I'm stumbling down the street in the October darkness with my roommate Darryl, the stars crystallized overhead in the chill air and just barely out of arms reach. We're on the way back from closing a bar, not the first time we've done so, and I'm relying on Darryl's movements as a surrogate gyroscope to tell me which way I need to lean in order to remain upright, the result being that the two of us weave atop the sidewalk like two jet fighters in a dogfight through the Grand Canyon. Just then Darryl stops and points at a bum on the other side of the road near a half-emptied pallet of boxes of grocery store food. The plastic stretch wrap is peeled back from the top like wilting, translucent flower petals.
As we move closer to the bum, Darryl turns and looks at me.
"I think that's the best-dressed homeless transvestite I've ever seen. Just look at the stovepipe hat he's got on: You just don't see that anymore."
I look across the street and shout: "Hey, get away from that, it's not yours. Go on!"
The transvestite-bum gazes across the street at us, laughs and tilts his hat toward us as if we had just given him a standing ovation for his performance. I shout "Hey!" again and the bum leaves, smiling and taking large, magnanimous steps down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.
Just then the door to the restaurant we had stopped near opens and a black couple walks out. They pause on the steps while the man tosses a white silk scarf around his neck and the woman pulls on a pair of leather gloves. Darryl walks up to the man and proffers his right hand.
"How are you doing tonight?" Darryl asks loudly, his voice echoing off the walls and resonating in the thin night air.
"I'm a regular king," the man says as the woman next to him tilts her head a quarter-back and laughs up at the stars.
Darryl turns to me as the couple brush past us. "What's up with your car? Isn't it parked around here, somewhere?"
I shrug and look up and down the street. I had parked it nearby just a few hours earlier.
"That's not the pallet of food we ordered for the apartment, is it?" I ask, motioning across the street with a nod. "I thought we moved it into the apartment."
Darryl just shrugs.
"Hey, is that your green corvette?" the black woman asks, tapping on my shoulder and pointing to a lime green car parked down the road.
"Yeah, I'm a regular corvette guy," I say as I look at my 1968 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight parked alongside the curb. "It was nice meeting you two. Good-bye."
"Bye," the woman says, lacing her right arm through the man's left and walking down the sidewalk.
Darryl and I start walking toward the car when a police helicopter hovers overhead and snaps on its searchlight, first enveloping us in a circle of light before tracing the oval beam across the street and resting it on my car. The helicopter floats above it and the light widens to illuminate it in all its faded lime-green luster. We cross the street and I notice a parking-ticket shaped piece of paper beneath the passenger side windshield wiper. I pull it out and read it as the wind from the helicopter makes October colder than it otherwise should be.
"We protected your car tonight," the note says.
I look at Darryl and then up at the helicopter. "Thanks, I appreciate you protecting my car," I say.
The helicopter turns off its light and flies away.
"What's the note say?" Darryl asks.
I look at my car and notice several dents on the front right quarter panel. "It says they protected my car tonight." Darryl shrugs and begins walking toward our apartment, which is cattycorner to where my car is parked. Then I look back down the street and across the bridge we had crossed just before running into the black couple.
"Holy fuck, it's the Monster."
Standing on the other side of the bridge, barely a hundred yards away, is the Monster. It stands tall in silhouette, perhaps ten feet, and looks menacing from its vantage point just outside the circle of light of a nearby street lamp. Darryl gets a jump-start running while I stare for a moment as it stands menacingly on the other side of the bridge, but then I'm on Darryl’s heels. As we reach the apartment building's front door, though, I become paralyzed and fall onto the grass strip between the sidewalk and the front door. Darryl grabs the front door, fumbles for his keys, and turns to look at me lying in the lawn.
"What are you doing? Get up!" he yells.
I can't move. I see the Monster in the distance starting to cross the bridge. Darryl runs from the door and grabs me under the shoulders and drags me to the landing in front of the security door. He gets his keys out, unlocks the door, and drags me into the foyer where he drops me beneath the mailboxes. I can see him panicking as he flips through the keys on his key ring for the one that will open the door to our apartment. I can only stare through the glass security door as the Monster turns onto my street and begins heading toward my building. Darryl gets the front door open and turns to me.
"C'mon, get the fuck up!" he yells.
"I can't. I can't move," I yell back as I watch the Monster walk toward the front door of our apartment building. "I need the scroll. Get me the scroll."
We have scrolls in our apartment that, when read, alleviate fear-paralysis. Darryl, though, is equally panicked as his head jerks between the safety of the apartment and my limp body at the bottom of the landing.
"We only have one left. I can't give it to you because it might get me next, so get up," he shouts as he looks into the apartment.
"Get it, I need it, the Monster will see me here any second," I shout. "If he sees me, we're both done for. Get it!"
Darryl refuses to look at me and I look back through the security door. The Monster is on the sidewalk and lumbering toward the door, its arms barely moving as it strides toward me.
"We only have one left. I need it for myself," Darryl says as he runs into the room and picks up the scroll, unrolls it and reads it aloud.
I look through the door and the Monster staring down at me, its red eyes glowing. It's nearly expressionless mouth almost resembles a grin of
Nick woke up in a cold sweat. He was sitting upright in bed. He looked over at the clock radio: it was 3:17 in the morning. Sarah was sound asleep, turned on her side, her hair fanned out across her face and washing over the pillow. His tongue hurt fiercely. He rubbed his eyes and slipped out from under the covers and went into the living room, picked up the pack of cigarettes from the coffee table and lit one. He blew a geyser of white ghosts into the darkness and watched as they fractured in the moonbeams coming through the slats in the blinds.
Twice in two weeks? The Monster? He sucked deeply on the cigarette and watched its tip glow furiously in the dark, red like the Monster's eyes. He shivered as the perspiration on his body evaporated and he looked into the shadows of the living room for the lurking hulk of the Monster. He looked down at the tip of the cigarette again and tried to concentrate on something else, hoping that the effort would clear his mind of the dream. He thought about the stolen paintings, trying to imagine what they might look like and conjuring images of Rembrandts into his mind. He wondered about the owner and whether he stood and stared at blank spaces on the wall. He looked at the tip of the cigarette and saw the eyes of the Monster.
"What are you doing up smoking a cigarette?"
Nick jerked on the couch and looked over to where Sarah was standing, her hair tangled about her shoulders and her nightgown clinging to her curves.
"Did I wake you?"
"I smelled smoke."
"Sorry."
Sarah walked into the room and sat down on the couch next to him. "What's the matter?"
Nick took another long drag on the cigarette and crushed it out. "I had another dream about the Monster."
"The Monster?"
Nick nodded.
"Are you okay?"
Nick shrugged. "I don't know. I guess. My tongue is sore. I guess I bit it to wake myself up."
"Didn't you have the same dream last week?"
Nick shook his head. "No. I dreamed about the Monster last week, but it was
n't the same dream. They're never the same dream; they're always different. It's always the same Monster, though."
"The Bigfoot thing?"
Nick nodded.
"Anything you want to talk about?"
Nick shook his head. "No. It's just weird that I'm dreaming about it, again. It's been so long. It's weird that I'm biting my tongue to wake up; I used to do that in high school. Sometimes I would wake up sure that I had been screaming -- my throat would feel hoarse like I had been screaming -- but no one else ever heard me."
Sarah yawned and looked over at Nick in the darkness. "Is there something wrong?"
Nick shook his head. "I don't know."
"Are you stressed out about anything?"
"Maybe, I don't know. Nothing I can think of," Nick said, staring up at the grayness of the ceiling. "This Monster used to follow me everywhere I went when I was a little kid, always popping up in my dreams. Seven or eight or nine feet tall with red eyes, sharp teeth, long fingernails and all covered in hair. Sometimes, it was really fast: it would come out of nowhere and take one of my friends off into the woods to his death. Other times, it was extremely slow, sluggishly coming after me as if it were mocking my ability to escape.”
Nick shook his head and looked at the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray, crumpled like a broken spine worn white by the elements. "And tonight, it was moving slow, coming after me methodically. And Darryl, shit, I haven't seen him since I don't know when. He's probably still in grad school working on a new masters in something. None of it makes any sense to me."
Sarah put her arm around him and pulled him close. "C'mon, let's go back to bed. Tomorrow's Friday and you can forget about everything tomorrow night."
Nick let her pull him from the couch and down the hall. He watched her from behind as the nightgown smoothed itself across her hips and emphasized the curves of her rear with each step. He turned her around when they crossed the threshold to the bedroom and pulled her in close, pressing his lips tightly against hers. She pulled away from him and smiled wickedly.
"A monster, huh?" she said as she moved her hand downward below his stomach. "Wow, scary."
FOUR