Chapter 3 - The Way You Make Me Feel.

When I finally returned to my senses, my head was throbbing and it took me a couple of seconds to remember exactly what had happened. The pulsing in my head was the reminder I needed that I’d fallen ass over tit down a flight of stairs. Shit. So this was what it must feel like to have been run over by a Mack Truck. Can’t say I was enjoying the experience.

I tried opening my eyes to see if I was still lying on the floor in the lobby - which was definitely a mistake considering the blinding stab of too-bright light that pierced my skull at the attempt. I immediately closed my eyes again and panted through the waves of pain that shook me. But when the worst of it had passed, I decided to use my other senses to feel out my circumstances before I attempted the vision thing again.

I couldn’t be sure, but judging by the soft cushions against my back I probably wasn’t still lying on the cold, hard, lobby floor. Something about the sounds around me didn’t match up with a bare, echoing, tile-floored building lobby either. Where was I?

I was pretty sure I wasn’t dead, despite how much pain I was in, or maybe because of the pain coursing through my head, since dead would presumably feel, you know, dead. Blank. Empty. Whatever. Not achy and throbbing and so much owww. Unless my father’s warnings about Hell were actually real and this was my penance for the sin of being gay. I didn’t think that a concussion sounded like divine retribution, though. Wouldn’t a vengeful god come up with something more creative? Now, if I’d woken up to my genitals aching and mutilated, THEN I might believe I was in some homophobe’s version of Hell. A sore head, though . . . meh.

I once again tried opening my eyes, this time much more slowly, and was glad when it looked like I’d succeeded. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much as far as figuring out where I was. I seemed to be in an unfamiliar room. It was so dimly lit that it was hard to see anything. I definitely wasn’t still in the Triangle Building lobby though. And I wasn’t in a hospital - which would have been the next logical place to find yourself after taking a nasty fall - because no hospital I had ever seen was this dark and quiet. Although there was a strong smell of antiseptic coming from somewhere, so maybe I was wrong? But no, because presumably if I’d been taken to a hospital they’d have given me something for this unbearable pain in my head. Fuck me!

I am embarrassed to admit that for the briefest of moments I returned to the assumption that I was dead, and let myself have a moment or two of slight panic . . . Dramatic, I know, but perfectly understandable under the circumstances, I think. I mean, let he who has woken up in a strange, dark room after having cracked open their skull while breaking and entering a building they’d been obsessing over for weeks, be the first to judge, right? It was only when I noticed that it wasn’t QUITE as dark as I’d first thought it, and then heard the sound of running water coming from somewhere over behind me, that I realized, no, I was probably still alive. Then I had to deal with the momentary rush of relief triggered by that realization and my gratefulness that I wasn’t about to meet my ‘maker’ and somehow have to justify the fact that, yeah, I did enjoy the occasional hot cock up my ass, thank you very much, and if that relegates me to the pits of hell, well, so be it because I’m not gonna apologize for being me and who the fuck gave you the right to judge me, I don’t care if you are some omnipotent fuckface, just lay off already, I’m doing the best I can with how YOU made me, you judgmental hypocrite . . . Phew. Yeah, dodged a bullet there, right? If this really had been death, I would have just failed the final judgment with that chain of consciousness shit there, huh?

But just where the fuck was I? I tried to push myself up off the soft surface I’d been lying on. That was sooooo not a good idea, though. Even the miniscule shift I managed was enough to cause an enormous new throb of pain to erupt right behind my eyes. I’d never really understood the term ‘seeing stars’ before, but now I totally got it. Can I just say, ‘ouch’?

“I wouldn’t sit up so fast if I were you,” a deep baritone voice sounded from somewhere behind me.

Disregarding the voice’s advice, I shot up, immediately regretting that I’d ignored the words of caution from the mysterious stranger. My head exploded with pain, the room spun, and a sudden wave of nausea began to set in, but somehow I managed to squint my eyes towards the dim light source coming from behind me. That’s when I saw him - well, the back of him anyway - a large male figure dressed all in black and turned away from me. He was tall and skinny and, from what I could see, kinda hairy. He also seemed to be washing his hands frantically at the sink he was hunched over.

“Are you okay?” I heard myself asking quietly, not sure why I was asking him that question, but it seemed strangely appropriate.

The man didn’t reply. Instead, he continued counting quietly to himself as he washed his hands over and over. Each time, he would squirt some soap into his hands and methodically rub them together, before rinsing and starting the process all over again. I was totally lost. What exactly was the guy counting after all? Did I miss something here or was my head still malfunctioning after being knocked for a loop?

“Eight . . . nine . . . ten.”

“Is everything alright?” I asked a little more loudly after my first question went ignored.

“Are you hungry?” the voice intoned, totally off topic.

I was so fucking confused . . . why was this man refusing to acknowledge anything I was asking him but then the next minute asking me something completely random? Maybe Daph was right and the face I saw was that of an incandescent ghost who was just pissed off and confused with the world. I shook my head - which was a mistake as it caused those stars to shoot across my vision again - but it did work to stop my imagination from running wild. I really needed to rein it in until I knew what the hell was going on here and who my Hunchbacked Host was.

“No . . . but thanks,” I replied, slightly bamboozled by this man.

“Chicken or fish?”

“I said I’m not hungry,” I repeated slightly louder this time.

“Chicken? I thought so - you had tuna for lunch, didn’t you?”

I rubbed my temples to try and ease some of the pain in my head. I was beginning to suspect that the pain I was feeling wasn’t just from falling down the stairs but from trying to wrap my brain around the confusion of my present situation. It literally hurt to think, even though I desperately needed to try and figure out what the deal was with this weirdo man I seemed to be trapped in a room with. I should probably have felt more uncomfortable with the situation than I did, to be honest, but there was something about the man that was oddly reassuring. I wasn’t worried precisely . . . just confused. Which was probably a good thing because I wasn’t in any condition to do anything about it if I truly had been worried or needed to flee for my life or anything like that. So I just resettled myself on my cushions at a new angle, allowing me to continue to watch the goings on over by the sink, and waited to see what would happen.

I watched as the man opened a cupboard above the sink and took down what appeared to be some type of small can. He opened it and poured its contents into a bowl. Fuck, I wished I could see his face, but he appeared determined to keep his back to me.

“Now, don’t eat it all at once . . . You remember what happened the last time you did that, don’t you, Bill?”

“Um . . . My name’s Justin. Justin Taylor. And you are?”

But my strange host totally ignored my attempted introduction and just went about whatever he was doing as if I wasn’t there. I watched as he placed the small bowl on the floor and stood back up, resting both hands on the kitchen counter, his back still facing me. If he was expecting me to jump up and run over there to eat whatever it was he’d put in the bowl on the floor, well, he was gonna be waiting a long time. What the actual fuck anyway? Who gives their injured house guest a bowl of food on the floor?

“Why are you here?”

I was so confused, was he talking to me or whoever this Bill person was? The guy hadn’t turned around and seemed to be directing his words to the kitchen sink. I didn’t think it made any sense, though, to be asking your plumbing fixtures what they were doing in your home, so maybe he WAS talking to me. Or maybe he was asking the bowl what it was doing on the floor? Who the fuck knew? I was so lost by that point I was kinda hoping I’d maybe pass out again and the next time I woke up things would miraculously make sense once more.

But, when that didn’t seem to be an option, I managed a dazed, “Huh?”

“I don’t have anything worth stealing, if that’s what you had in mind.” His voice sounded kinda sad when he said that and it made my stomach do a wild little flip-flop thingie that didn’t seem related to the nausea caused by my concussion.

But before I could answer him, I was surprised by a flash of movement as something that was moving way too fast for my still dazed brain to focus on emerged from behind the still hunched over stranger, jumped from the countertop, and landed with a quiet thump on the wood floor at the man’s feet. I turned my head quickly, trying to follow the speedy little thing - whatever it was - but the dizziness from before came back at full volume. I slumped back against the pillows propping me up and just moaned through the worst of it till I could breathe again. Luckily, by that time the thing that had caused all the trouble had casually sauntered over to investigate me and my moaning on its own.

The two yellow eyes, the disdainful frown, the pointy ears that swiveled around like radar dishes trying to catch my every whimper, and the questioning little ‘mew?’ explained it all.

“Oh, you’ve got a cat! Okay, that explains a lot. Because I thought, either you were talking to your sink or that maybe I’d hit my head even harder than it seemed.”

“I don’t have a cat.”

“Uh . . .” I pointed to the furry body that had just lazily stretched itself in front of me before daintily lying down about a foot away from my face. “Then what is that? Or am I just dreaming all of this. You know, actually, that would make more sense than what’s happening. Maybe I hurt myself so badly when I fell that I’m in a coma and this is all some fever dream or something?”

“It’s not MY cat. He’s just some stray that came in here and refused to leave.”

“But you’re feeding him?”

“So?”

“Soooooo, that makes him your cat.”

“No it doesn’t. If anything it makes me HIS person. But we don’t believe in labels like that,” the hulking back declared, still not turning around to face me. “I only feed him because he gets even more annoying if I don’t. Plus, I don’t need a starving cat dying and stinking up the place.”

“But you named him ‘Bill’, right? People don’t name cats that aren’t theirs. They just call them ‘cat’ and tell them to shoo,” I insisted, sure that I must have proven my point finally.

“I didn’t name him ‘Bill’.”

“But . . . Didn’t I just hear you talking to someone named ‘Bill’? I’m sure I heard you saying that name and MY name definitely isn’t Bill so . . .” I was getting confused again. Maybe that coma dream theory had more to it than it seemed?

“It’s ‘William’ actually,” the stranger muttered so quietly that I wouldn’t have heard him if it hadn’t been so deathly silent in there.

“William? Who names their fucking cat ‘William’? I mean, I kinda think ‘Bill The Cat’ is dope, in an old-school kinda way, but William? I don’t get it?” I was too tired and in too much pain, for once, to remember my manners with this looney-toons guy any longer.

“William Shakespaw,” Mister Tall, Dark and Crazy mumbled at me.

“Huh?” I asked again, unable to come up with anything more intelligent to say.

“The fucking cat’s name is ‘William Shakespaw’,” the man roared back at me, finally turning around to reveal himself to be owner of the mysterious haunted face in the window. “He likes to lay on my books when I try to read and he bats at my hand when I turn the pages so I call him William Shakespaw, alright? Do you have a problem with that too? Should I have consulted with you and asked for a list of approved cat names before I selected one? Who made you the cat name dictator anyway? Some fucking burglar you are. Or did you just break into my home to give me shit about cat name etiquette, huh? Huh?”

As he spoke, the man had gradually become more irate and more animated. He had even advanced a step or two closer to where I was lying, glaring down at me all the while. As he got nearer, even in the dimness of the room, I could finally see him a little more clearly. In the back of my mind I was rather proud that my sketch had got so many of the details about him correct, despite the fact that I must have only got the briefest of glances at him from clear across the street. He was just as hairy as I had drawn him with a bushy beard that covered most all of his face and straggled down his neck. The beard was matched by a headful of shaggy, poorly-trimmed, dark brown hair that curled around his face and partially obscured his eyes. From what I could see of the parts of him that weren’t hidden by hair, he was probably younger than I’d first suspected - maybe in his mid-thirties or so - and he had a strong, high forehead, an aquiline nose and, nestled under equally unruly, thick brows, worried-looking hazel eyes. I could see the beginnings of small lines around the corners of his eyes and he looked tired, with the bags under his eyes betraying the fact that he probably didn’t sleep all that well. But in spite of what some might see as a forbidding appearance, I didn’t get a ‘dangerous’ vibe from him at all. Just that worried nervousness. And maybe an undercurrent of lonely sadness.

Or maybe it was just me reading too much into some crazy guy who lived all alone in a huge vacant building with a formerly stray cat as his only company.

“You’re my ghost!” I announced, laughing up at him, my mirth causing him to stop in his tracks and stare at me as if I were the crazy one.

“What the hell are you talking about? I’m not a ghost,” he insisted, taking a step backwards in retreat. “Shit, you must have hit your head harder than I thought. I’m going to have to call an ambulance or something, aren’t I? And you’ll probably sue me even though it’s not my fault you broke in here and then did a header off the stairs.” This thought seemed to make him angry again, though, spurring him to once more demand, “What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I told you I don’t have anything worth stealing.”

“I just wanted to draw your building?” I replied, the answer sounding more like a question than assertion of fact.

“I know that; I’ve watched you. But what are you doing INSIDE? I didn’t want you inside.”

“I . . . I . . . I’m sorry. I just wanted to see if any of the architectural details of the building had been maintained on the interior,” I haltingly explained. “See, I’m doing this project for my Art and Architecture class at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and I chose your building because it’s so unique and I’ve researched everything I could about it from an historical perspective and I’ve got lots of pictures and drawings of it from the outside but I couldn’t find anything on what the interior was like and I wrote to the building owners but I never got any response and I just thought I’d try the door one last time to see if it was open and when I jiggled it this one way today - well, I jiggled it at the same time I kicked it, actually - but it opened, so I was just coming inside for one quick peek, and I didn’t mean any harm, but I got startled when I saw you and . . . yeah . . .” Did I mention that I sometimes talk way too much when I’m nervous?”

“You’re annoying,” my host declared while leaning back against the countertop and crossing his arms over his chest as if he was done with me.

“That’s all you’re going to say? After you basically pushed me down the stairs, you think I’M annoying?”

“Yes. You’re very annoying. You’re even more annoying than Bill.”

“You’re comparing me to a cat?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Well, you’re still here aren’t you? You won’t leave me alone. You’re exactly the same. Only instead of a stray cat, you’re a stray burglar.”

“I’m not a fucking burglar . . .”

“That’s precisely what a burglar would say.”

I gave a not-so-quiet tut at the audacity of his words. I mean, I guess he was right, but he didn’t have to be so mean about it. Either way, I was done with this insane conversation. I stood up quickly and felt the room begin to spin around me, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to stay here any longer. Not if he was going to be like THAT. So I ignored the dizziness that was slowly beginning to overtake me and grabbed my bag from where I spied it waiting on the floor beside the couch where I’d been resting. I felt myself stumble and I could see out of the corner of my eyes that he wanted to help me. I could see that his feet were trying to move and make their way towards me, but it seemed like something was stopping him. I wasn’t going to wait to find out what his deal was, though. I made my way to the door on my wobbly feet and prayed that I would make it down the stairs in one piece. I really couldn’t afford another head injury.

“Don’t worry, you won’t have to be annoyed by me any longer since I’m leaving,” I announced as I walked out the door and gave it a slam behind me - because, clearly, I’m a mature adult who handles situations like this in an adult fashion. NOT!

Of course, I’d only made it about halfway down the stairs before I had to stop and sit down until another wave of vertigo passed. That’s when I heard the sounds that had followed me from the room above. My stomach dropped as I listened in, hearing the sadness in the man’s voice as he spoke angrily to himself. But It wasn’t just the tone of his voice that got to me; it was his words, filled with such loneliness and self hatred, that caused the uneasy feeling in my gut.

“FUCK! Even the burglar couldn’t wait to leave. Everyone always leaves. Shit, Bill . . .”

Okay, so now I felt bad for not wanting to stick around and be harangued by the crazy guy. I mean, yeah, he was nuts and I felt like shit and probably needed to have a doctor look at my head or something, but it still didn’t sit well with me that I was leaving like I was. It also bothered me that I knew the cat’s name but had apparently forgotten to ask the cat’s person’s name. Maybe I really was as annoying and bratty as he’d accused me of being.

Or maybe it was just the bump on my head that had made me act like a total asshole to the guy. Yeah, let’s go with that excuse. It made me feel less horrible, even if it was, maybe, not completely true.

Either way, I figured my best course of action at that particular moment was to first and foremost get to the urgent care clinic and take care of my head. I could try and figure out my psycho ghost later. And with that decided, I gingerly climbed back to my feet and carefully made my way down all five flights of stairs, letting myself out the still unsecured lobby door. It was already dark when I finally left, so I must have been out for a while - not a good sign - and I still felt too sick to try and figure out what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go. Thank fuck that my best friend was only a phone call away and said she’d be there to pick me up in fifteen minutes. So all I had to do was hobble over to my bench across the street and wait for help to arrive.

And while I waited I kept an eye on my building, not missing the moment when the curtain in the middle window of the top floor shifted enough to show me a now-familiar, bearded face, looking out at me from above.