-- PHOBIC --
An Incomplete Short by Leyland Perree
Gary sat on the edge of the bed with his legs tucked up underneath himself. He had been like that for over an hour.
Stupid, he thought. Bloody ridiculous. But no matter how much he tried to convince himself that the situation he was in was laughable, he couldn't. He was afraid.
He hadn't been so a month ago when he'd first moved in to the tatty one-room apartment in the run down tenement. Although place was cheap, Gary doubted the legitimacy of the "contract ' a handshake preceded by a down payment of cash ' and the Landlord, a scruffy old man who reeked strongly of detergent, had made himself scarce, despite telling Gary that he lived downstairs on the first floor. Gary's room was on the fifth. Between his room and the Landlords were three floors of silence. Gary had not seen a single other person during his four weeks and three days in residence.
And now, if he couldn't beat this thing, he wasn't likely to.
He looked down at the carpet, shuddered and drew the quilt around himself. Three days ago he had layed pages from a magazine across the floor to the bathroom. He used these pages as stepping stones, but repeated use and the draft howling from under the apartment door had caused the pattern to spread into a useless drift.
The dozen or so beer-bottles of urine he kept on his bedside table were full. There might have been more empties under his bed, but he couldn't bring himself to look. He had quit eating two days ago, but despite suffering from stomach cramps, he badly needed to poo.
The carpet was a stained emerald green, threadbare and foul. It etched dread onto his heart with an icepick.
Yesterday, was the deadline for his paying his telephone bill. His line was disconnected sometime during the night. Yesterday he could have called for help. Yesterday or any of the other days when he had woken up, unable to leave the bed. But yesterday he wasn't urgent for the bathroom. Today he was.
The carpet seemed to grin up at him, an emerald face scarred with cigarette burns and crawling with lice and 'roaches and-
And those unseen things that GRABBED.
He remembered the mouse that has slipped easily under his apartment door, no doubt attracted to the pungent smells that evil carpet offered up. He remembered what happened to that poor excuse for a creature.
If swallowed his fear and ran for it, he might make it to the door.
Or he might not.
Gary wanted to cry...again.
