Glitch

The lights were off in my apartment. I edged forward, navigated my way to the kitchen, and found the fridge. I pulled out a pack of Coors.

  On the way to my sofa, I caught my eyes in the TV.

  In the black screen, my eyes glowed blue. Two lights in the darkness.

  CHAPTER FIVE: THE STALKER MEN

  The snow fell thick and heavy from a black sky, from clouds that choked the moon and the ambient, glowing light of refracting stars. The snowflakes fell fat and heavy like marshmallows, caking the streets. The snow clogged the gutters. It buried cars. It massed in crooks of naked trees and turned the night into a black and white photo.

  I shifted on my feet, letting the snow pile up on the shoulders of my jacket.

  I stood on the sidewalk outside UTM’s Davis building, the gigantic slab of concrete that held the oldest lecture halls on campus. The lights were still on inside, but the Davis building was empty now. The last bus left ten minutes ago.

  My phone buzzed in my palm. I flipped it open.

  “Talk to me Jon.” I said. My words made clouds in the air. Flakes of snow dusted my bare knuckles, then melted away with a feathery feeling.

  Jon’s voice came muffled through the phone. “Yeah. Sorry I’m late. You’ll see me in a minute.”

  “Got it,” I folded the phone and dropped it in my jacket pocket.

  I took a deep breath and blew a column of mist into the air. When I was a kid, we’d use the cold air to pretend we were smoking. I was nineteen now, and I’d tried smoking. It made my mouth taste like ass.

  Davis was only accessible by a narrow, single-lane road. The road was the best way into campus: it cut through the woodlot, wound through the hills and ponds dotting the parks, and made a clear, clean path around the Davis building and up to Mississauga Road. I watched the road, and waited for Jon.

  A muffled, comfortable silence had settled with the snow. The birds were quiet or gone, the crickets long burrowed beneath the ground. Just the buzzing streetlights at the side of the road, and the sound of snow settling.

  Stillness followed the silence. Outside, with no people and no traffic, it was easy for me to think time had stopped. The only exception was the snow, drifting from the sky in thick, white sheets.

  A pair of headlights lanced the woodlot. The twin lights mounted the hill beyond the circle road, and glimmered through the dark trees. They passed across the road, and turned the snow to sparks.

  The headlights belonged to a blue Honda. As I watched, the Honda rounded the turn of the circle road. The engine roared. The driver honked. A white hand waved in the window.

  I hitched my backpack and headed to the street. The car skidded to a stop, ploughing snow up around the tires.

  In the window, Jonathan reached behind his seat and popped the back seat open. I yanked the door and threw my backpack into the seat. Snowflakes scattered on the black fabric.

  “Exam went okay?” Jon asked.

  I shut the passenger door and went around to the shotgun seat. Jon opened that one for me too.

  “I’m guessing no.” He said as I sat down.

  “It went fine.” I pulled the door shut. The thump of the door gave a verbal period.

  Jon revved the engine. The car squealed. The wheels spun, spun, and finally kicked us over the piled snow.

  I shrugged off my coat and threw it in the back seat. I didn’t like snow, and I didn’t like being wet. I pried off my boots and tucked them in the back too. Finally I peeled off my wet, dirty socks, and tossed the damp woolen balls behind me. I dialed the heater up to its highest setting.

  Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “Comfortable enough?”

  I dialed the radio to 97.3 ROCK. Finger Eleven blasted out Paralyser. I grunted to indicate I was now comfortable.

  “Cool.” He said.

  The headlights cast the circle road in stark light, like a Polaroid with too much flash. The road stretched white and clear ahead of us, while the woods around us loomed dark and murky. The streetlights came rarely. Long stretches of bare tree trunks flashed in the headlights as we passed. They reminded me of tiger stripes.

  The wipers squeaked across the glass. The heating whooshed on and off as the car rumbled through the snow. Finger Eleven’s Paralyser cried out tinny and ragged on the ancient speakers.

  I shuddered. Jon glanced over at me.

  “So Cheri facebooked me. She said you haven’t spoken to Nicole in a while.”

  I grunted. I wasn’t getting along with Nicole at the moment.

  The headlights hit a stop sign. Jon passed by without stopping.

  I shot him a dirty look. “That’s two demerit points.”

  “No one’s here.” Jon said.

  “Doesn’t make a difference.” The sign grew smaller and smaller in the window. “It was under a light and everything.”

  “Rules only apply if someone’s watching.” Jon said. We entered a stretch of road bordered by trees on both sides.

  “Also don’t tell Mom I said that,” Jon added.

  I grunted.

  We completed the turn around circle road and came to the lights on Mississauga Road. Jon took a right without checking for traffic or pedestrians. The car skidded.

  “Are you drunk?” I asked.

  Jon puffed out his cheeks and stuck out his tongue, like one of those girls on the animes he watched. The face looked displaced on my tall, muscled, five-o’clock-shadowed brother.

  “Tell me about the exam or about Nicole,” he said. “I’m not going to listen to your crap music for the next hour.”

  It was half an hour back to Brampton. “Test was okay,” I said. “Except I had to say a bunch of stuff about Kublai Khan.”

  “That poem you hate?”

  “Yep.”

  “So you slammed it?”

  I shook my head.

  “There are, rules and stuff,” I said.

  The snow on Mississauga Road glowed orange in the streetlamps. Jon pushed the car through it. If it kept snowing like this, the tracks we left would be covered by morning.

  We didn’t usually get heavy, soft snow like this. Usually it came hard and windy, with icy teeth that burned cheeks and shook the dead leaves out of trees. This snow fell like a blanket.

  “You know I read that thing after you were complaining about it,” Jon said. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s just a stupid opium dream,” I said. “Some guy gets high and writes about it.”

  “You don’t have to say it’s good if you think it’s stupid.”

  I bit my lip. Kublai Khan was more than stupid.

  “There are rules though,” I said. “My prof has this fu—stupid idea that art is this spontaneous thing you can’t control.”

  I bit the rest of my opinions down, because if I let them out I’d never stop.

  If art was truly spontaneous, something truly uncontrollable, studying art was pointless. If it couldn’t be controlled, it couldn’t be understood. Professor Simon’s idea of the poem shat on the money I paid her to teach me.

  “So write that out,” Jon said, like it was easy.

  “It’s not just the profs,” I said. “It’s the fucking—sorry—stupid people in the classes who fawn over them and enable this sort of sycophantic clusterfu—orgy. Thing.”

  “There’s no meaning in any of it,” I said.

  I looked out the window, at the dark streets racing by. There wasn’t meaning there either, just cold snow and wind.

  “And it’s so boring,” I finished. “Really, really boring. We’re not learning methods or theories, just interpretations.”

  “And you haven’t asked your prof about this?” Jon asked.

  “There are rules,” I repeated.

  Jon was silent for a while. After a bit, he turned the radio to 91.1 and soft jazz mumbled through the speakers. Jon thought about whatever Jon thought about. I thought about rules.

  After Jon died, I forgot about rules.

  #

  “Sam? You up?”

  Horrib
le brightness shocked the living room.

  “Aaaah,” I held a hand up to shield my eyes. My vision blurred. I blinked and felt stinging tears pour through my crusted eyes. “What the hell man?”

  The living room looked worse now; that was my fault.

  I felt a lot worse too; that was on me as well.

  I’d made a camp on the sofa in front of our TV. Aside from pillows, blankets, and two flashlights, I’d also stockpiled beer and food. The overall presentation did not look good. It didn’t even look sane.

  The food was on the other end of the couch: a sandwich made of bologna, cheese, and tomato. It was teetering on the sofa arm, dangerously close to falling. The beer was even closer: an empty pack of Coors lay on the floor, neatly squared against the sofa. The pack’s handle was ripped, and the tear broke apart the pack’s printed mountain scenery to show corrugated cardboard. More importantly, the tear made two bottles roll out under the sofa when I opened them. I’d spent a good five minutes last night trying vainly to retrieve the bottles without getting off the couch.

  Greg, standing at the entrance of the hallway in suit-jacketed sternness, did not look impressed. I motioned for him to turn off the light. He shook his head.

  He wormed out of his jacket and folded it across his arm. “Sorry man.”

  “I was sleeping.” I lied. I hadn’t really slept all night. I’d dozed. Every ten minutes my head had nodded off, and I’d entered a zone of grey thoughtblurs and semi-restfullness. But every time, I’d jerked awake, checked my mirror, and saw the blue eyes staring back at me.

  I shifted my ass and bottles clinked around me. My back hurt from sitting too long.

  “How’s the arm?” Greg draped his jacket lightly over the TV.

  I looked at my arm. Purple bruises swam across the wrist and knuckles. A lukewarm Coors bottle nestled under it. It radiated sickly warmth.

  “Needs more cold.” I coughed, then groaned. “What time is it?”

  “Eight o’clock.” Greg said. He raised an eyebrow at the bottles. “You realize it’s a work day.”

  Eight o’clock.

  I scrunched my face and hoped sleep would come. It didn’t. I just felt nervous, sick, miserable.

  “Where were you?” I asked. I felt around and realized I still had pants on. Point one for Sam.

  “Late night at work,” Greg said as he walked over to his room. He vanished into the hallway and shouted: “Decided to stay at Carrie’s. You should’ve seen it—there was this GIS report due because of some new software. Everyone was going crazy.”

  “That does sound crazy,” I said. I eyed the light switch on the other side of the room. I wished Greg would turn it off.

  Greg came back into the living room. He’d changed into a new pair of khakis and a starched, daffodil dress shirt. He buttoned the cuffs and asked me without looking up, “So are you going to work today or what?”

  “Not feeling good,” I said. I curled my clammy toes against the sofa.

  “Wonder why,” Greg said. He got both cuffs buttoned and patted the shirt down. “By the way, turns out the Shirtless Santa’s had a Facebook page all along. I think he manages it himself.”

  “I see.” I said. I lurched upright and planted both feet on the ground. I clumsily grabbed at the table and heave myself up. The blood rushed out of my head. Stars exploded in my eyes. My legs gave way and I crashed back into the sofa. Bottles clinked and the sofa springs creaked to welcome me back.

  Looked like I was staying put.

  “Anyway, we’ll do something simple next week,” Greg said. He retrieved his suit jacket from the TV and put it back on. He pulled the lapels and the fabric fwumped like a sail in high wind. “I guess I’ll see you tonight?”

  I had hardly heard him. I just nodded. My eyes closed. My head spun. Colours danced behind my eyelids.

  “Cool. Uh, feel better.” Greg’s disembodied voice said.

  I heard footsteps, and the sound of an opening door.

  “Wait,” I groaned. “Wait—about that photo you took—”

  The door clicked shut. Greg was gone. I was alone.

  Well, not quite alone.

  I waited for the stars to pass. They did. The dizziness cleared and I felt the machinery in my head slowly choke, rattle, and finally jerk to life like an old engine with a few kilometers left in it.

  I slowly patted myself to get an idea of where all my body parts were. I found my hips, found my jeans, and then felt a tiny, hard circle inside my front pocket.

  Fuck.

  I reached into the pocket. My hand came out with a simple gold earring looped around my index finger. After so long in my pocket, it matched my body heat perfectly. Greasy whorls smudged the metal where I’d touched it.

  So, it was still here.

  I thought of getting up again, but my head was still reeling from my last attempt. Instead, I threw off the blanket.

  I leaned over the sofa and looked down. The floor stared back at me. I had to get down.

  But how would I—

  I leaned too far. My balance vanished. I whipped my hands out but they struck empty air. I twisted. The blanket tangled my legs. I was dropping. Down down do—

  I was on the floor now.

  Mission accomplished.

  I raised my head. The dark green blanket tugged my feet as I shifted. I kicked it off and got to my knees.

  Okay. So far so good. I crawled on the floor to the windows.

  The entire north wall of our living room is windows, looking out to the other apartment building across from us. Greg said it looked like money. I said I didn’t want people staring at my junk. Greg’s inevitable response to this was the assurance no one wanted to stare at my junk. Touché, Greg.

  The thin, blue blinds were the only barrier between the world and my obvious inebriation. I crawled over to them now, stumbling over the cold, bare floor.

  I reached the little blind-control stick at the end of the last window, and spun it. The blinds slanted open, and revealed the apartment complex. A small, orange sun was rising in the east, and it cast pumpkin-coloured light on the manicured lawns and asphalt byways below.

  The light was too much. I closed the blinds.

  I coughed again, and gagged on my own breath. I thought of how I must look: a sweat-stained, unclean, alcohol-ghost. Wrinkled clothes, messed hair, breath smelling like rancid sick. Slats of light striping my hands and back. Clinging to the floor. Baffled by gravity. Disgusting.

  It was the earring’s fault.

  The earring.

  I’d dropped it at the foot of the sofa leg. It was still there, half-hidden under a drift of green blanket.

  I stumbled on all fours away from the windows. The curved gold caught the faint light in the room and concentrated it to a point—a single, unblinking eye.

  The earring ruined everything. I could ignore my eyes—still blue, still glow-in-the-dark—by avoiding mirrors. Hell, I could pretend I always had blue eyes. But the earring was something incontrovertibly real.

  I tripped. My knees skidded on the floor. I sprawled forward on the ground, right in front of the earring. Not so small anymore: it towered, a wall of inscrutable gold with its single point of light, watching me.

  I hated it. Especially because hating the earring was easier than the vague sense at the back of my head that, somehow, I had landed in something terrifying, and then fucked it up.

  I grabbed it. I squeezed it in my palm and felt the edge dig into my skin.

  “Fucking thing.” I grumbled. My eyes shut and this time I thought sleep would come. I thought I’d fall asleep, and wake up safe and warm and normal. But no sleep came.

  “Fucking thing.” I whispered. Then I groaned, and tossed the thing away.

  I really needed a shower.

  #

  It was such a stupid thing.

  I slouched against the shower wall, pinching the earring in my thumb and index, observing it for any imperfections or hidden letters that would only appear in war
m soapy water. I found none.

  It was just a goldish circle, broken only by a tiny lever to separate it. I knew three different places where I could get better-looking jewelry than this.

  But last night, Amrith said this earring could find the thing that had changed my eyes.

  The water drummed my head. The hot water had sweated out most of the remaining alcohol, and cleaned off whatever gunk had been oiling my skin. But my mind still felt full of fog, and though I was still too nervous to sleep, actual thinking came hard.

  I tried a few mental exercises. I failed them. I couldn’t recall any speeches from Faust, nor could I remember any squared number series. That meant I currently had the working IQ of a rabbit; today I’d be useless for anything that didn’t involve the internet.

  The internet it was then.

  I got out of the shower and toweled off. I wasn’t in any shape to work, so I grabbed the phone and called my supervisor while I searched for undies in the clothes-dunes of my bedroom.

  My supervisor, Tanya, was mad. She didn’t say it, because we were a calm and considerate workplace, but I knew that my absence today would add another entry on the “improvements” section. Whatever—I wasn’t trying to climb the corporate ladder. I just wanted to pay my rent.

  After I finished with Tanya and found a cleanish outfit, I remembered my laptop was missing—stolen from last night.

  So to balance karma, I stole Greg’s laptop. He kept it under his bed, in the dark blue box it came in from Best Buy. I dragged it out, set it down on our kitchen table, and booted it as I turned the power on for our ancient, black plastic coffee machine.

  While the machine gurgled to life, I guessed the password by running down a list of Greg’s favorite things. I went through “Carrie,” “watermelon,” “Daft Punk” and “P90X” until correctly guessing “123456“.

  As I typed, the red light on the coffee machine’s rear flickered on to let me know it was heated up. I ignored it, went to Google and typed in “level zero.”

  The results were a movie trailer and a Swedish electo-rock band.

  I idly looked for a mug in the cupboard and pulled out one with a rooster on it because I liked roosters. I set the mug under the coffee maker and pushed the button for a large cup.

  The machine made noises like a thousand cats in a grain thresher. I went back to the computer.

  I tried Google again with “blue glowing eyes.” Horror movie links and unscary pictures came up. Web MD had nothing with blue eyes as a symptom.