Glitch. Part 30

"Enjoying that there Facebook Sam?" Henry's voice asked.

I jumped. The mouse popped out of its USB. The tower of my computer wobbled. Henry was so close I was surprised I hadn't smelled his Old Spice deodorant, or felt the threads of his TEB hoodie on the back of my head.

"No no, don't get up man." Henry said. He put a hand on my shoulder and eased me down.

"Sorry Henry," I said. "Lapse in judgement."

I plugged the mouse back into the USB and went to close the window. Henry stopped me.

"No no," Henry held out his hand. "Let's take a look. Let's check out the notifications, you've got any hot girls on your friends list?"

Not the time old man. I gritted my teeth. "Sorry. Won't happen again."

"I said it's no problem," Henry insisted so that I knew it was a ma.s.sive problem. "Show me your friends list."

"That's-"

"Show me." Henry insisted.

I opened my friends list. I was grabbing the mouse again. I took a deep breath. I could keep calm.

I could keep calm.

"Dude, you've got like, five girls!" Henry slapped me on the back. My knuckles whitened on the mouse.

I scrolled down the list, slowly. Henry took in every picture and every name. The humiliation was tangible.

"Yeah, click on her-Lena." Henry said.

I clicked on Lena's profile.

Lena's profile still hadn't been affected by the recent format change. I wonder how she'd managed that. Her profile picture showed her and Amrith with the faces photoshopped onto each other's bodies. It was creepy.

Lena's wall was pretty spa.r.s.e. The comments came in days apart. The most recent comment came from two days ago.

Someone named Lori-lee had written: where are you?

Huh.

"You enjoy," Henry patted my back again. I heard his suddenly audible footsteps leave the room.

That was probably a pay reduction right there, but I didn't care.

Where are you?

For some reason, that bothered me.

I went over to Josh's profile. There was no activity there either-but, he only had 21 friends.

I searched Josh's friends list. Amrith and Laurent were both on there. I clicked on both their profiles.

Laurent's profile was blocked, but Amrith's wasn't. On his wall, someone called Juresh Bhattia had written: dude answer ur phone.

This was from two days ago.

I bounced my foot on the floor. I went back to Josh's profile-not thinking of Josh in the dreams I didn't forget. Josh with his stomach full of fire, spreading like a cancer, blackening skin.

f.u.c.k. I bounced my leg harder.

Josh, in my dreams, burning. Dying.

But dying was what people did. They lived, they died. They were more like machines than anything else. People were, and then they weren't. They came, and then they went away. All the time.

People like Jonathan.

If I could make it right...

But I couldn't make it right.

The Stalker Man knew that much, I felt. The Stalker Man had seen that. Dust. He'd called me dust. I was dust. We were all dust that scattered in the wake of its red, red eyes.

Red eyes staring at me.

WHY HAD IT'S EYES CHANGED COLOUR?.

I stepped outside the HR office. The TEB hallways with their flourescent lights and beige paint-job suddenly looked too much like a corporate Level Zero: the same room and same people repeated again and again in every direction. I had to get out.

I took the narrow, empty hallways by the interview rooms, and skirted over to the elevators. A group of three interns-two girls and a guy-were chatting next to the elevators, each holding folders, papers and official-looking c.r.a.p. One of them was Gary Geare. He raised his hand to me as I walked past.

The elevator lobby was empty, but it was close enough to lunch that I could fake a trip down to the Mr. Greek at the bottom of the building. I just needed to get some fresh air.

I took the elevator down. No one joined me, and when the doors parted on the bottom floor I jammed my pa.s.s-card onto the turnstile and pounded for the closest exit.

It was hot outside; the sun was out and basted my forehead. I started sweating right away. I unb.u.t.toned my shirt and threw it down.

Just needed fresh air, right?

I unhooked my belt and slipped it out of its links. I fed it into a trash can.

I'd paid seventy dollars for that belt, what the h.e.l.l?

The TEB building exits into a little brick plaza that looks out onto Square One. A Wal-Mart greeted me as I walked further and further from the building. Traffic was steady on the street in front of me.

I flipped out my keys and looked around for the underground parking entrance.

Couldn't find it. Thinking some more, I realized it was probably only accessible from the elevators inside.

I wasn't going back inside.

I headed out in no direction at all. I just wanted to get out.

I'd chosen to perform some hyperventilation in a brick plaza near some restaurants.

There was a fountain in the middle of the plaza. Its bottom shone with rusted pennies.

I didn't want to return to work. Something told me that I'd pa.s.sed the limit of strange s.h.i.t there forever anyway. I'd ignored the three calls from my supervisor, and answering a fourth one would probably only get me chewed out. And even if I deserved some discipline for freaking out on company time, that didn't mean I'd walk into it.

The restaurants in the plaza were dead-two weren't even open, and the others had about two people in each.

The only store doing well in this little plaza was an Arab grocery store called Botros Mart. I'd tried calming down by going inside there to buy a snack; the store smelled of pot-pourri and flour. Everything seemed to be either made of dried fruit or dried fruit stuck inside fist-sized blocks of nougat.

So I sat on the edge of the fountain, smelling the chlorinated water and trying not to flinch from the drops of cold water pattering on my back. I held my head in my hands. I felt hot. It was too bright out.

And life sucked so much.

I had bad dreams that night Not dreams where a Stalker Man hovered above me, but a bad

dream.

I dreamt of Josh And how I killed him.

"What are you doing with that Josh?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

My eyes saw in black and white and grey. They saw squares of white dots, chequered out on a black sky. My ears heard static. Every sound came in distorted like someone had hit the world's whammy bar.

Except it was all so clear.

"The knife behind your back." I said. My voice echoed in the altered soundscape, and stretched like pulled harpstrings.

"What knife?" Josh asked. His voice was close. Right behind me.

"The knife you're holding out." I said. "The knife you're ready to-"

I leaped ahead. The edge of a knife prodded my back but didn't even break my clothes. I spun.

Josh, etched in black and grey, stood with the white, white knife out in something like a fighting stance.

"It got you," Josh said.

I flipped out my own knife. I don't know how I moved so fast.

Josh jumped forward. He swung the knife level with my throat. I jumped back. I turned and ran with the open blade against the pavement. The scriiiitch of metal on asphalt rang out in the

silence. The light of a gate opened on the ground.

Except it was red.

"f.u.c.k," Josh said at the gate.

A sound like falling rocks echoed from all around us.

"Sam stop," Josh said.

I felt hunger. But I felt strong. There was thunder in my chest. The emptiness. It felt good.

I ran at Josh.

"It's here!" Josh screamed.

My head was blank. There was just purpose and intent. I was movement abstracted from reason, like an equation relating the movement of a bullet. Didn't matter what I was doing, just mattered that I did.

I put out my foot. It hit Josh's side. The blow threw him to the side.

Josh was on his back, but he got up right away. I kicked him in the teeth.

"Oofh!" Josh recoiled. He cupped his mouth and blood seeped out. "Shhhchit." His voice was slurred.

I sat on his chest, and grabbed his collar.