Sleep Tight (25 page)

 

Dr. Reischtal held his phone up, listening to it ring, as he double-checked his suit for any rips or tears. He had a roll of duct tape ready, in case.

A click. “Yeah?” The voice was dry as smoke.

Dr. Reischtal said, “Good evening, Mr. Evans. I have a job for you.”

The voice at the other end was quiet for a moment.

Dr. Reischtal was patient. He understood his call was not good news. “I need you to gather a team of drivers and pick up a special cargo from our mutual friends out in Denver, and arrange transportation to Chicago.”

“How large is the cargo?”

“You will need at least thirty rigs.”

“Where the hell am I gonna get thirty drivers right now?”

Dr. Reischtal said, “That, Mr. Evans, is your problem. I will expect the entirety of this cargo on its way to Chicago within six hours.”

Tommy sat in his wheelchair, facing the corpse, and waited. Waited for someone to notice that Don was dead. Waited for someone to come get him. Waited to get sick. The fluorescents hummed and flickered almost imperceptibly, casting a twitching glare throughout the room. Air hissed from the filters. Blood dripped from Don’s bed.

Tommy watched the puddle on the right side grow larger. He winced at the spatter when each drop hit the puddle. He couldn’t stop imagining what happened when the drops hit the plastic, sending microscopic slivers of voracious organisms, tiny explosions of death, naked to the human eye, as it scattered the virus into the air of the room.

Maybe he was already infected. Maybe that was why the drops of blood splashing against the plastic sounded so loud in the stillness of the room.

The other side of Don’s bed started to leak, creating a new puddle.

A speck of movement, down near Don’s bare feet. Tommy squinted, but saw nothing else. Maybe it was simply the maddening stuttering of the fluorescent tubes, creating buzzing, shadowy static among the tufts of hair along the top of Don’s feet.

Tommy wondered if the virus was already in his system, wondering if he was about to face the long sleep, followed by the horrible itching, until finally the rage rocketed through his system, and he had to endure the agony of spending his last days, screaming hoarsely, pathetic, weak, strapped to a goddamn hospital bed.

Something definitely moved on Don’s skin. Tommy blinked, squinted again. There. It was a bug. Something reddish-brown, creeping along like a crab, although it wasn’t any bigger than one of the spatters of blood on the floor. He wondered if Don had lice. The bug scurried across the mattress and disappeared behind the rails.

A thought struck him, and he forgot about the bug. This thought was something that he deeply understood to be true, but had never dived deep to examine. Now, faced with the icy, stark recognition, Tommy knew he was going to die. This was something most people held off at a distance. It fades into the background. Nobody but the suicidal and teenage goths linger intentionally in that part of the mind.

There was no pushing it away. He was going to die. One way or another, sooner or later, he was going to die. It might be the virus now, it might be some organ or another falling apart when he was an old man, seventy or eighty. He would’ve preferred to live to old age, but he started to understand that either way, quick or painful, he wanted to die having lived his life as best he could, taking care of himself and his family.

He remembered the tune, and a couple of words, to an old Monty Python song that his old man used to listen to once in a while. He couldn’t remember much of the words so much as the intent, to remind you that you live in a universe hell bent on reaching for infinity, and you were but a speck of nothing.... However, the simple fact of your birth amid such vastness told the math to go to hell.

He understood the universe was entirely indifferent to his existence. He could not look to anyone for help. His parents? God bless ’em, but they couldn’t make it to Dominick’s for the weekly groceries without getting lost. Kimmy had stopped caring where he was at least four years ago.

His partner was dead.

And his boss wanted him here.

There was no one else. No one but Grace.

Tommy slumped in the wheelchair, fighting to slow his galloping heart. The panic fed at his consciousness like a fast-moving fungus, crawling underneath his sanity, tugging gently, looking for weak spots.

He tested the straps again, listening for that elusive sound of leather or thread ripping. Nothing. The restraints might as well have been made of steel. He pulled harder, harder. There was no give, no tearing noise, no nothing. Had he imagined the sound earlier?

He struggled to slow his breathing. Tried to refocus. Tried to think of anything except the fact that he was strapped to a wheelchair and locked in a room with a corpse. He found himself staring at the figure on the bed.

There should have been some sort of peace, now that Don was dead. His partner wasn’t screaming anymore. He wasn’t thrashing around, he was simply motionless.

Tommy decided the silence was worse. The stillness was worse. He tried to remind himself of how tortured Don had sounded, but already the memory was beginning to fade, that sound of utter hopelessness was gone, and all that was left was complete fucking silence and so all Tommy could focus on was his own hope, his own faith, that somehow it would all somehow work out in the end, and that the universe or God or whatever would recognize that he had been a decent, caring human being.

There wasn’t much left of that feeling.

God did not care.

The universe did not care.

There was nothing left inside.

It was either fight or die.

And fighting was futile.

 

OMG. Mr. Ullman could be such a
bitch
.

No, Janelle decided as she rubbed her temples,
bitch
wasn’t strong enough. He was a cocksucker, that’s what he was. The city was half deserted, and hardly anybody was left in the whole damn Fin, but he wanted her here right at the crack of dawn. Didn’t he know that she had a life outside of this friggin’ job?

Apparently not. He met her at the employee entrance, all looming angles and aggressive cologne. Yes. Yes, Mr. Ullman. Of course she would give today everything she had. Oh, yes, you cocksucker.

It’s your own fault
, a voice said inside her throbbing head. The voice belonged to her roommate, Brandi. Now Brandi, she was a bitch; that was for sure. Yes. Brandi was a bitch, and Mr. Ullman was a cocksucker. That declaration felt right, but it didn’t ease Janelle’s hangover.

She sat by herself behind the desk in the grand lobby for ten minutes, and quickly realized that if she didn’t make it to the restroom, there was going to be a mess that she didn’t want to explain. Instead of using the more convenient restroom on the first floor, she decided it was imperative that she reach the employees-only bathroom downstairs. She hated going number two at work, and would avoid it if at all possible, but this morning was an emergency. She knew that very few employees would be around at this time of the day, and she could probably slip in and get out before anybody came in and smelled what she’d left.

Janelle massaged her temple and squeezed the bridge of her nose with her left hand while her right clutched the stairway railing. She eased her way downstairs, down the concrete steps to the employees-only restroom. Why the hell had she decided to wear her highest heels this morning? Any other day, she could practically run a marathon in any of her shoes, but right now, the tequila and tacos from last night at Taco Loco were threatening to erupt, and Janelle, quite frankly, wasn’t sure which orifice they might spew from. The way she felt, the contents of her entire intestinal tract might just squirt from her goddamn ears.

You knew you had to be at work at six, so quit’cher bitchin’
, Brandi’s voice sang in her aching head. Brandi, that tanned bitch, didn’t have to be at work today. Brandi worked at some chic travel agency, fawning over rich pricks and gushing about Caribbean vacations all damn day, but her boss had told her to stay home until this mess with the rat flu was straightened out. So she was home, curled up in her bed in their apartment in Lincoln Park.

And to top it off, Janelle’s period had hit with a vengeance last night. She’d slapped the shit out of her alarm clock only to find her eight-hundred-thread-count sheets spotted with blood. She couldn’t win. She’d dragged the sheets and comforter off the bed, praying she hadn’t stained the mattress, and dumped the mess in a corner of her room. Somehow, she’d managed to find her way into the shower, where she’d watched the sad remnants of last night’s chicken and lettuce collect on the silver holes of the drain after she vomited. Twice.

Still. She’d made it to work, even with only half the buses running. So fuck everybody. Who cared if she could barely walk. She’d punched in, dammit. And just like she had thought, there was nothing happening at work. Nobody was checking out, and there sure as hell wasn’t anybody checking in. Not at six in the fucking morning anyway. And the thing of it was, nobody else was at work either. That was the worst part. She’d been the only one dumb enough, the only one desperate enough, to actually come in to work.

Last night, you would have thought that the whole rat-flu thing would have scared everybody off, but God, she’d never seen Rush Street so crowded. The bars, the clubs, everything was full. There was this vibe in the air. Janelle couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was as if the thought of danger had amplified the desire to escape into music and alcohol and lust. Everybody was going crazy, even the bartenders. She hadn’t bought one drink all night. She couldn’t move two steps in any direction without bumping into cute guys. She still couldn’t quite figure out how she and Brandi had ended up back at their place by themselves. Maybe it was for the best. She did have to work the next day after all.

Once downstairs, she was in luck. The women’s restroom was empty. It wasn’t nearly as extravagant as the guest restroom just off the lobby, but here, she knew she probably wasn’t in any danger of being disturbed. She stumbled past the sink to the two stalls, locking the handicapped door behind her. She wriggled her pencil skirt down to her knees and sank gratefully onto the toilet.

She set her phone on the toilet roll dispenser and pulled out her tampon. Just as she had thought, it was soaked. The sight and smell of the blood threatened to make her gorge rise, and that was the last thing she needed, to puke all over her panties and skirt, which were sketchy enough anyway, while she sat on the friggin’ toilet.

She gritted her teeth as her body evacuated what felt like white-hot lava into the bowl while she pinched the tampon string. She couldn’t dispose of it because some idiot, most likely a cock-sucking
man
who had no idea what he was doing, had installed the receptacle out of reach of anybody sitting on the toilet. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead and she tried to only breathe through her mouth.

The thought of the used tampon dangling from her hand made her stomach roll uneasily yet again, and in a moment of rage, she simply threw the damn tampon at the uncomfortable box on the wall. The tampon bounced off, leaving a streak of clotted red viscera, and dropped to the floor.

If she made it through the day without staining her clothes, she promised herself a long hot bath tonight, to hell with the period, and a glass of red wine. And if Brandi wanted in the bathroom, well then, too damn bad.

Janelle started to see how this was all Brandi’s fault anyway. Sure, Brandi would blame her, but who had been dragging whom to the bar for all those flaming shots with those DePaul frat boys? The more she thought about it, the more she thought Brandi needed to be suffering right along with her.

She fumbled for her phone and knocked it off the toilet paper dispenser. It bounced on the tiled floor and came to rest out of sight, behind and under her. “Really? Really?” she said under her breath, eyes on the ceiling as her fingers swept across the tiles, searching.

Something heavy, with matted, wet fur brushed against the back of her hand.

Janelle shrieked and jerked her hand back.

The thing hissed at her and scrabbled across the floor, darting through her stall, before disappearing around the corner to the sink.

The awful sensation of being chained to the toilet seat as seemingly everything inside of her, including all of her internal organs, slid into the bowl finally passed, and she cautiously bent over, peering under the stall wall. The bathroom was empty.

She sat back, worried that the fear might make her vomit. She tried to control her breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Relax. It was just a rat.

She gave a hitching exhale, like she was sliding down an icy road and flinched every time she bounced over crack. Just a rat. It was gone, under the door. She wasn’t happy to see a rat in the restroom on the best of days, but now, with all that flu stuff in the news, it made her want to cry.

She sniffed, looking at the ceiling again, determined not to smudge her mascara. She looked bad enough as it was. She bent down again, this time looking at the phone. It sat by itself. No more rats. Staring at the phone, she could think of one person that deserved to share her misery. It was the least she could do.

Brandi’s groggy voice said, “Oh, you bitch.”

“Oh, don’t ‘oh bitch’ me, you bitch,” Janelle said. “You won’t believe me. I just saw a rat. I’m dying in here, and there’s a damn rat running on the floor.”

Underneath her, out of her sight, two bedbugs wriggled out from under the toilet, where the bowl was bolted onto the floor. It had been sloppily sealed with silicone and the bugs oozed from a small gap. More bugs followed.

Brandi yawned. “You called me ’cause of that, are you kidding me?”

“Don’t you know anything? The rats, you know, the rat flu?”

Brandi grunted sleepily, said, “Yeah, that’s awful.”

A steady line of bugs emerged through the hole under the toilet. More crawled from the air vent in the ceiling.

Brandi yawned again.

“Oh, no. No. There’s no way you get to go to sleep. Don’t you hang up. I’ll keep calling. There’s nobody at work. So don’t think I won’t. I’ll call and call and call, and you’re gonna have to talk to me sooner or later so it might as well be now, bitch.”

Bugs burst from the gap between the toilet tank and the wall and marched steadily down the wall.

A fresh spasm jolted Janelle’s abdomen and she closed her eyes, riding the latest wave out. Brandi heard the sounds and wrinkled her nose, “Are you fucking kidding me? Please don’t, oh no. You’re in the bathroom right now, aren’t you? Oh. My. God. You are sooooo disgusting.”

“Bitch, please. Don’t. Just talk to me. I just wanna die.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s okay. That bathroom, what? It’s in the basement, you told me. So it’s probably just a rat that’s trying to get to shelter or something. It doesn’t care about you. It’s gonna be okay. Really.”

“But what about the disease?”

“It’s only if they bite you or something. So just chill, you’re okay, okay?”

The spasm passed, and Janelle wondered if she should dare to wipe herself and insert a new tampon. She had to get used to that thought for a while, and rested her head on her knees. Through half-closed eyes, she watched a little bug trundle confidently along between her shoes. She blinked, and watched the bug move with a purpose, straight to the used tampon.

The bloody cotton tube was crawling with insects.

She gasped and jerked her feet off the floor. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You won’t believe this. Oh my god.”

“What?”

“This, this is how my morning is going. I’m not even going to try to tell you.” Janelle gave an unhinged giggle. “You need to see this yourself so you can see. I’m going to send you a video.”

“Oh, come on, I—”

Janelle hung up. Clicked on C
AMERA
, then switched over to V
IDEO
. Bracing her feet on the walls, she got a shot of the tampon, with what looked like fat red ants clambering all over it. She zoomed in. The lighting was awful, and the zoom didn’t do much but blow up all the pixels, but it looked like the insects were relishing the fresh blood. She zoomed back out to give some perspective. Several lines of bugs marched on the used tampon, all from under her toilet.

She scratched absentmindedly at her waist with her left hand, still focused on the phone in her right. The sight of the bugs had not sickened her; they hadn’t added to her nausea. Instead, she found the movement and documentation of the bugs fascinating. The opportunity to prove to her roommate that this morning was by far the worst morning in the history of the world was enough to satisfy her and settle her gag reflex.

Even when she looked away from the phone’s display and saw that the bugs had moved up the toilet en masse and were now crawling across her thighs was not cause for immediate panic. She stood, forgetting the lines of bugs that crisscrossed the floor, and experimentally tried to brush the bugs off her torso. They weren’t much bigger than bell pepper seeds, and clung to her skin with the same stubborn tenacity as those same seeds, resisting being washed away by the kitchen sink faucet or even the vegetable knife.

She finally realized that the bugs were now surging up her high heels and up her legs, settling on her bare skin and latching on somehow. Before, when she had first seen the bugs, there had been dozens. Now, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, jockeying for position, fighting to find an empty patch of skin, so they could sink their strange, undulating teeth into her exposed flesh.

And only then did she start slapping at the bugs. She might have been slapping at the wind. The bugs continued to rise from the floor, unfolding up her legs like a horrible wave. She grabbed at her skirt and tried to pull it up in a vain attempt to stop the bugs from crawling into her pubic region.

The bugs though, smelled blood, and flowed up her legs and wriggled under her damp panties.

Janelle jerked the bolt open and stumbled out of the stall. The bugs had reached her armpits. Her heels slipped. The phone dropped from her hands as she reached out for support. Dizzy from the loss of blood, she fell into the wall, and sank to the floor. There was time for a final exhale, and the bugs swarmed over her skull, crawling into her open mouth. Her nose. Her eyes.