Glitch. Part 25

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 t.i.ts.

"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 skysc.r.a.pers.

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 G.o.d-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 a.s.sumed was a plunge down the rabbit hole. A line of flas.h.i.+ng 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 k.n.o.bs 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-s.h.i.+rt 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 fis.h.i.+ng." 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 skysc.r.a.pers 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. "Just like fis.h.i.+ng."

"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-d.i.l.d.o.

Greg aimed at a building one street down, a modern one shaped like a sail made of green gla.s.s. Around the skysc.r.a.per'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 a.n.a.lysis 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, eggsh.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.ton 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 f.u.c.k." I whispered.

A sea of teenagers.

They came in all genders, shapes, and levels of awful fas.h.i.+on 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 s.h.i.+rts, 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 pa.s.s-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.