Glitch by Amir Ahmed
“Kung PAO!” The narrator exclaimed.
“Think you can eat chips with chopsticks?” I asked.
Greg looked into bag open in his lap. “There’s some with the spoons.”
I went to the kitchen. The cutlery drawer held three metal chopsticks. I took two tossed them over to Greg. They bounced off his face. Greg swatted at them noncommittally.
The documentary showcased more unlikely weaponry: pens, fans, and miniature dogs that hid in sleeves—which I thought was cheating. Each weapon featured a CGI skeleton fight scene, and ended in a horribly pun.
“This is one weapon you don’t want to cross!” The narrator said as one CGI skeleton pointed a crossbow at another and shot. Greg and I were trying to eat the Doritoes with chopsticks.
After Greg shoved a chip in his ear for the fifth time, I decided to go to bed.
#
I had a few bad dreams that night.
I dreamt I killed Josh.
I dreamt I was in danger.
But mostly I dreamt about the Stalker Man.
The cold started it. At first I shut it out. I bundled the covers tighter, and shoved a spare pillow against my chest. I had a few dreams-within-a-dream where I won the Kentucky Derby. I had another dream where I was a claymation alien on some kid’s show. In another dream I fought a CGI skeleton with a dogbow—a crossbow that launched dogs.
But again and again the cold woke me up. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep and opened my eyes.
The Stalker Man.
Its head—white and hard and featureless—screamed loud and ugly and profane in my sight. It loomed like a mountain, dominating my field of vision, creating a dizzying sense of height, power, and dumb size.
The Stalker Man’s face appeared distorted—a nightmare bulging in a fish-eye lens. Its face was lit from below, as if it held a flashlight in its hands. Shadows fell long and deep at the sides of its skull. They emphasized the paleness of its skin, and the way it stretched tight over the skull.
But it wasn’t perfect, I noticed. The Stalker Man’s skin didn’t have pores, but I did see tiny wrinkles and golf-ball dimples—imperfections in the perfect, rubbery mask. The small errors just made it scarier. They made it real.
As I stared, the room grew slightly larger, then slightly smaller, like it was breathing, bending at the edges.
In typical nightmare-logic, I couldn’t move.
I tried to look away. But the Stalker Man filled everything. My dirty room, with the mounds of dirty clothes, poster of Panda Lenin, and my two laptops open and glowing with white light, looked disturbingly accurate for a dream. I forced my eyes left, and saw red numbers spell 13:61 on my alarm clock. That wasn’t helpful.
The entire time this dream played by, there was a sound: haaaaaa-waaaaa. It sounded like the ocean in a seashell. At every haaaaa. a cold breath blew on my forehead. At every waaaaa, the hairs on my stubble tingled.
The Stalker Man was breathing.
I tried to look at my fingers, because that’s a good way to realize you’re in a dream. But I still couldn’t move.
The Stalker Man haaaaed. It waaaaaaed. Its slit-mouth gurgled, and sometimes a smell like rotting fish crept out. It yawned. For a second I saw a forked tongue, covered with slick black hair.
“What do you want?” I tried to say.
No sound came out. If the Stalker Man could read my mind, it didn’t answer. It just stared. Its slit mouth sometimes twitching, sometimes tugging, but always haaaaa-waaaaing cold breath on my face.
Slowly, the smudgy red numbers on the clock changed.
The clock ticked down. From 13:61 to 13:60. Fro,m 13:60 to 13:59. And then down and down and down to 13:01.
When the flickered to 13:00. The Stalker Man twitched.
It licked its lips with its hairy tongue. A sound like falling rocks came from inside its stomach.
The shadows beneath its face widened, the haaaa-waaaa-ing grew fainter and fainter. The Stalker Man’s blue eyes dimmed from electric blue to navy.
Then, like a shuttered candle, they winked out.
All the light was gone now, except for the red numbers of my clock. The current time was 12:59. My eyes hurt with bright green afterimages.
No wonder he left, I thought as my dream faded. 12:59 was real time.
The clock ticked up to 1:00 AM. I dreamed about tits.
#
“Are you writing?” Greg asked.
“I’m writing.” I said. I put down my green Sealed Air thermos on the edge of the roof and pecked a few words on the laptop balanced on my knees. The wind wobbled my thermos. I secured it with a free hand.
The two of us stood on the roof of a Holiday Inn, located at the far end of Bay Street in downtown Toronto. The forty-story high building was still dwarfed by nearby skyscrapers.
The Inn was the best we could get—Greg’s girlfriend’s friend was in some managerial position, and had greeted us at the door to let us up to the rooftop. The only stipulation for the rooftop rental was that we refrain from mentioning Holiday Inn or the girlfriend’s friend’s name.
The rooftop actually looked nice: a line of trees split the stucco rectangle in two from the entrance, and a square of astro-turf complete with tasteful sculptures lounged on the northeast side. It looked like the hotel staff had intended to have guests up here, then closed it off for some reason.
“I still can’t see any,” Greg said. He held his camera up and scanned the sky for hawks. This was his business camera: the lens stretched as long as my thermos, and was covered with neat white numbers for God-knows-what photographic calculation.
I sat with my back to the raised ledge that bordered the rooftop. Depending on your height, the ledge either made a safety-catch for the rooftop wanderers, or a perfect tripping hazard.
I turned my head and saw a gigantic ad for the new Alice in Wonderland performance. A curvy Alice hung in silhouette in the middle of the ad—her skirt ruffled in what I assumed was a plunge down the rabbit hole. A line of flashing LEDs bordered the billboard. Most of them weren’t working.
“Tell me what you’re writing,” Greg said. He turned a few of the lens knobs and the zoom lens.
“I’m not writing yet,” I admitted. “Shouldn’t you be photographing?”
“There’s nothing here.” Greg said. He was just complaining because he was cold: the poor guy hadn’t understood that it gets windy this high up. He wore a plain white t-shirt that constantly billowed in the wind and a pair of shorts he should have kept at the gym.
“They’ll come out. It’s like fishing.” I said.
Greg sat down next to me. I took another swig from my thermos. Greg looked like he hated me now.
“That toque looks warm.” He said.
“Thanks,” I said. It was warm: a double-knit I got from Zellers last year.
“Coffee looks good too.” He said.
“And the laptop is nice and toasty.” I said.
“Except you’ll never have kids now.” Greg said. He pointed to the laptop’s proximity to my crotch.
“Don’t want any.” I said.
“Don’t like kids?”
“They get dirty,” I said. “We should have brought bacon.”
“Bacon?”
“I’m pretty sure hawks can smell meat. Like, one tenth of a smell-atom is supposed to make them go crazy.”
“That’s sharks.” Greg said.
“I’m pretty sure it works for birds too.” I said.
We sat and watched for birds. Until Greg got some footage, the entire story was worthless. Stranger Danger was not a literary journal; it was a blog. Reporting on hawks that lived on skyscrapers was boring enough, but if we didn’t have photos we wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that we were pretty much out of ideas.
Greg seemed to hone in on my thought process. “I choose next week’s thing.” He said. I nodded.
“Still though, this is relaxing,” I said. I leaned back on the ledge and rested my head on the rough stucco. ?
“Give me your hat or I’ll eat your skin for warmth.”
I gave Greg my hat.
I began to doze. The noise from below never rose above a faint murmur. The best part about it though, was that this was normal. Well, normal for me.
“Hey! I see one!” Greg shouted, working the camera-dildo.
Greg aimed at a building one street down, a modern one shaped like a sail made of green glass. Around the skyscraper’s roof, a brown blur leaped, and circled in the air.
“Awesome.” Greg whispered. “I can actually get a pretty good shot.”
“Bacon.” I said. “If only we had bacon.”
More hawks came. They flew around the rooftops, rolling lazily through the air currents. Sometimes they joined together like schools of fish. Sometimes they scattered like seeds thrown in the wind. Sometimes they dropped. They dropped down down down to another rooftop, skimmed just above its surface, and rose again.
Greg went into full-on photographer mode, talking about angles and light and junk. You couldn’t tell he worked in ad analysis and spent his days making slides about marketing campaigns.
I typed out a few words for the article. But I expected the photos to carry most of the weight, so I played bejeweled on Facebook instead.
When I got bored of that, I folded the laptop and set it down next to my thermos. I folded my arms over the ledge, and looked down into the street.
The cars and people moved like toys beneath us. I kept expecting them to vanish, like a video game still rendering, but they just kept on moving in perfect hi-def.
The LEDs on the Alice in Wonderland ad blinked on and off in front of me.
As I stared, the lights blew out. Maybe there’d been a short circuit.
But then, one light on the sign’s ride side burst on. Bright blue light stuttered on.
Another light blinked on the left side.
They almost looked like eyes.
#
I dreamt of the Stalker Man again.
He stood in front of me, just like before. Big eyes, big, white face, cold breath and slit mouth.
The Stalker Man’s breath seemed colder now. When he breathed out, my cheeks burned. When he breathed in they numbed out. My nose started to run. It oozed a slick, slimy trail across my lips and down my chin. I wanted to wipe my nose but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even think about moving.
Just like last night, I could see my clock. Today it read 13:23. The clock was ticking down, just like last night.
When the clock ticked down to 13:00, the Stalker Man wheezed. It snuffled. It gently rolled its double jointed shoulders.
Darkness welled at the edges of my vision. With every breath it grew deeper and the Stalker Man grew darker. Soon it was just a pair of eyes, watching me in the dark.
Then, not even that.
#
I swiped my entry card over the turnstile-gate. The card reader beeped green.
I slid past it and adjusted my man-bag. The card snapped back to the lanyard clipped to my pants. The pants in question were the green and gold company sweat pants. We were supposed to wear them on our off-hours and Sunday morning was my time off. I also had a tie on.
TEB’s foyer was an orgy of neutral colours: taupe, eggshell and beige predominated. Sleek-looking, uncomfortable office furniture sat at specially chosen areas to make the place look homey, but in a businesslike way. Bad, minimalist art held prime real estate.
I headed to the elevator lobby and called down an elevator. One came almost immediately. I stepped inside, checked the mirror in the back for lint in my hair, and pushed the button to the second floor.
The doors rumbled shut. I leaned against the mirror and sighed.
Employers were supposed to respect work-life balance. Overtime pay was nice, but that money couldn’t buy back time I needed to do stuff, like fight Stalker Men and eat delicious food.
But this morning I’d got an email from Henry. The interns had some sort of play-day and I had to come in and make sure no one lost an eye.
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened. My eyes widened.
“Holy fuck.” I whispered.
A sea of teenagers.
They came in all genders, shapes, and levels of awful fashion sense. I saw a group of girls in pastel tank tops and jeans, and two guys in full-on executive suits. I saw ill-fitting dress shirts, horrible polos, skirts that ran too long, too short, and one with a slit in it like a nightclub hostess. The guys wore so much hair gel it sparkled, and the girls wore makeup for clubbing in a very dark club.
“Mr. Flautt!”
A young, over-confident voice called my name. I looked around, still dazed. Out of the crowd emerged a teenager, a heavily muscled one with five-o’clock shadow, wearing a suit and tie I’d seen in the windows at Le Chateau—a black-purple-steel grey colour scheme that looked like money and douchebaggery.
“Oh hey...” I said. The teenager held out his hand and I shook it. I saw a Blackberry clip at his
belt. I didn’t even own a phone anymore.
“Gary.” I remembered.
Gary grinned. “I thought you’d forgotten me!”
“No no,” I said. “Swim team guy. That’s you.”
“Haha. Yeah,” Gary rattled off a perfect business-laugh. “So you’re running the orientation?”
Orientation?
“I’ll get back to you on that,” I said. “Excuse me.”
I shouldered through the crowded elevator lobby. The teenagers turned to look at me—in awe of the guy with the pass-card lanyard. I recognized a few faces that I’d interviewed. Names sprang up as I pushed past them—Samantha, Albert, Inder.
The crowd thinned immediately as I left the elevator lobby and entered the office proper. An empty cubicle-farm greeted me. Seeing them deserted was a little disconcerting. I could hear the echoes of phones and typing.
“Sam!”
A hand waved. It was Henry, dressed in his usual outfit of company sweats and hoodie. I realized with horror that we were pants-buddies.
Henry sat at a conference table between Rohit and that albino guy from marketing—Sean. The three of each wielded sheaves of paper and serious-looking clip-boards.
“Like the outfit.” Henry said. I couldn’t detect any sarcasm. “Fresh. Exciting.”
I took a seat opposite him. I dropped my man-bag filled with nothing next to me.
“So the room is booked and you and Rohit just need to give your presentation.” Henry said.
Presentation?
“Just do it like you did last year.” Henry continued.
Rohit’s eyebrow quirked.
“Answer any questions, yadda-yadda, welcome them to the company, let them know that interns are a vital part of our family. And are part of a holistic body that gets their hands dirty to do some goddamn finance.”
“Henry...” Rohit began. “Sarah did the presentation with me last year. Not Sam.”
“Oh.” Henry said. “Okay then. Rohit takes point and Sam can read off the powerpoints. It’s not hard.”
Overtime pay, I thought. Think of overtime pay.
#
Henry and Sean ferried the interns down the elevators, leading them to the presentation room on the first floor. Rohit and I stayed behind to go over the slides.
“Hey, Sam. Sorry about the short notice,” Rohit said. He packed a bundle of papers under his arm. I saw lots of blue ink on his papers. Lots of notes. “This must be pretty random.”
“It’s fine,” I said. It wasn’t, but overtime pay
The two of us took the elevator down. Rohit in his business-casual, myself in sweats and a tie. Rohit carried a stack of slides. I carried an empty bag and a single sheet outlining the orientation for the new crop of interns.
People clapped as we entered the presentation room—a lecture style room splashed with TEB’s gold and green. Rohit told a joke that wasn’t funny, and everyone laughed. I stumbled along.
?
“Now, you’ve all volunteered to work for us, for free, and we respect that. We respect that so much that we’re not getting paid to be here today!”
The interns clapped. My mouth hung open.
“Henry’s not getting paid, he just loves to be here.” Rohit pointed out Henry at the head of the audience.
The interns clapped.
“Sam’s not getting paid; he just gives one hundred and ten percent!” Rohit said. The interns clapped again.
“And I’m not getting paid either. Because work isn’t about money! It’s about play!”
Fuck this shit.
“Next slide Sam.” Rohit said.
I raised an eyebrow at him. People laughed.
The projector glowed a single blue light. I clicked the next slide and it flickered. At the front row, one of the better-dressed interns adjusted his glasses. The blue-white power-point caught the glass.
Glowing eyes again.
#
I dreamt of the Stalker Man that night.
Its eyes glowed bright blue—shining through my closed eyelids. When I opened my eyes, the Stalker Man was there.
The light from its eyes spilled across the walls, blazed in rows on the floorboards, and glowed along the sallow, stretched skin of the Stalker Man.
I’d never realized how huge the Stalker Man was before. Now, in the searchlight-shine of its eyes, I understood.
The Stalker Man’s hands were planted at either side of my bed. Its feet pushed into the walls at the corners of my room. Its long, thin limbs were bunched up. Its double-jointed arms had folded over to make room for itself. The thing’s double-elbows scraped the walls of my bedroom. Its arched back rose to the ceiling.
The Stalker Man exhaled a cold breath. So cold it hurt. It stiffened my shirt and burned the feeling out of my skin.
I could hardly breathe in this nightmare. The weight of a flipped Volvo pushed down on my chest. The clock on my bedside was just out of my range of vision.
I strained my eyes to decipher the half-numbers in the clock. I think it said 13:21. If the Stalker Men followed the pattern from last time, he would leave at 13:00, when the world entered real time.
Just twenty minutes.
I stared at the clock. I ignored the Stalker Man’s gaze, the shifting limbs and the strange sounds like falling rocks that came from its bubbling, shifting stomach.