s nose peaked over the edge of the bed. Jim reached up, turned off the light, and pushed Tyler’s nose away from him. He would not be lead outside. He would ignore the dog. He would ignore the dog. Tyler harrumphed himself back onto his cushion in the corner, curling into a tight angry ball. Jim slept.
    Jim had already noticed it before the first compliment of the day. He had lost weight. His pants fit a little better. One of his married friends gushed behind the safety of her wedding ring about how good he looked and how he had such a good tan, which was bullshit. He told them he had been eating better, working out a little. He almost convinced himself. He certainly wasn’t tired, so maybe his body was adjusting to the way it was supposed to live. Not everyone needed eight hours of sleep. He had read about a woman who slept ninety minutes every night. Doctors had studied her and everything. They said she was perfectly fine. She was a librarian and spent all that extra time reading—almost a book a night. Imagine what he would be able to do if he could start using that time instead of laying in bed and staring at the dark ceiling.
    Jim thought he might just try to stay up, but when the time came to sleep, there was no denying it, he was tired. He fell asleep without even turning the light off, and he was sure that it was the light that woke him up. He glanced at the clock. Damn 1:29. Close. He reached up and pulled the light cord. Darkness. It was always dark enough at first that he couldn’t even see his ceiling. Jim played a little game with himself when the lights went off, to keep his eyes closed so that he could pretend it really was that perfect sleepy dark in the room.
    Where was Tyler? Jim was happy that the dog had learned that his wakefulness did not necessarily mean they were going out. Eyes closed. He wasn’t going to check. He heard a noise downstairs and figured Tyler must be getting water—the dog had just missed his sudden awakening. Eyes closed. No checking, he reminded himself, determined to play his game.
    But that feeling was in him now. There was something wrong, and he knew what it was. He felt it curl in his stomach and a hotness rush up into his chest and face. Eyes closed and breath held. Someone was in the house. Someone was downstairs in his house.
    He opened his eyes. Was Tyler in his bed? It was too dark. Was that Tyler or the old blanket he left on the dog’s cushion? If someone was in the house, should he leave the light on or off? In his last apartment, he had kept a baseball bat next to the bed. He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t even have a knife upstairs. Golf clubs. Were they in the office or the back seat of his car? His straining ears didn’t hear anything.
    He reached for the light, pulled the string.
    There was something there. Just for a moment. Something right in front of him standing in the doorway, and then it was gone. A man. He had run.
    Jim flew out of bed. He raced to the stairs, screaming threats. I called the police. I’ll kill you. Get out. Freeze. I’ve got a gun. There was no one there, but he hadn’t heard the door.
    Tyler? Tyler wasn’t in his bed.
    Jim stared into the dark living room, his earlier bravado dead. Was someone hiding? He had a sudden vision of finding Tyler hurt, maybe dead. He reached for the lights, felt like something was right in front of him. When the lights came on, he would see it right in front of him. He turned the lights on to an empty living room, searched the kitchen, the bathroom. Nothing.
    Had there been someone at the bedroom door? He couldn’t remember any features. Had he just panicked? He hadn’t heard anyone, and there was nowhere to hide down here. He went to the backdoor and turned on all the outside lights.
    There was Tyler, sitting on the porch. Jim opened the door to let Tyler in and then locked it back. He went for the phone in the kitchen. There’s someone in my house. I don’t know. Quick. I don’t know. I think so. They put my dog outside. I saw someone. I don’t know.
    The police, two of them, were not happy. They searched the house. No signs of forced entry. Everything locked with deadbolts. Anything missing? Can you describe the intruder? You’re not sure? About 1:45?
    Jim sat in his living room with all the lights on until it was time to go to work. The married woman thought he looked sick. Just yesterday he was tan and now he was pale. And thinner. Maybe he should go to the doctor.
    Jim left all the lights on again, sat in his living room with a kitchen knife and Tyler’s cushion newly placed next to the couch. He fell asleep until 1:40, he noted. They might come back. He felt so stupid for having left the lights on. No one would come up to the house if he left all the lights on, and he wanted to see who it was, didn’t he? Jim went through the house, turning off each light, and then stood by the windows, alternately peaking through the blinds at the front of the house and the blinds in the back. Tyler watched him anxiously from the cushion.
    Work. This time he got the Tylenol PM from the drugstore and took them right at 9:00 so that he would be asleep before ten. All the doors were locked, triple-checked. He had the knife. Tyler was with him in the room. He took the pills and read a story from a magazine about a man who hijacked a plane with a water gun in China. He was asleep before he found out that the plane crashed.
    It was hard to breathe when he woke up. Something was on him. He opened his eyes, but there was a hand over them and over his mouth. He gagged, jerked. His heart was kicking through his chest. His legs flailed. He was able to roll away onto the floor, but away from the light.
    He saw the thing across the bed for just a moment, a kid maybe—small, but strong. He grabbed the first thing he could and threw it across the room. The alarm clock’s cord was wrapped around the bed stand’s leg. It snapped back, hit Jim in the head with 1:45 on the screen. The thing was gone.
    Jim got back in bed, pulled up his sheet, and waited for his heart to stop beating so hard. In the darkness, he heard Tyler change positions on the cushion.
    He forgot to call out of work, and didn’t answer the phone when they called him. He put everything against the doors and windows—couch, shelves, tablesÉ and slept when he could force himself. Tyler paced. Jim assured the dog, but wouldn’t take him out. Tyler messed the office and was ashamed, but Jim didn’t mention it.
    He waited when night came. 11:45. 12:45. 1:40. This time he had left all the lights on. He would see it coming. 1:41. The lights went out anyway. 1:42. Jim grabbed his knife and poked at the air in front of him, back against the wall. 1:43. Something moved in the opposite corner. 1:44. It was on him. Tyler barked at his feet. The thing, the man, had wrapped its legs around Jim’s whole body at the waist. Its hand was on his face though. At his mouth. Pushing in. Jim tried clamping down on the arm, but the skin was like wet plastic, sliding in. Jim’s arm brought the knife around wildly. He stabbed himself in the side, dropped the knife. The arm was down his throat now. Jim’s scream was dead in his chest as the rest of the creature disappeared.
    But Jim knew where it was now. 1:45. He saw reflected from a mirror.



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