LoverOfTheLands
02-21-2014, 06:18 PM
The elevator doors opened slowly, like they always did. They made the creaking noise that any resident of Harwicke Building was accustomed to—the nails-on-a-chalkboard screech. Nick crossed the threshold and entered the old, empty, wooden paneled elevator.
He sighed and pushed the button for floor fourteen, but it didn’t light up. He pushed it again. Nothing. Of all days, he thought, why this one?
Work had been particularly hard for Nick that day. Unhappy with his performance, Nick’s boss had threatened to demote him if his monthly sales calls were unsuccessful. Nick scratched his head and looked down; he had just turned 30, and his hairline was already receding. Had Iris noticed?
Disregarding this thought, Nick for a third time attempted to command the elevator where to take him, and again to no avail—until a button lit up. It wasn’t the button for floor fourteen, though, but that for floor eleven. The elevator rose in accordance with Nick’s frustration. He angrily and repeatedly pushed the button for his floor, and yet it did not turn bright. He tried for floors twelve and fifteen as well, but those did not turn on either. The only button exhibiting any sort of activation was that for floor eleven, and it did so in a taunting way, mocking Nick, removing any control he had—or he thought he had.
Once it had finished singing its tune, the elevator stopped, and after a few seconds it opened its doors to reveal the outdated hallway of floor eleven. Nick stepped out, and the doors closed behind him. He stood there, baffled, helpless, purposeless, until he heard an unexpected, piercing scream.
“Ahhh! Nick, wake up! Honey, pleeeeease!”
Nick opened his eyes, still disoriented from the odd dream. He rubbed his face. “What?"
His wife sat up next to him in the bed. “We need to get up now,” Iris spoke with all seriousness. “Maryanne just called the landline—I guess you didn’t hear it ringing—and she said that Margaret McCarthy was murdered!” Tears swelled up in her eyes, and her voice, shrill as ever, was enough to fully wake Nick from his daze. He immediately got out of bed and put on his slippers.
“Are the cops here?” he asked, panic in his tone.
“Yeah, right now looking at the crime scene. All Maryanne said was that about an hour ago Margaret’s housekeeper came by and found her, you know, lying there covered in blood and with a giant kitchen knife in her—in her chest.”
Nick looked at the clock; it was 9:30 a.m. He and Iris put on their robes, and then walked out of their apartment and into the familiar wooden paneled elevator.
Nick said, “Margaret lives on eleven, right?”
“Yes,” Iris responded despondently.
He scrunched his forehead. “How weird.”
“What is?” Iris asked, but Nick didn’t respond. She let it go.
The doors opened and the couple walked down the hallway, crowded with drama-hungry neighbors eager for an interesting story to tell at the water cooler, to Margaret McCarthy’s apartment. Margaret was a kind lady, and at 89-years-old, she was one of the oldest in the building. Everyone knew her as the warm, sunshiney old lady on the eleventh floor. What had she done to deserve this? Nick shook his head, muddled by the whole series of events.
The rest of the day proceeded as any normal Saturday would for Nick and Iris; they visited her mom for lunch, they caught up with TV on their DVR, they attended evening Mass, and they went out to dinner with Carl and June. The dinner consisted mainly of a recounting of the morning’s events, as narrated by Iris. Nick, on the other hand, was too uncomfortable with the whole ordeal and its relation to his dream to give much input. While Iris provided more than enough melodrama to the story, Carl and June reacted to the tale appropriately, expressing sympathy for the old lady, asking the appropriate questions, chief of which was, “Who murdered her?”
Iris responded, “Oh, the cop Nick and I spoke to said that they didn’t know yet, but it was really a very messy murder, and he also he said that the hallway didn’t have any, like, surveillance cameras, but based on a lot of the evidence they found it shouldn’t be too hard to find the guy.”
“Well you really were on a roll with the whole Margaret McCarthy story, weren’t you?” Nick said to Iris after dinner in the taxi back to Harwicke Building.
She looked quizzical. “What are you talking about? I just answered their questions.”
“Sure,” he responded facetiously.
Upon getting back to their building, Iris and Nick, both uncomfortable with each other, silently got into the elevator, taking them to their floor, fourteen. They got ready for bed, The Colbert Report acting as their background noise, and then fell asleep with the loud yet unheard TV blaring in the background. At around 3:00 a.m., after much tossing and turning, Nick fell into another dream.
This time, he again entered Harwicke alone, but he was coming from the gym instead of work. Having run into annoying acquaintances, all of whom enjoyed providing Nick with ample advice on his form, he was tired and desperate to reach his apartment. He called the elevator, waited impatiently for it to glacially open, entered it, and pushed the button for floor fourteen. Nothing. He pushed the button again. Nothing. And again. Nothing.
And then the button for floor six lit up.
Nick did not want to go to floor six; in fact, he fought against it—and yet, the elevator did what it wanted to do, chiming five times until dropping Nick off at the floor of its choice. He resigned to simply climbing the stairs to his floor, and as he exited the elevator, starting down the long, dim hallway, identical to that of every other floor, a penetrating shriek met Nick’s ears.
The landline phone rang loudly. Nick opened his eyes and yawned. Already arisen from bed, Iris was walking toward the kitchen to answer it. Nick sat up to listen.
“Yeah, hi Maryanne. Another early morning phone call?” She giggled. “I hope another neighbor wasn’t murdered...”
After a second, Nick heard his wife gasp. “What?! Who?!” Iris paused and then spoke again, saying, “Oh my God! Maryanne, I have to go. I have to tell Nick...Okay, bye.”
Nick jumped out of bed, feeling with his feet for his slippers while calling to Iris. “What happened?”
She entered the bedroom, extremely distraught, and said, “Cory and Carlos Taylor, you know, the dad and little boy downstairs—they were killed during the night the same way Margaret was. Can you believe that?” Big, compassionate tears welled up in her eyes the same way they had for Margaret.
Shaken by the news, and even more so by the floor that he remembered the Taylor apartment’s being on, he asked his wife, “What floor do the Taylors live on, again?”
“The sixth floor, I think.”
“Oh my God.”
“What is it, Sweetie?” Iris asked, with an uncharacteristic amount of genuine concern. Not quite feeling ready to share the shaky turn of events with Iris, Nick lied about why he looked so tense. “I just can’t find my slippers,” he fibbed.
She rolled her eyes. “Just wear your sneakers. C’mon, we should go see what’s going on.”
On the sixth floor, outside of the Taylor apartment, Nick and Iris conversed with a police officer who told them the details of the murders.
“Extremely similar to the one the other night,” he said. “You folks should make sure your doors are always locked, and definitely consider investing in one of those deadbolts. Even though our guy is pretty careless with his kills, he’s still crafty.”
After their conversation, Nick and Iris, increasingly drowsy from another night of segmented sleep, took the elevator back up to their floor, and as they got out, Nick made a curious discovery: his brown L.L. Bean slippers propped against the wall, below the elevator call buttons.
“What are these doing here?” he asked, wondering if he could be any more confused than he was at that very moment. Iris shrugged and Nick glared at her suspiciously.
“Iris, I have to talk to you,” he said, leading the way to their apartment and then sitting her down in their living room, adorned with those Parisian street paintings that she liked so much. He gathered himself, taking deep breaths, then began. “The past two mornings you were the first to hear about the killings, and,” he paused for a few seconds and then continued, “and after Maryanne called this morning and yesterday morning you cried—but you cried a lot—and for people we just barely know—knew. The cries—they were almost exaggerated.”
Appalled at her husband’s demeanor, Iris attempted to interrupt, but before she could start her sentence, he gently raised his hand. “Just let me finish, Iris—please,” Nick said. “I just am trying to put two and two together. You were the first to know about the murders, you cried an oddly large amount because of them, and then you couldn’t gossip enough about them to Carl and June. It was like you were on a high from these deaths. And now,” he pointed to his feet, “my shoes miraculously end up in the hallway? I know I didn’t put them there. The bottom line is that I am—I am leery. In my opinion, you’ve been very, very shady about what’s been going on.”
At this point, Iris’s jaw was practically touching the floor. She was aghast at her husband’s accusations, frustrated with his distrust. She did not know how she could articulate any sort of defense. But she did eventually composed herself after a few moments, and she looked Nick straight in the eyes as she let her words pour slowly out of her mouth, tasting each one with considerable contemplation before releasing it from her grasp. “I have absolutely no role in these deaths, and as my husband, you are expected to know that. I am offended beyond belief, but even
more than that, I am really really ashamed of you.” And with her words lingering behind her, Iris stood up, grabbed her purse off the mantle, and walked out of the apartment.
Nick sat in the same spot on the couch; he did not say a word. He let his wife walk out on him without concern, for he did not trust her or her feigned verbal defense.
Nick was unsure of how to go about the rest of his Sunday, but he decided to spend it at home watching TV, which turned out to be very therapeutic; he took a comfortingly dreamless nap, cooked himself a delicious, one-person, gourmet meal, and was delighted to see that no other strange happenings occurred—except for when he could not find the screwdriver when he wanted to change the batteries of the TV remote. Once night came, however, Nick unwillingly returned to his recurring dream for a third time.
He again entered the elevator, pushed the button for floor fourteen, and received no response until another button, this time that for floor eighteen, lit up. He rode the elevator to the eighteenth floor and when he got there, he stepped out. He stood still, petrified, in the grim hallway, waiting for something, for anything—and that was when he heard the scream—the scream similar to the ones he had heard in his dreams the previous two nights. But this time, it was so much more real, so much more startling.
AHHHHHHHH!
Nick opened his eyes, slowly regaining consciousness. This time, he did not find himself in bed next to Iris. He was in the Shultz apartment on the eighteenth floor, standing in their kitchen. He looked down to see Isaac and Jess Shultz lying in front of their refrigerator in a pool of blood and with knives in their chests. He looked behind him to see the door ajar, with a screwdriver and paper clip in the keyhole. He thought back to his wandering slippers, to his unusually intuitive dreams, and, most poignantly, to his childhood history of sleepwalking.
“What have I done?” he gasped.
He sighed and pushed the button for floor fourteen, but it didn’t light up. He pushed it again. Nothing. Of all days, he thought, why this one?
Work had been particularly hard for Nick that day. Unhappy with his performance, Nick’s boss had threatened to demote him if his monthly sales calls were unsuccessful. Nick scratched his head and looked down; he had just turned 30, and his hairline was already receding. Had Iris noticed?
Disregarding this thought, Nick for a third time attempted to command the elevator where to take him, and again to no avail—until a button lit up. It wasn’t the button for floor fourteen, though, but that for floor eleven. The elevator rose in accordance with Nick’s frustration. He angrily and repeatedly pushed the button for his floor, and yet it did not turn bright. He tried for floors twelve and fifteen as well, but those did not turn on either. The only button exhibiting any sort of activation was that for floor eleven, and it did so in a taunting way, mocking Nick, removing any control he had—or he thought he had.
Once it had finished singing its tune, the elevator stopped, and after a few seconds it opened its doors to reveal the outdated hallway of floor eleven. Nick stepped out, and the doors closed behind him. He stood there, baffled, helpless, purposeless, until he heard an unexpected, piercing scream.
“Ahhh! Nick, wake up! Honey, pleeeeease!”
Nick opened his eyes, still disoriented from the odd dream. He rubbed his face. “What?"
His wife sat up next to him in the bed. “We need to get up now,” Iris spoke with all seriousness. “Maryanne just called the landline—I guess you didn’t hear it ringing—and she said that Margaret McCarthy was murdered!” Tears swelled up in her eyes, and her voice, shrill as ever, was enough to fully wake Nick from his daze. He immediately got out of bed and put on his slippers.
“Are the cops here?” he asked, panic in his tone.
“Yeah, right now looking at the crime scene. All Maryanne said was that about an hour ago Margaret’s housekeeper came by and found her, you know, lying there covered in blood and with a giant kitchen knife in her—in her chest.”
Nick looked at the clock; it was 9:30 a.m. He and Iris put on their robes, and then walked out of their apartment and into the familiar wooden paneled elevator.
Nick said, “Margaret lives on eleven, right?”
“Yes,” Iris responded despondently.
He scrunched his forehead. “How weird.”
“What is?” Iris asked, but Nick didn’t respond. She let it go.
The doors opened and the couple walked down the hallway, crowded with drama-hungry neighbors eager for an interesting story to tell at the water cooler, to Margaret McCarthy’s apartment. Margaret was a kind lady, and at 89-years-old, she was one of the oldest in the building. Everyone knew her as the warm, sunshiney old lady on the eleventh floor. What had she done to deserve this? Nick shook his head, muddled by the whole series of events.
The rest of the day proceeded as any normal Saturday would for Nick and Iris; they visited her mom for lunch, they caught up with TV on their DVR, they attended evening Mass, and they went out to dinner with Carl and June. The dinner consisted mainly of a recounting of the morning’s events, as narrated by Iris. Nick, on the other hand, was too uncomfortable with the whole ordeal and its relation to his dream to give much input. While Iris provided more than enough melodrama to the story, Carl and June reacted to the tale appropriately, expressing sympathy for the old lady, asking the appropriate questions, chief of which was, “Who murdered her?”
Iris responded, “Oh, the cop Nick and I spoke to said that they didn’t know yet, but it was really a very messy murder, and he also he said that the hallway didn’t have any, like, surveillance cameras, but based on a lot of the evidence they found it shouldn’t be too hard to find the guy.”
“Well you really were on a roll with the whole Margaret McCarthy story, weren’t you?” Nick said to Iris after dinner in the taxi back to Harwicke Building.
She looked quizzical. “What are you talking about? I just answered their questions.”
“Sure,” he responded facetiously.
Upon getting back to their building, Iris and Nick, both uncomfortable with each other, silently got into the elevator, taking them to their floor, fourteen. They got ready for bed, The Colbert Report acting as their background noise, and then fell asleep with the loud yet unheard TV blaring in the background. At around 3:00 a.m., after much tossing and turning, Nick fell into another dream.
This time, he again entered Harwicke alone, but he was coming from the gym instead of work. Having run into annoying acquaintances, all of whom enjoyed providing Nick with ample advice on his form, he was tired and desperate to reach his apartment. He called the elevator, waited impatiently for it to glacially open, entered it, and pushed the button for floor fourteen. Nothing. He pushed the button again. Nothing. And again. Nothing.
And then the button for floor six lit up.
Nick did not want to go to floor six; in fact, he fought against it—and yet, the elevator did what it wanted to do, chiming five times until dropping Nick off at the floor of its choice. He resigned to simply climbing the stairs to his floor, and as he exited the elevator, starting down the long, dim hallway, identical to that of every other floor, a penetrating shriek met Nick’s ears.
The landline phone rang loudly. Nick opened his eyes and yawned. Already arisen from bed, Iris was walking toward the kitchen to answer it. Nick sat up to listen.
“Yeah, hi Maryanne. Another early morning phone call?” She giggled. “I hope another neighbor wasn’t murdered...”
After a second, Nick heard his wife gasp. “What?! Who?!” Iris paused and then spoke again, saying, “Oh my God! Maryanne, I have to go. I have to tell Nick...Okay, bye.”
Nick jumped out of bed, feeling with his feet for his slippers while calling to Iris. “What happened?”
She entered the bedroom, extremely distraught, and said, “Cory and Carlos Taylor, you know, the dad and little boy downstairs—they were killed during the night the same way Margaret was. Can you believe that?” Big, compassionate tears welled up in her eyes the same way they had for Margaret.
Shaken by the news, and even more so by the floor that he remembered the Taylor apartment’s being on, he asked his wife, “What floor do the Taylors live on, again?”
“The sixth floor, I think.”
“Oh my God.”
“What is it, Sweetie?” Iris asked, with an uncharacteristic amount of genuine concern. Not quite feeling ready to share the shaky turn of events with Iris, Nick lied about why he looked so tense. “I just can’t find my slippers,” he fibbed.
She rolled her eyes. “Just wear your sneakers. C’mon, we should go see what’s going on.”
On the sixth floor, outside of the Taylor apartment, Nick and Iris conversed with a police officer who told them the details of the murders.
“Extremely similar to the one the other night,” he said. “You folks should make sure your doors are always locked, and definitely consider investing in one of those deadbolts. Even though our guy is pretty careless with his kills, he’s still crafty.”
After their conversation, Nick and Iris, increasingly drowsy from another night of segmented sleep, took the elevator back up to their floor, and as they got out, Nick made a curious discovery: his brown L.L. Bean slippers propped against the wall, below the elevator call buttons.
“What are these doing here?” he asked, wondering if he could be any more confused than he was at that very moment. Iris shrugged and Nick glared at her suspiciously.
“Iris, I have to talk to you,” he said, leading the way to their apartment and then sitting her down in their living room, adorned with those Parisian street paintings that she liked so much. He gathered himself, taking deep breaths, then began. “The past two mornings you were the first to hear about the killings, and,” he paused for a few seconds and then continued, “and after Maryanne called this morning and yesterday morning you cried—but you cried a lot—and for people we just barely know—knew. The cries—they were almost exaggerated.”
Appalled at her husband’s demeanor, Iris attempted to interrupt, but before she could start her sentence, he gently raised his hand. “Just let me finish, Iris—please,” Nick said. “I just am trying to put two and two together. You were the first to know about the murders, you cried an oddly large amount because of them, and then you couldn’t gossip enough about them to Carl and June. It was like you were on a high from these deaths. And now,” he pointed to his feet, “my shoes miraculously end up in the hallway? I know I didn’t put them there. The bottom line is that I am—I am leery. In my opinion, you’ve been very, very shady about what’s been going on.”
At this point, Iris’s jaw was practically touching the floor. She was aghast at her husband’s accusations, frustrated with his distrust. She did not know how she could articulate any sort of defense. But she did eventually composed herself after a few moments, and she looked Nick straight in the eyes as she let her words pour slowly out of her mouth, tasting each one with considerable contemplation before releasing it from her grasp. “I have absolutely no role in these deaths, and as my husband, you are expected to know that. I am offended beyond belief, but even
more than that, I am really really ashamed of you.” And with her words lingering behind her, Iris stood up, grabbed her purse off the mantle, and walked out of the apartment.
Nick sat in the same spot on the couch; he did not say a word. He let his wife walk out on him without concern, for he did not trust her or her feigned verbal defense.
Nick was unsure of how to go about the rest of his Sunday, but he decided to spend it at home watching TV, which turned out to be very therapeutic; he took a comfortingly dreamless nap, cooked himself a delicious, one-person, gourmet meal, and was delighted to see that no other strange happenings occurred—except for when he could not find the screwdriver when he wanted to change the batteries of the TV remote. Once night came, however, Nick unwillingly returned to his recurring dream for a third time.
He again entered the elevator, pushed the button for floor fourteen, and received no response until another button, this time that for floor eighteen, lit up. He rode the elevator to the eighteenth floor and when he got there, he stepped out. He stood still, petrified, in the grim hallway, waiting for something, for anything—and that was when he heard the scream—the scream similar to the ones he had heard in his dreams the previous two nights. But this time, it was so much more real, so much more startling.
AHHHHHHHH!
Nick opened his eyes, slowly regaining consciousness. This time, he did not find himself in bed next to Iris. He was in the Shultz apartment on the eighteenth floor, standing in their kitchen. He looked down to see Isaac and Jess Shultz lying in front of their refrigerator in a pool of blood and with knives in their chests. He looked behind him to see the door ajar, with a screwdriver and paper clip in the keyhole. He thought back to his wandering slippers, to his unusually intuitive dreams, and, most poignantly, to his childhood history of sleepwalking.
“What have I done?” he gasped.