Chewed

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            She called to him. 

 

            Bill knows that as he sits, arms wrapped around his knees on the heavy shag of his walk-in closet.  A draft sneaks through the doorjamb and kisses his face.  Bill inhales it and stares into the darkness.

 

She is coming …

 

            He no longer sleeps.  In the last two months, his waking hours trespassed further and further, until his rest time ebbed into a mental blinking, dividing his reality with moments of screaming hallucinations, like vampires dragged from the basement into the bright, noonday sun.     

 

            The rooms inside his house have changed; their geometry bloating into curved and uneven angles as if their architect was a drunken Dr. Seuss.  On trips to find food, the walls deflate behind him, like lungs contracting.

 

            And then he heard the singing.