Walter, a college dropout, moved to Nashville to make some money. If he saved up enough, maybe he could go back and be with his sister in college, just like the two of them always planned. He found what he was looking for at the diner: a shift with...
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"Shit, shit, shit," Walt sprung out of bed. His watch dangled off the nightstand as it slipped from his hands. He reached down searching for his pants (that he hadn't washed in days). His belt was still in the loops; the buckle rattled on its way up his thighs. He buttoned the denim together and zipped his pants. He flipped through dirty shirts on the floor to find the one with the least amount of stains.
"Not that one," he said. The shirt looked like his face did. Stained. He had deep purple bags under his bloodshot eyes. The beer didn't help him sleep like it usually did. The book he flipped through all night in bed didn't do the trick either. He read line after line, but his eyes just skimmed over them, moving left to right, over and over again. He never actually read a single word. He'd get frustrated at the bottom of the page and try again. But all it took was three lines before his mind was lost again. His mind kept taking him back to the moonlit living room. He played it over and over again in his head. The scales on the thighs. The yellow-stained toenails. The fangs with the drool dripping down; like a dog that sat on a rug with his tail wagging, just waiting for a crumb or piece of food to miss his owner's mouth. The thing in the seat across the room last night was... drooling. Just like a hungry dog.
He couldn't stop thinking about those yellow eyes. Every time Walt tried to close his eyes he saw them. He spent all night trying to go to bed. He even brought the fan into his bedroom. Maybe the low hum would drown it out of his head. No. Maybe the book would bore him into sleep. No. Maybe writing a letter to his sister (who was at college in Arkansas) would make him come back to reality and realize all of this was just his mind and the darkness making a pact to play a prank on him.
Wendy,
I'm still out here working hard. You know I'm not the biggest fan of that school, but it doesn't feel right being out here without you. I hope you are happy and that college doesn't spit you out the way it did me. I'm working at a diner downtown. Nashville isn't nearly as scary as I thought it was...
He wrote the last line without thinking, but it made him pause. He stuck the pencil in his mouth and looked over his shoulder. There it was again on his mind. No, the letter didn't do any good either. As much as he tried to cram seeing that thing into the back of his mind, it still found a way to creep out from the darkness and sit first in line for his train of thought.
The hallway from his bedroom door to the living room saw him over and over again that night. From above it would have looked like the busiest runway on Earth with a plane landing every fifteen to twenty minutes. The pace throughout the night never stopped until, finally, he slipped into sleep just three hours before his shift at the diner. The downstairs neighbor was one more creek away from coming to his apartment door to curse him out for keeping him up all hours of the night. He wanted to ask Walt what was so damn interesting in the living room that he had to go back two, three, four times an hour.
All throughout the night he got the same answer. The living room was empty. There was nothing there. The answer was never good enough. Every time he turned the corner to the living room he stopped to stare at the leather chair in the corner. He opened the windows so wide it would have kept someone awake if they had used the couch for a bed. On the fifth trip to the living room, he even turned the chair upside down on itself so that no one could sit there. It looked like someone had turned it over to screw loose legs back on and tighten the bolts. But no. Walt wasn't tightening the legs of the chair. He was trying to keep his heart from fluttering. He spent the entire night like he had swallowed shot after shot of espresso. But it was only adrenaline.
