Picking Stones Chapter 8

"Sleep"

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)

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Sleep

Air wafted through the living room window and slowly seeped its inky blackness toward the couch. It was so late. The little white card stared at me from its vantage point between my thumb and index finger. My body sunk deeper into the worn brown suede of the couch. Plum wine was rushing to my temples, bursting through my skin as cold sweat. Light coming off the lamp resting on the side table made a shadow form off of my thumb and obfuscated the three red letters on the card.

NIM.

Shadows sweltered around me. I stared at the letters, the word. What could it possibly mean? Could I have imagined everything that had happened the night before? Not possible. Unless…

“Nim.”

It was the first time I said it aloud. What was I expecting to happen? An earthquake? Meteor shower? Atomic bomb? I cursed myself for my own stupidity and let the card drop from my hand and flutter to the floor. My hand opted for something familiar, the remote.

Click. Nothing. Panic. The TV didn’t turn on. I wouldn’t dare move. All the booze teaming through my body told me the only place I’d go if I got up was straight to the bowl. Pressing the rubber on-button with all my might, I was greeted with the wave of the characters from South Park, just in time for a new episode. Thank God.

Static-riddled volume was low enough where I didn’t have to pay attention, but loud enough to comfort me in the empty—presumed empty—apartment. Before settling into the couch I had done a full sweep of the place; kitchen cabinets, shower, closets, and under the bed. Nothing but me and the card in the entire apartment that was visible to the naked eye.

I sucked in a last breath and did a half-hearted attempt at a prayer. Silent words swashed through my head as imagined the fortune I had gotten at dinner, my new deity.

“Don’t panic. What happens next will be part of your plan.”

What happened next? I found the card. Could it have been—no. Those fortunes are made by-the-pallet in a factory somewhere far away from here. No meaning, no depth to them at all. There are thousands, millions just like it, all with the same words printed on. Yet, that’s the one that was given to me right before…

“Enough!” I gasped out. Brain functioning was at an all time low. Finally I could take it no longer. I curled into a fetal position and immediately lost consciousness

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Do you ever wake up and feel something? You know something is different. Something changed. As if the signals shooting from brain to body are in flight. The kind of panic that sets you off on a course of change lasting days, months, or even years. I know it well; it happened to me that very morning as I came back to existence in the wake of one of the worst hangovers life had ever laid upon me. The plum wine, for better or worse, had done me in. I couldn’t possibly have drank so much as to allow such a rampant war to take place in my liver, yet there it was. “Never again,” I said to no one.

Pins and needles had replaced the left arm. My upper body was sent careening off the couch as the limp arm dangled to the side, refusing to come to my aid. I don’t blame it. The next several seconds was spent on the floor, writhing to one side as I pleaded to my blood for a quick return passage back to the arm’s empty veins. “Never again,” I said to no one.

A bit later I was fidgeting with the coffee machine with the one good arm. The TV was still on. Whatever had run across the screen reminded me of Brendan. I winced and cursed myself for being so low as to envy someone who had once been a close friend, and who still thought of me in that regard. I wanted so badly to be happy for him, to reach over and give him a hug, to shake his arms and tell him I was beyond proud of him, for the engagement and the promotion and the rest soon to come with it. But the only feeling inside was the sting of jealousy, followed of course by the pain of sorrow, of regret. I clicked on the coffee machine, popped in a serving of my drug of choice, and walked away to find something to alleviate my headache. Where had I gone wrong? Evidently everywhere.

The pills washed down my throat. “Never again,” I said to no one.

I was his opposite, not him mine. A failed relationship, a dead-end job, and no ambition. His name couldn’t be uttered in the same breath as mine, no one’s could, my only comparisons lie in death. The only thing separating me from a corpse was a pulse.

Shut light in bathroom, eyes refocused and was given sight of the living room. I wasn’t sure whether my eyes or my subconscious glimpsed it first. At the foot of the couch, barely visible to the naked eye, was a little card. Bone white. No bigger than a business card. In seconds the entire evening reared its ugly head.

The wind. The wailing. The waiter. The whispers. Two taps.

The card.

I ran to it and scooped the thing in my hands, back cracking as I bent down. There it was, just three letters printed in thick blood red ink. NIM. As I stared at the card the coffee machine started to sputter, its heating process finally complete. Jet black liquid began pouring from its mouth and quickly falling to where an awaiting mug should have been set to receive, had my fogged mind remembered to put one there. I stood still, with the card in hand, as the coffee poured down the landing pad of the machine and pooled all over the formica counter top. Millions of caffeine molecules seeped into every inch, corner, and crevice available to it. Behind the toaster, microwave, and the unsealed gap between sink and counter. I felt my jaw strain shut. There it went, spilling onto the floor and soaking whatever unfortunate items were stored under the sink. “Never again,” I said to myself.

Brain deduced the nightmare mess to be one for my future-self to deal with. On the couch I stared into the card, trying to see through to its soul, trying to get it to spit out an answer. Had the streetlights been a figment of my imagination? An anxiety attack like that could provoke you to see some serious shit.

But the taps. I know I felt them. And the voice. A stark image of the door in a gray flash of light. There had been no card when my eyes looked at the door. I knew what I saw. The card had appeared, seemingly out of thin air, after the streetlight shut off again. The card had been dry even after being set on a soaked door. I flipped it to find watermarks, but there were none. There wasn’t a coating to protect it from the elements either, it wasn’t adding up.

All I knew was that it was placed there by someone. This led me to what I should have known since last night, someone followed me home from the restaurant. A shudder sliced down my back.

I saw my friends enter their respective cabs. They went the opposite way of my walk. A prank gone this far was not like them. It wasn’t them. That much I knew, which only made me feel worse. I desperately needed a coffee, so I made a new one, still opting to save the spilled remnants of this coffee’s older brother for later.

Three letters. Just three. Not four or five. Did that mean something? I’d need to brush up on my detective skills for this one.

Sipping the coffee, I decided to clean the former off the counter. I was alone in an apartment with no one to feel bad for me, or to clean up my own messes. I needed to take this into my own hands for once. Heart was racing, I needed to know who was behind the card. As my hands whirled paper towels against the counter, my mind got lost in the revolutions.

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It was the only thing I could think of. Who else could it be? No one. I knew what I saw, I knew what I felt and what I heard. There was only one explanation for the culprit behind last night’s trauma. The only person who made sense when I pieced it all together.

I walked beneath the rattling stop sign, under the headless walking signal, and in front of the snarling dragon. Sucking in air, I felt panic and masked it with confidence. The explanation was simple. Who could have possibly followed me home last night besides the man who had had gone on to me about seeing pain in my eyes, about an energy surrounding me? He was the only person who was a match. There was unease, a gas bubble forming and releasing from my stomach. I had to be up for work in the morning. What could I possibly have been doing back here on a Sunday night? Above me the dragon growled, warning me not to come inside. I didn’t listen.

The door jingled. I felt the card in my jacket pocket, its three letters burning a brand into my palm. Solemn music from the erhu vibrated straight for me. Imperial Szechuan was a ghost town compared to the night before. The erhu player winced as she gently swiped her bow across the instruments neck.

Same hostess from last night greeted me, I noticed a surprised smile as she recognized me. Stupid. “Hello again,” she said. “How many?”

“Just one.”

“Oh, okay,” she said and scanned the restaurant where only tables of two or more stood dormant in wait. “Would you like to sit at the bar?”

“I’d prefer a table.” The pit in my stomach was growing deeper and heavier by the second. How foolish did I look to this girl, to myself.

“Sure. Right this way.”

The hostess grabbed a menu off her stand and swiftly glided toward my soon-to-be table.

“Is Peter in tonight?” I asked.

“Yes, he’s bartending.”

“You know, I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to sit at the bar.”

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You can also buy me a coffee. The one Will made for himself sounded pretty good.

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