Sneak Preview: "Killing Teddy"
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—TWELVE RESIDENTS DREAMING—
Prologue: The First Life of Anacoy Marlin
1. Heirs of the Abyss
2. Trapdoor
3. Killing Teddy
KILLING TEDDY
william pauley III
It came from the third floor.
The sound echoed through the hallways and down each of the staircases before tearing into my ear canal like a fucking razor. I tell you, it was a scream! A scream followed by the ripping thunder of a chainsaw furiously rumbling to life. As much as I would’ve loved to have pulled the blankets over my head and attempt to sleep through it all, as the building superintendent, it was my duty to take care of these kinds of things as soon as possible. Believe me, you do not want to wait around until every last one of these miserable tenants are stark raving mad and screamin’ in your face about who’s doing what and why their rights are more important than his or hers or yours or whoever’s. Goddamn. Works me up just thinkin’ about it.
I snorted a line of red fire ants (a nasty habit I plan to quit, believe you me). The ants crawled around in my brain, awakening my senses. From each of their fangs leaked electric venom.
I grabbed my shotgun then ran up the staircase, tripping up a time or two. Those goddamn fire ants, they always get the best of me. The closer I got, the louder the noise became. Several of the tenants opened their doors as I passed by. Before they spoke, I held a finger to my lips, signaling for them to keep quiet, then continued my trek down the halls.
When I finally reached the third floor, I hoisted my shotgun and leaned one shoulder against the wall, just as I was trained in my younger days in the Army. All the rooms on the third floor were vacant, except for one. Room 333. From that one room came the sound.
I balled up my fist and banged twice on the door, keeping my sights on the peephole. The chainsaw noise stopped. The screaming stopped. Suddenly, there was silence.
A shadow briefly appeared before the peephole, then vanished. I beat my fist against the pale oak door a third and fourth time. Still, no sound.
“Now look here, folks! There are people here trying to sleep!” I said, answered only by silence. “Now, if I have to come up here a second time, I’m gonna knock down this goddamn door and pull ya out by your earlobes!”
Silence still.
“You hear me?!”
Silence.
“Well, alright then.”
I lowered my shotgun and walked downstairs. The other tenants all watched as I trudged down the hallways. I just waved them off, shooing them back into their rooms. I needed some sleep and goddamn it if I was gonna stay up all night answering their questions. I wasn’t sleeping so well then, especially with all that noise carryin’ on.
Before climbing into bed, I went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. I hugged the sides of the icebox and moved it out about two feet. Three large brown cockroaches roamed about underneath, panicking at the light, anxiously seeking refuge. I managed to pin one of them down against the floor with my index finger. I pinched the squirmy pest, picked it up, and pushed it between my lips. I had to wrap my tongue around its writhing body to hold it in place while I went back for the glass of water. I hate the fucking taste of a filthy cockroach. I can never manage to swallow one without having something to wash it down with. Only reason I eat the damn things are because there’s something in their fat bodies that always makes me feel tired. It’s like that chemical found in turkey meat that’s supposed to make you feel sleepy or something. Whatever it is, it works. It’s the only goddamn thing that works. I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in nearly a month at that point. I needed it.
I bit the little fucker in two, downed the entire glass of water, and spent the rest of the night picking parts of its legs from my teeth until I finally fell asleep.
I was awakened shortly after, or so I thought. Turns out I’d slept for two entire days. A drop of water landed right square between my eyes and pooled around my left socket. It brought me screaming back into consciousness. I wiped the water from my eye and looked up at the ceiling. The span of it was completely soaked and had already started growing black rings of mold. I immediately leapt from my bed, and that’s when I discovered the carpet was submerged within two inches of freezing cold water. The mail slot in my door was crammed full of white envelopes. Some of it was mail. Most of it was complaints about the water leaking into and destroying the tenants’ apartments. All of them claimed the water was coming from the third floor. It was then that I’d first suspected I’d slept a little longer than I’d originally intended.
Again, I grabbed the shotgun and angrily stomped out of my apartment. I lost my slippers in the ocean somewhere between my front door and the staircase.
When I finally made it over to the staircase, a waterfall was pouring down onto the steps from two floors above. I pulled the nightcap off my head, pitched it angrily at the pool of water at my feet, and braved the flood.
Now I ain’t gonna lie, at that moment I felt like killin’ a man. Maybe that’s the easiest way to explain my participation in the unfortunate events that followed.
Once I was up on that third floor, staring down the hall at room 333, I knew right away that something wasn’t right. The oak door that had been on those hinges just two days before was replaced with a large steel door, the kind found on goddamn submarines. You could imagine my anger when I first noticed this, being the building superintendent and all. I tried to remember if any of the letters stuffed in my mail slot had anything to do with asking permission to install a large metal door. I was sure there wasn’t.
I pounded my fist against that steel door and was surprised to hear that there was no sound. I beat my fist against the door again, still no sound. It was as if the whole goddamn room was filled solid with metal.
My anger got the best of me as I kicked in the door of the neighboring apartment. The room was empty, as I mentioned before, all the rooms on the third floor were vacant except for the one causing all this ruckus. I loaded my shotgun and took aim at the wall shared by the two flats and blasted a hole about two feet in diameter.
Much to my surprise, I was knocked flat on my ass by a 500-gallon water-blast that shot out from the mouth I had just blown through the wall. Half of the room filled with ice cold water in an instant. My feet finally found the floor. I rose up out of the abyss, the water was now as high as my chest.
What I saw in that room, you’d never believe. I threw up my shotgun and aimed it straight at the terror standing in room 333.
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