Gregory the First, Wilbur the Third, and Three Bloody Feet

All three of us are in the dining room, sitting at the small round table, but I’m the only one who has a vice-like grip on a half-eaten pork chop. And it’s clear that this is making my two roommates rather uneasy. Or, perhaps it’s the fact that I am shaking this piece of meat wildly at them as I shout belligerent threats that’s making them nervous. In any case, they are both still giving me that steely eyed stare that they’ve been giving me for the last twenty minutes, but behind that I detect a certain air of fright. What the hell is he planning to do with that porkchop? I am now completely certain this is the worst meeting in the history of meetings, and I say as much to them, before storming off to the kitchen. In a moment of pure immaturity, realizing I am still holding the half eaten pork chop, I slam it down to the floor before opening the fridge and grabbing a fresh beer. And then I march to my room.  

I slam the door shut behind me and feel the whole house shake for a moment. I close my eyes and instead of black, I see red, I’m that angry. I rest my back against my bedroom door and try to control myself. But it’s not long before I stop resting and start pressing. Yes, I am now pressing into the door with great force, pushing with my bare feet against the worn hardwood floor below to the point that my back is in pain, smushed against the door. There’s no logical reason for me to be doing this, but it feels good all the same. A nice outlet for my rage. But I can hear the creaking and moaning of the old decaying door and I know if I keep this up I may very well end up breaking it down and go crashing through to the hallway just outside my room.

This entire lousy, decrepit house would collapse if someone pushed hard enough, I think to myself.  

This thought becomes a vision. Me standing outside on the porch, giving the outer wall a nice hard shove and watching the old house collapse in on itself; crushing and killing David and Pollard inside.

 I feel a sick joy inside me.

 I tell myself that I need to calm down, not to get too worked up. I take a few healthy swigs of beer from the bottle in my hand in hopes of doing just that, but as I drink there is only one thought circling my mind.  

That wasn’t a meeting, it was a god damn ambush. 

I’m certain this is true. After all, meetings are planned upon things that everyone knows about ahead of time, right? Well, I had no idea that was going to happen. Hell, not a half hour ago I had been in the dining room alone, enjoying that thick juicy pork chop, celebrating the latest finished chapter of my novel- which is quite the doozy if I do say so myself- when they came for me, from that dreadful other end of the hallway. A collective unit of two, David and Pollard, taking over that rickety dining room table of ours like a couple of strong armed tough guys and laying into me with their list of complaints, all in the guise of “a friendly meeting between roommates”. 

The bastards. 

How dare they make me feel so awful, so pathetic. So I’m not the cleanest person in the world, so what? It’s not like they’re fucking Mary Poppins themselves. When was the last time Pollard did the dishes? When was the last time David swept the floor? And what did any of it matter when this old house seemed to shed dust and dirt in the dead hours of the night?

And so what if I’m home all day. I work nights. Or evenings, rather. That’s my fault? Since when did I have an obligation to do anything but pay my rent and bills? Besides, I’m a writer, and writers need time at home to write. 

And yes, sometimes writers need a break from their writing. Sometimes they need to drink to relieve the stress and pressure. Otherwise they’d go crazy. Have they not heard of Hemmingway?! And yeah sometimes that leads writers to being quite loud, in their room, alone, with a bottle in their hand. Is that really so bad? So creepy?

And because of these minor issues they want me gone?  

The bastards…

I happen to glance down and catch the sight of a brazen cockroach sprinting from my tiny closet, which is cluttered with a mountain of dirty clothes, three feet away from my bare toes. For some reason seeing this causes a new wave of anger to overwhelm me. I throw the bottle in my hand down at the nasty little beast below which results in a terrific ear splitting crash as beer and bits of glass fly in a hundred different directions. It also results in a complete miss, and I watch the cockroach disappear safely under my bed where it can now live rent-free in its new sanctuary.  

Perfect.

I go limp against the door now. No more pressing. No more smushing. I look down at the mess below me and sigh. I did it again. I let my anger get the best of me. Let it build and build inside me until I overreacted and did something stupid. Just like out there, at the meeting. 

That’s what my father always did. 

That’s what I can’t do.

I have to be better than that, but I just don’t seem to be able. 

My eyes go from the floor to the sizable oak desk in the far corner, where my computer stands. On it, my novel-in-progress waits for me. An hour ago, I couldn’t have been prouder of it, now I just wish it would burn away. I’m wasting my time, I realize, and nothing I can do will ever justify my being an adult. It’s very simple, I realize now, I was meant to be a kid forever. It didn’t work out that way, because that’s just not the way it works, but I know now that that was all I was meant to do, be a kid. Everything since then has been a disaster. 

My internal agonizing is interrupted though when I begin to smell smoke. Cigarette smoke. I find this bizarre because I don’t smoke. Never have. Not my thing. Turns your mouth into a garbage dump. My first thought is one of my malcontent roommates is smoking in the house and, again, I become livid. They have the audacity to smoke inside the house after beating the shit out of me with that list of complaints?!  

 I’ll nail their balls to the wall for this… 

But my anger retreats a bit when I notice something else rather strange. My nose. The nerve endings at the edge of my nostrils seem to be dancing with each other, flaring up, as if I’m having some sort of allergic reaction to the smoke. But I don’t sneeze, it’s not that kind of a reaction, it’s more like the tip of my nose is slightly on fire, and yet there’s no pain. 

Odd…

“So which one do you think hates you more?” A gruff voice suddenly comes from the far corner of my room, where my desk stands, and the shock of this causes me to jump a bit. Actually more than a bit. I’d say I act like that of a startled cat, leaping wildly into the air, causing me to immediately fall to the floor thanks to my precarious position against the door. My feet and pants are treated to a cold bath of raspberry beer that already floats on the hardwood. I jump back up and press my back against the door once again, but this time in fear, not anger. My eyes focus on that far, dark corner where the voice came from. 

 Neither the overhead light nor the ceiling fan attached to it works in my room, so instead I use the ineffective three foot lamp I bought for $4.50 at a garage sale years ago up in Lakeview to illuminate my little cave at nightfall. It stands between my dresser and the wall over in the opposite corner of my desk, both of which cower above it, which means the lighting in my room is far from decent. That’s fine with me, usually, as it allows me to ignore the considerable mess that my room has turned into, at least at night anyway. But now, thanks to this poor light, I can only see a shadowy figure of medium build sitting on top of my desk, in a sort of “cool guy” pose, with one black boot-wearing foot resting on the seat of my pleather rolling chair and the other up on the desk itself, allowing him to rest his cigarette-holding hand on a bended knee. A shot of cold runs through me and I feel a strong urge to run out of my room as fast as I can.

But I don’t. I stay put.

Instead of running, I watch the cardinal end of the cigarette move from the top of the shadowy stranger’s knee to the front of his darkened face.  

“I said,” the man repeats himself, “who do you think hates you more?”

“Who are you?” I manage to get out. “How did you get in here?” 

At this, the man says nothing. And even though his face is hidden in shadow, I can feel his eyes on me, causing goosebumps to cover my arms and legs.  

 His mouth opens, but only a puff of smoke comes out, and the microscopic ballet dancers on the ends of my nose perform another number. 

 “Who are you, and how did you get in my room?” I say again in a firmer tone, hoping my audible conviction will hide the terror I currently feel. 

“I asked you first,” he replies, “which one of them do you think hates you more?” 

“Who?! Who are you talking about? How the fuck did you get in my room?!”

“Shh,” he orders me, putting a finger up to his mouth, “keep your voice down, buck private, do you want the enemy to hear you?”

“Enemy? What enemy?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.” 

“Look man, you can’t just come in here-” I take a step forward as I speak, trying to establish some sort of dominance in this odd new stand off in which I find myself. But this step of bravery ends in fantastic pain, as the heel of my foot comes down on the sharp edge of a particularly large fragment of the recently deceased beer bottle on the floor. 

“Fuck!” I curse, grabbing my injured foot and falling back on my lumpy, unmade bed that stands to the side. I twist in agony, pawing at the injury with careful fingers, trying to remove the bits of glass embedded in me. The blood trickles down my hand before dripping onto my not-so-clean bedsheets.  

“Looks like someone needs a medic,” I hear the stranger in the corner say. “I would call for one but I don’t think there are any around. Not here. Now if we were back in France…” 

“I’m calling the cops!” I threaten, digging into my pocket with one hand while the other holds my bleeding foot. 

“Aw, you don’t want to do that, do you, buck private?” The words come from that dark corner once more, but less than a second later I feel a shadow drape down upon me and in my peripherals I see the shape of a person hovering just beyond my bed.

 Impossible. I didn’t even hear him move. 

Still looking down at my wounded foot, I can see just two legs, dressed in long dark green pants, standing past my bed. My eyes move up from the legs, and as they reach his hips I can see a handgun in a black holster attached to his belt. My lungs stop working now while my heart goes into overdrive, pumping like that of a deer standing frozen in the middle of a street at night, staring at those bright round lights ahead that are getting bigger and bigger… 

I lift my head up slowly, certain that by the time my eyes reach his face I will be killed. I visualize a knife to the throat, a hammer blow to the head, a bullet just between the eyes… and yet still, I find I can’t stop myself from scanning up. 

After the pants and the holster, comes the coat. A long, dark green coat. It’s at this point I realize he is in uniform. Some sort of military uniform, but nothing of recent years. A worn uniform from years past, to be sure.  

 Fantastic, I think, I’m dealing with some psychotic AWOL Rambo. 

After the coat comes the man’s neck, and it’s your standard neck of flesh, I’d say, except for that the skin is stained with something dark and red. 

Blood from his other victims?   

Then comes the face. I gulp a little at this part, worried for some bizarre reason that it’ll be that of a monster, a five-eyed cretin with antennas and scales growing out of his forehead and cheeks. 

But it’s not, and my heart rate decreases a bit as I find the face of a young man looking back at me. A man much younger than me. A young man with a contrasting face. Youthful cheeks, a perfect hairline of brown on top of his head- a real boy scout of a face- and yet, a hard, weathered face at the same time, with almost comically sagging circles of dark patchy skin under the eyes and small scars just above the mouth. And the eyes themselves… it gives me a headache just looking at them, as they seem to be an impossible contradiction. Both piercing and faint at the same time. Like bright glowing blue daggers with a white veil hung over them, something you might see in a painting at a museum, but not in real life. 

“Really, let’s not call for reinforcements just yet,” the young man says as he motions to the phone in my hand. “There’s a lot more that our little two man unit has to do.” 

Now that he’s standing close to me, I notice a new sensation each time he speaks. Similar to the nostril thing, except now it’s my ears. With each word that comes out of his mouth the nerve endings on my ears start to swim, sway, and tingle. They are alive in a way they never have been before. I don’t know what this means, but I find the whole thing rather hypnotic. 

“Everything okay in there?” I hear my roommate, David, ask from behind my door. I cringe at this. His words might seem like ones of concern, except for the tone, that patented why-are-you-always-fucking-up tone of his, that proves it to be anything but.  

“Fuck off!” I reply automatically. I realize that a smarter man might have said something along the lines of “Help! There is a scary stranger in my room and my foot is bleeding and I need help!” but between the hatred I have for my roommate and my new fascination toward this would-be soldier, I decide to send David away. Deep down though, as I consider my newly fanciful ears and nostrils, I can’t help but wonder if this decision is entirely mine… 

“Are you smoking in there? Pollard and I can smell smoke…”

“I’m the only one here who doesn’t smoke and you know it. Now fuck off!” 

Both me and my new friend listen silently as David appears to stand on the other side of my door, contemplating what to do. Eventually, he seems to accept my orders, as we hear footsteps retreating back down the skeletal echochamber of a hallway. As I listen to the footsteps fade, I feel something soft fall on my lap. I look down and find a clean white handkerchief resting on me.  

“For your wound,” the stranger whispers.   

I pick up the soft piece of fabric, noticing as I do the initials W.G.W.  finely stitched into one of the corners, and apply it to my bleeding heel. I then take the two ends of the handkerchief and tie it around my ankle, creating a half-assed makeshift bandage, and put pressure back on the wound with the palm of my hand. I wince in pain. I don’t think I’ll have to go to the hospital, but it’s a nasty cut to be sure. 

“You know,” the uniformed stranger says, “it is that kind of ill-willed belligerence of yours that has helped bring you to the dire situation you are currently in.” 

“What situation? You being in my room, uninvited? Trespassing? My foot bleeding profusely? That situation?” 

“No,” he replies with a shake of his head, “I’m speaking to the fact that one of your roommates is plotting to kill you. Tonight.”  

“What?!” I laugh. “That’s ridiculous!”   

“Is it? That’s not what my report says. My report says you are up shit’s creek without a paddle. That the situation here has turned volatile. Murderous. That you will meet your end with a knife stabbing into you numerous times. First in the side of your neck, then your face, right in both eyes, before finally four strong drives straight into your heart. Grizzly way to go, if you ask me.”

“That’s absurd.” 

“It might be, except for one thing.”

“Which is?”  

“That you are living with a complete and utter sociopath. One with no concept of morality or empathy. One that is looking to graduate into a full blown psychopathic killer And you as his first victim. Tonight.

“According to my report,” the stranger continues, “your inconsiderate and sloppy nature as a roommate will soon turn a run-of-the-mill disturbed person into an infamous serial killer, who will go on to murder another ten innocent people, at least, after tonight.” 

“I am not that bad of a roommate!” I bark, forgetting the quiet rule. 

“Not so loud, private,” the supposed soldier orders. “and please don’t be so insulted by what I am telling you, I am simply going by my report. Now think for a moment. Of your two roommates, which one seems more psychotic?”    

I begin to turn his question over in my mind, when the reality of this whole situation hits me. 

“Wait just a fucking minute. I don’t know why I’m listening to any of this. You break into my room, order me around, telling me to be quiet in my own house, and then start throwing out these wild accusations. No, no, fuck that. Either you start answering some of my questions or get the fuck out now.” 

“What do you want to know?”

“For the millionth time,” I say, exasperated beyond words, “who are you?!” 

He takes another puff of his cigarette before answering, and my nose does its weird tingling thing again.  

“My name is Wilbur Gerald Watters the First,” the words come out of his mouth slow and deliberate. “Marine Private First Class, ID Number five, four, zero, eight, eight, three, four, seven, three, nine.”  

“Okay…well, Wilbur Gerald Watters-” but as his name leaves my lips I feel another touch of cold move through me. I know this name.  

Wilbur. 

My dad’s first name, his real first name, is Wilbur. He always went by his middle name though, at least as an adult, as his first name had caused him some humiliation as a boy, when that Charlotte’s Web book came out and his playground friends gleefully found out that he shared his name with a famous literary pig. In fact, he once told me that’s why he named me Gregory, to avoid the mockery he experienced as a kid. I suppose that was one good thing he did for me.

My father’s middle name, the name he has gone by for my entire life, is Gerald. 

And his last name, as well as mine, is Watters. 

 “Wilbur… Gerald… Watters…” I repeat the name in disbelief. 

“The First.” He finishes for me. “I had a son. Born just before I departed to Europe to fight against the Nazis. My son was Wilbur the Second.”

I don’t believe any of this.

How can I? 

And yet…

“Which would make you Wilbur the Third, buck private.”  

“Wait. Wait just a minute,” I beg the man, “You’re trying to tell me that you’re my grandfather. My father’s father? The one who died in World War Two on D-Day?” 

Wordlessly, his slender hands go to his coat now, right to the buttons that line the middle. Carefully, he begins to remove the top five pristine black buttons.

“What are you doing? Don’t do that.” I say with lifeless words, my eyes transfixed on that which I’m protesting. 

Once he has undone his top buttons, his fingers grab the ends of the coat and pull, revealing several layers of white shirts underneath. In front of the top shirt, a pair of silver dog tags dangle from his neck. Just below the tags there’s a hole. A rather sizable hole, about the size of a silver dollar. And I can see that this hole goes through not just the first shirt, but the next two behind that as well. And each layer of shirt is coated in blood. But of course, the hole doesn’t stop there, it keeps going, extending to the man’s chest, leaving a gaping wound so large I can actually peer into the body cavity, down to the mushy guts inside that look far from healthy.  

 It has to be a trick, I think, some sort of achievement in makeup like in movies, tv shows, or even in those silly haunted houses like the ones they have around town during Halloween. 

As I stare at his chest I begin to feel pulled in its direction. I rise off the bed. My heel lets out a quick scream in pain as I put my weight on it, but I ignore this. 

I have to get closer. 

Now standing, I lean my head down towards the man’s chest, to his wound. I get about a foot away from it when I notice my left hand is even closer. I can’t explain it but my index finger is doing some sort of E.T. impression and heading straight for the bloody hole. There’s nothing I can do, I’m powerless. As it nears the the hole, the nerve endings at the tip go wild. In a way, it feels like an electrical shock, but a surge of unnatural excitement rather than pain, comes instead. And as my finger reaches the outer edges of the wound, I feel a new sensation even odder than the last. I don’t even know how to begin to describe it, but it’s as if I’m back to being a kid again. Like I have the mindset of a carefree child. I know this sounds crazy, but damn if it isn’t so. 

By now I can’t help myself, I push the finger further in, so that I’m actually penetrating the wound and the tip of my finger is poking against something warm and gooey, and the sensation becomes even more pointed, and my surroundings began to fade away, everything goes dark. 

And then suddenly: brightness. 

Great, incredible brightness.  

I am the exact age of nine, on Kennedy Road, enjoying a bike ride with my friends after a day in third grade. We are racing through the old neighborhood, and we’re just about to hit that nice steep decline of a hill that comes after Worchester Park, and the wind is whipping through my hair, and I’m just so excited to be alive. I can see my three friends at my sides: Zac, Pete, and Adam. All but Pete are behind me. Pete is the fastest rider in the group. I’m the second fastest. He always wins, I never do. But today that’ll be different. Today, as we race down the Worchester Park Hill, I tell myself that I’m gonna win, no matter what. No question. I’m just at the decline now, I take a breath… 

And then, just before I hit the hill, Pete, Zac and Adam, the road below us, and the houses to the side start to twirl and mix into one another as one mass swirling color.   

Now suddenly I’m in fourth grade, but I’m in my childhood house playing hide and go seek with my siblings. My parents aren’t home. My dad’s at work and my mom went out for a bit. So I go and hide in their room in that big walk-in closet. It’s nice and dark in there. I wait in silence for a good amount of time before I hear the door open. The hair on the back of my neck stands tall, as I wonder if my sister will find me. But then I realize the footsteps I am hearing are much too heavy for a child’s, it has to be an adult’s…but whose?  

And then things twirl again and now I’m at Jacob Delouse’s house, my best friend in 5th grade. It’s night, we’re giggling and sharing turns putting our ear against an empty drinking glass that we’re holding horizontal against his sister’s door, trying to hear what her and her friends are talking about during a slumber party. I think I can hear them mention my name, but what are they saying…?

Then my sight goes blurry, and the door, and my friend fades into darkness, and my room comes back to view and I see that my granddad has stepped away from me and my intrusive finger, and he’s giving me a look of intense awkward displeasure. 

Words fail me. 

Dear God, have I just violated my dead grandfather’s bullet hole? 

Silence fills the room and I want to die. I find that I can no longer meet those vibrant yet faint blue eyes anymore, so I look down instead. I notice all the bits of glass still on the floor from the shattered beer bottle. I look over past the ghost of my granddad and see the bright red broom leaning against the wall. 

Ah yes, it’s been there for three weeks now, since the last time I had that small bit of ambition to clean that never really went anywhere…

Still avoiding eye contact, I look down at the floor as I reach past my granddad for the broom. I notice two sizable holes in the top of both his boots. Weird. But nevermind that, I think, I don’t need anymore weirdness right now. I begin to sweep the broken glass under my bed, and smear the spilt beer even more over the floor in the process. I have no idea what I’m doing, I just want to escape this moment.  

 And then, things grow much worse as the entire shoddy house fills with the sound of a blood curdling scream. It sounds like it’s coming from that other side of the hallway. It is a scream of pure agony. Vicious, horrible pain. It is the sort of scream that is so awful and so loud that it makes the flimsy dingy walls of the house shake and sway. 

The scream goes on for a few tortured seconds before stopping abruptly. Then the house turns into a tomb of silence and my spine turns into an icicle.  

 I don’t like any of this.  

 “What the fuck was that?” I whisper to my grandfather, who is in the middle of a deep frown. 

“It appears your roommate has strayed from the path,” he tells me. “This was not in my report. This was not the order.” 

“Order?! What fucking order?!”

“Whoever your killer is, he kills you then he kills the other roommate, according to my report at least. But that scream we just heard tells a different story.”  

He gives a shrug of his shoulder as he says this, like it is some trifling point. 

“Jesus, Granddad, what mess have you gotten me into?!”

“This is a mess of your own doing,” he says with a stern finger pointed at me. “Perhaps if you weren’t such a pig,” he motions to the mess that is my room, “you wouldn’t have driven your roommate to murder.”

“Okay, okay, fuck all that, what am I supposed to do now?”

“Arm yourself and prepare for battle.”

“Prepare for battle? Are you crazy? I don’t know the first thing about fighting. Besides, why can’t I just run out the front door and go get help? Hell I could call the cops right now…” I pick up my phone as I say this.  

“You will be dead long before the cops ever get here,” he promises. “And if you try to run out the front door he could be waiting for you. What then?”

“I could break one of these windows then,” I nudge my head to the various windows surrounding us. They don’t open thanks to the incompetent painter our landlord hired to paint the house who painted the windows shut. “I could break one of them and crawl out and be gone in a flash.” 

“You could do that, but he might hear the glass break and give chase. And besides, is that really the man you want to be?”

“Fuck you, Wilbur! I want to be the man who stays alive!” 

My grandfather smirks at this, but says nothing. 

My mind is going in a thousand directions and I feel nauseous. My eyes scan the area, trying to find that simple solution just in front of me. Instead, I see a room decorated in used plates, bowls and drinking glasses. The sight of the glasses sends my mind back to one of those bullet wound-inducing memory recalls and I scramble for the glass closest to me and copy my fifth grade self, pushing my ear against the glass, and the glass against the door.   

“Let me tell you a story,” my young granddad speaks up. “It’s about how I died. Have you heard this story before?”

“Granddad, is this really the best time?” I ask, straining my ears to hear anything that might be happening outside my door. 

“It was June 6th, 1944, D-Day.  0200 hours. I am part of the second airborne fleet meant to give assistance to those already on the ground, and I’ve just dropped from my plane, falling as fast as you can imagine into the angry darkness below. But I’m trained for this, so even though my heart is up in my throat, I pull the chord at the right time and soon I’m no longer falling, but more like floating, down to the ground. I’m thinking about my mission, about what needs to be done as soon as I touch ground, but then, just like that, something bites me. Bites me right at the bottom of my foot. I look down and see a new hole in my boot, one that goes clean through, and blood is flying up to my face. I’ve been shot in the foot, I realize, and the bullet went right through. It hurts. Incredibly so. But despite my pain I am able to notice something off about my journey down. It’s now faster than it should be. Not by a lot, but enough to cause some concern. So I look up and find a bullet sized hole in my chute. Can you believe that? The bullet went right through my military issued boot, my foot, and then took out a piece of my chute. Of all the lousy luck. 

“Anyways, this isn’t a huge crisis, cause, as I said, I was going faster than I should, but not too fast. I was in for a rough landing though, I knew that. And with my injured foot, coming in hot and hard was not ideal. But what the hell could I do? I’m in the air for crying out loud!

“So there I am, with my wounded foot, my broken chute, and my face keeps getting sprayed with blood thanks to my new injury and the law of gravity. And as I’m trying to figure out what to do about all this, I look over to my left and you’ll never guess what I see.”

“What did you see?” I ask, finding myself engrossed in his story while still trying to listen to whatever might come from beyond the door.  

“It’s unbelievable but when I look over I see someone whose going through my exact situation. No joke. A fellow marine, floating down just like me thanks to his chute, which is also leaking its effectiveness by the second thanks to the hole in it, and his face is splashed with blood too because his injury is the same as mine, a shot through the foot. Can you believe it!”

“You saw all this at night, in the dark?” I ask, thinking at the same time that I might have just heard some distant stumbling/stomping down the hallway but not entirely sure.  

“So anyways,” he continues, ignoring my question, “I’m looking at him, and then he looks at me, and we share this moment, like ‘what are the odds.’ and I even think of shouting a few words of encouragement to him, but that’s when I hear and feel a new crop of bullets whizzing past my face, being fired up into the air by some bastard below. And now I’m falling faster, because my chute has more holes in it, and I look over and my new buddy is falling faster too, and I chuckle cause how does this keep happening?

“Anyways, the bullets keep coming from the ground, and I realize now if I don’t do something fast this bastard below is either gonna get another direct hit on me or tear my parachute apart to the point of it having no value to me. So I aim my rifle down at the ground below, but before I am able to even get a shot off it goes flying out of my hands because, get this, it gets hit by a bullet. Can you believe that?”

“This all seems hard to believe.” I distinctly hear through the glass the sound of a door on the far side of the hallway open and close… or did it close and open? Trying to listen to two things at once is giving me a headache but what choice do I have? 

“So I look over, and I see my new buddy is staring at me, and he doesn’t have his rifle anymore either, and he doesn’t even have to say it, I know what happened. But I can see in his face a look of pure fear. He’s frozen in terror. I realize I must look the same way to him. And I know I can’t be doing that if I want to live through this thing. So I break away from my new friend and grab my hand gun from its holster and aim it to the ground. I’m only fifty feet away from the surface now, so I’m scanning the land for the enemy.

“And then I find him, crouched down next to a bush, aiming his rifle up at me and my new friend, blasting away. I know I have no time to hesitate, so I take aim myself and fire. I’m  only able to fire once before blinding pain hits me again, causing me to drop my pistol.”

“He shot you again?” as I ask this I’m positive I hear the sound of something being dragged across the hardwood floor in the living room. 

“No, worse luck than that. In all the chaos and confusion I end up shooting myself right in the other foot. Can you believe it? So there I am, with two wounded feet, floating down to certain death at a rather uncomfortable speed, and I begin to make peace with the fact that my life is about to end. But then, do you know what happens?”

“Your buddy used his handgun to shoot the bastard on the ground?” I guess.

“No! He was too scared to even take his pistol out. No, what happened was even more unbelievable than that. I’m looking down to the ground, and I realize the enemy that was once crouched down, firing at me, is now laying on his side, dead as a doornail. 

“I count my blessings and prepare for impact. It was not a good landing, and both my feet scream in pain, and my new buddy is hollering for me to help him because of his injury, having no idea that I am suffering twice as bad as he is; I’m just not moaning about it like a little girl like he is. Anyways, I ignore his cries and crawl as fast as I can over to the fallen soldier who had been shooting at us.”

“What for?” Silence has returned to my glass and it’s killing me. What the hell is going on out there?  

“I had to know. I had to know what killed him. You see I had a suspicion in my mind but it seemed too unbelievable to be true, yet with all the crazy shit that just happened I had to know.  So I go up to the body and find a bullet wound right at his heart. And I knew right away just by looking at it, that this wasn’t some rifle bullet wound. Not like mine. Oh no, this was a small one. The one you’d get if you had been shot with a military standard issue pistol, like mine.

“Do you see it? Do you see how crazy it is? I take one shot from my pistol, send a bullet straight through my own foot and into the heart of my enemy fifty feet below. Can you believe that?”

“No, not really,” I tell him, “that all sounds unbelievable.”

“Well, it happened,” he responds, almost indignantly, “and I’ll never forget it. But the point is I turn back around to my new friend, and find him lying on his back, rifle shot to the head, dead as dead can be. He never found out the truth. He never found out that my bravery, as much as it had hurt me, had saved us both.” 

“But it didn’t save him,” I argue, “he died. Also, wasn’t this the story of your death?”

“Well yes… soon after that, a German came up to me and shot me in the chest. Then everything went dark… then I ended up here.”   

I look at the soldier blankly.  

“Granddad, I have no idea what you want me to take from that story.”

THWAP THWAP THWAP

Three loud knocks on the door destroy our conversation and I jump again in fright. And in the process of jumping, I drop the glass in my hand, causing it to shatter on the floor. I watch the pieces fly in every direction yet again, this time noticing a good amount sliding under my door, coming to stop somewhere out in the hallway where the mysterious knocker stands.  

“Greg,” a voice, that I think is David’s but I’m not totally sure, says through the door, “we’ve discussed it, we want you to come back out and finish our talk. We feel like nothing’s been resolved.”

 There was a pause here. I am too wrapped up in my thoughts to respond.

“Greg? Did you hear me? Are you there, Greg?”

“Yeah, I heard you,” I finally say, “I need some time, I’ll be out in a minute.”

And with that, more silence comes, then more footsteps echoing down the hallway. 

 “What do you make of that?” I ask, turning back to my grandfather. But upon looking at him, I find him to be in a different state of mind than before. He wears a face of great consternation, and he’s looking not at me but down at the worn hardwood floor. 

“Why did he call you Greg?”

“What?”

“Greg. He called you Greg. Why?”

“…that’s my name.”

“No,” he corrects me, “it is not. Your name is Wilbur. Wilbur Gerald Watters the Third. Or Will, as I imagine you might go by. But not Greg.” 

“Well, my name’s not actually Will or Wilbur. My dad, well both my parents actually, named me Gregory. . But I go by Greg.” 

“Gregory Gerald Watters…” he repeats in a quiet tone that worries me, “that’s not what it says in my report..”

“Yeah but you said yourself the report can be wrong-”

“When I left home for the war,” he interrupts, “I gave my wife clear instructions that should I not come back that my first born should continue my legacy. I would be the first, my son the second, and his first born son, the third, and so on and so forth.”

“…yeah, that makes sense.” I answer, not sure what else to say. 

“And yet, you are not Wilbur.”

“No. I guess…I mean, the way I heard it, my dad didn’t care for the name Wilbur because of the book and all. You know, Charlotte’s Web?” 

He gives me a blank stare. 

“Actually that might have come out after your time. But, well anyway, in the book there was a character, a pig, actually, a talking pig named Wilbur, and I guess my dad caught a lot of shit for that when he was a kid, and he didn’t want me to go through the same thing, being called a pig.”

“I can’t believe this,” he says quietly, staring right into my eyes with those piercing faint baby blues of his. “I sacrificed everything I had, everything I could have been, for him, for my country, and he can’t even honor my last living wish?”

“Yeah…” I say. “I agree that’s kinda rude. But can we focus on the issue at hand? Like the murderer outside my door right now?” 

“Would you do it?” 

“Do what?”

“Do what your father couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Name your son after me. Continue my legacy.” 

“I… can’t really wrap my head around that sort of thing right now,” I answer honestly. 

“So you want me to help save your life but you won’t help me continue my legacy? After everything I’ve sacrificed?”

“Look man,” I tell him, not appreciating this ill-timed guilt trip, “to be honest with you I don’t even know if I’m gonna have kids. In fact, I’m pretty sure I won’t.” 

“Sure, sure,” he waves me off, “I read in the report how you guys are nowadays. But you’re young, you’ll change your mind. You’ll want someone to continue your legacy, trust me.”

“I mean, I’m not that young. I’m in my mid thirties.”

The ghost before me reels back at this revelation.

“Mid-thirties? My report said you were twenty five.”

‘Well, you’re report was wr-”

“God dammit! Mid-thirties?! What the fuck are you doing with your life!”

“I’m a writer!” I shout, defending my life choices to this ghost. “I dedicate my life to telling stories, people need stories.”

“A writer? My grandson is one of those starving, childless, legacy-less, irrelevant writers?!”

“You don’t know what your talking about!” I scream. “I am currently writing a novel that could very well change the courses of many of the youths of today. Once it is finished. “ As I say this I motion to my laptop sitting on my desk. 

I watch my grandfather mull these words over in his head as he looks from me to the laptop on the desk. I stare at those vibrant/dull eyes of his, no longer afraid. I see him going through a change. And it feels like I am looking in a mirror, watching myself try to fight that wave of anger and violence that continually overtakes me in daily life. And just like with me, I see my granddad lose his struggle as he reaches for the pistol at his hip.

“A writerl!?” he bellows as he points his pistol straight at my portable computer and fires. At first I’m too shocked to move, watching my laptop earn a hole on its screen. More holes soon follow as the pistol goes off again and again. Soon my laptop is nothing but a pile of unusable parts, but the pistol keeps firing. But now my granddad’s aim turns to the rest of my room. Bullet holes slap into my walls now, and I hit the floor just as the sound of a light bulb exploding fills the room and everything turns black.

 On my belly now, I shut off my brain and simply scurry under my bed in the dark. In doing so, I find a new nightmare waiting for me. A year plus of sweeping, pushing, and throwing unwanted objects under my bed now greets me. It’s a pile of disgust and shame. It’s an army of crusty plates with microwaveable taquito bits; of old, stinky socks sticking out of plastic cups that hold the last remnants of forgotten milk, orange juice, or soda. The smell is beyond unforgivable. As I try to move my arm about, I hear the clanging of empty beer bottle after empty beer bottle colliding together. There is a centimeter of space between the top of my head and the roof of the box frame. I am in my own pitch black coffin, I realize, and it is flooded with my shame. 

Meanwhile, the pistol continues to fire away above me.  

“What happened to honor?!” I hear him scream, “What happened to legacy? What the hell has happened to this country?”  

What the hell am I gonna do?

I realize he doesn’t seem to notice that I have hidden under the bed, which makes me wonder about the limitations of being a ghost. But just because he hasn’t realized where I am yet, doesn’t mean that won’t change in the very near future. 

I hear the sound of an empty clip hitting the worn hardwood floor. He’s reloading, I realize, it’s time to act!

But I am facing the wrong way, and backing out butt first into danger does not sound intelligent at all, so instead I make the hard choice of trying to turn around in this swamp of trash and decay that surrounds me. I reach out to the far wall and push with my hands so that I can turn my body. As my body turns I can feel the countless gatorade bottles, old clothes, and God knows what else go with me. The smell is unbearable and I start to gag. I push it back though, no time for throwing up. As I turn I feel something sharp at my elbow and feel around with a hand until I come to a dirty steak knife. A weapon! I complete my 180 and hear all that crap spill out to the uncovered floor in my room. It’s all out in the open now. I hold the steak knife firmly, with only one thought in my mind: 

Can you stab a ghost?

“Come out of your hiding place you little brat coward, it’s time to face the music.” 

I hear the sound of a new pistol clip locking into place, followed by the sound of a two boots taking a step closer to me. The feet! I remember what I saw back when I looked down at the boots earlier and I get an idea. It’s a crazy idea. A stupid idea. A downright asinine idea. But is it any crazier, stupider or asinine than trying to stab a ghost in pitch black darkness? 

 I silently put my steak knife down on the floor and then, with two careful hands, I reach out in front of me, out from under the bed, and feel the hard surface of two rubber boots. My hands go to the top of the boots, and two index fingers find the holes and plunge down into them. 

Once again, I am taken to the world of the past. But this time I am making sure my fingers are pushing down hard into the holes. The world becomes bright again, and I’m back on my bike and I’ve just descended the Worchester Park Hill and I can see Pete in front of me and I can hear Adam and Zac behind me whooping and hollering, but they don’t matter, all that matters is me beating Pete. I pump my pedals as hard as I can, even when we are more than half way down the steep hill and it feels like I’m going a hundred miles an hour and my eyes sting with the wind blasting in my face and my arms are killing me, it’s taking all my strength to keep my bike steady, I feel like I’m gonna crash and die for sure, but I keep pumping, and all the while, somewhere in the back recesses of my mind I make sure to keep pushing my fingers down into the holes as hard as possible. And then the hill ends, the race is over, but it takes me a good thirty yards just to come to a stop. But by the time I do, I can hear Zac and Adam whooping and I turn around and see Pete with his head down, saying nothing. 

“He did it, Pete! He beat you! He beat you!”  

And I break out into a big smile and feel better than I can ever remember feeling. 

And my fingers keep pushing down.

And then the scenery twirls again, and I’m back in the closet, hiding, and the loud adult footsteps are real close now, and then the sound of someone sitting down on a bed, followed by crying. My mom, I gasp. My mom doesn’t know I’m in here and she’s come home and she’s sobbing. And it’s not a light cry either. It’s one of those bad cries. She’s crying so bad she’s having a hard time breathing. And I want to go to my mom and comfort her, but I’m afraid if I do I’ll get in trouble. Or maybe I just don’t want to know what could make my mom cry like that. So I just stay in the closet and feel more lonely and miserable than I ever have in my life.   

And I keep pushing my fingers down. 

And the closet twirls again. 

And I’m outside my friend’s sister’s door listening with my ear to the drinking glass, trying with all my might to hear what she and her friends are thinking about me. I hope it’s something good, they’re cute girls, especially my sister’s friend.

“Do any of you guys think that Greg is kinda weird?”

“Yes!” I hear them say in unison, “oh my god he’s the weirdest. I don’t know why my brother hangs out with him, he’s such a freak. I wish he didn’t go to our school.”

“Yeah, he looks weird too.”

“Yeah!” they all agree. 

Inside, my fifth grade heart crawls down below the concept of sadness, and I feel a new desire to detach myself from reality that I’ve never known before. As if I’d rather be in some pretend reality up in my mind instead of down here in this world where the people who I want to like me don’t like me at all. 

And I keep pushing my fingers as hard as I fucking can. 

Until finally, everything turns to black. It takes me a few seconds to realize I’m back in my room, in the dark, and my two index fingers are absolutely killing me. I try to move them a bit and stop just short of screaming. Both my index fingers are broken, I realize. 

All that pushing. 

My granddad is nowhere to be found. Nor can I hear him. In my heart, I know he’s gone for good. So I crawl out from under my bed, and slowly, carefully rise to my feet. Instantly, I realize the handkerchief is no longer wrapped around my ankle. Maybe it came off during all the craziness under the bed?

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

My heart jumps. 

More knocking on my door. 

I consider my options. I have two broken fingers, a bad heel, and I can’t see shit. 

Perfect. 

I remember the steak knife I left on the floor and retrieve it. With my bad fingers I can’t hold it with any meaningful strength unless I use both hands. One that I use to wrap three fingers and a thumb around the handle, the other I put over the end of the handle, covering my other hand as well. It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to do. 

What now? I could hide in the closet, I consider. Call the police and wait in there and if he comes to me before they get here I could defend myself… 

No, I decide. That won’t do. I’ll be easy prey tucked away in the closet. No, I have to face this head on… 

I practice a few swipes with the blade in the dark, followed by a couple of stabs into the air. Seems good enough to me. I feel for the door knob, grab it and twist. As I pull open the door I find a new plane of darkness in front me. All the lights are off. Fuck. I know the nearest lightswitch is just on the other side of the wall of the hallway, in the kitchen, not more than four steps away. If I sprint there, he’ll never have a chance to get me in the dark. And once the lights are on, all bets are off, mother fucker. 

I’m about to make my first step out of my room when I remember something my granddad said.

First in the side of the neck, then two in the face, then four in the chest. 

OK, so I should crouch down as I run, so he’ll miss my neck and my body altogether. I get into crouch mode, tighten my hands around the knife as much as I can, and make my move, bolting out the door into more darkness. 

But it’s only in my first step when I encounter disaster, as the balls of one of my feet, my previously uninjured foot, press down against a long sharp piece of glass out in the hallway, and I cry in pain and instinctively rise up. Almost immediately, I feel the hard stab of steel into my flesh. But it’s not my neck, it’s my cheek. I feel a foriegn blade cut into me a good two inches right in the dimples. But there is no pain, only shock, followed by immediate, and terrific anger. 

This will not end me!

  I feel the knife being ripped out of my face, and I force myself to immediately, but quietly, crouch down to the floor. I can now hear David above me, grunting while swinging his blade wildly trying to find me. With a tender hand I quickly, softly, look for his foot. I find it, and despite my pain I smile a bloody smile. He’s wearing his workman boots. We have a strict no shoe policy inside the house, and yet David, the terrible roommate that he is, felt it was ok to ignore this rule so he could murder his enemies before making his escape. If he had been barefoot like he’s supposed to be, he might have felt the touch of my hand, but he doesn’t. And with both of my hands back at my knife I stab down into where I found his illegal boot. And then comes beautiful music. David screaming in absolute pain. I smile again.

But this celebration is short lived, as I feel a sharp explosive pain in my shoulder, as David’s knife finds the corner of my upper back. It’s a good wound, and I grunt in fury, rising up again with brute strength. The back of my head hits the bottom of his jaw with a sickening thud, and I hear him fall back into the corner of the hallway. I follow him, smothering him clumsily. I am able to wedge him into the floor corner, with my knees on top of his arms. He begs a bit before my knife finds his throat. 

Ten seconds later it’s all over. 

I stand up, dropping my knife on David’s body. I leave the corner. I turn around and use a hand to feel my way along the wall of the hallway until I limply reach the kitchen entryway. As I do, I bump into a chair that shouldn’t be there, blocking the path. The fucker had traps waiting for me…  

As I walk across the kitchen floor to the back door that leads to the driveway, I feel something soft and squishy under my foot. At first I’m afraid it’s another booby trap, but then I realize what it is and can’t help but laugh. At the end of that “friendly meeting among roommates” I lost my temper and chucked my half eaten pork chop out of the living room and into the kitchen with great force while screaming that I’d never move out, no matter what. 

What an immature thing to do, I realize. 

I pick up the meat and put it in my pocket, because it’s best not to leave a mess. 

I open the back door and find a new world of night before me. But this one, thankfully, is full of moonlight, and I am able to gently, tenderly, make my way over to the old rickety garage. I lift up the metal door and find my bike waiting for me in the corner. There’s a little pain down in my feet when I first start to pedal, but after a few dozen yards or so it stops hurting, or rather, I find myself not thinking about it anymore. Instead, I’m thinking about how amazing the world looks right now, and how good I feel right now, despite my recent injuries, and how, as crazy as it seems, I might just be okay after tonight. In fact, even though I know this city is as flat as they come, it feels like I’m biking ever-so-slightly downhill.

 It feels good.  

THE END