Burt Binder's eyes popped open like they were rigged with springs.
No sooner than the night air caressed his eyeballs, an icy cold
shiver worked its way up the back of his neck, past his hairline,
then to his scalp, where it finally branched off in little tendrils,
making his hair feel like it was buzzing.
There was no reason for the chill. At least no logical reason.
It certainly wasn't because of the temperature, because it had
to be at least seventy degrees. And that was at—Burt looked
at the digital clock—2:46 am, for Pete's sake. But that was
no surprise.
It was becoming regular lately. Like clockwork. He would wake
up, either in a cold sweat, or spooked for apparently no reason
at all. Then he would look at the digital clock on the table by
his bed and it would read 2:46 am in its glaring red numerals.
Every time. Not 2:45. Not 2:47. And not something random, like
5:32 am. Heavens no. Because that would be rational. And rationality
was something that seemed to be forsaking him more and more lately.
It seemed to be leaking out of his brain through an ever shrinking
funnel of sanity.
Of course, it was probably just old age. He knew that. But that
didn't make it any less frightening. And there was always the
"A" word. Yes, that one was always lingering back there
in the wings. Alzheimer's. That awful mind thief. That ruthless
bitch. It had stolen his mother all those years ago. And as if
to add salt to the festering wound, it had then taken his sister
too.
It started out slowly. Like all insidious things. First, it was
forgetting where you put the keys. Then it was difficulty writing
the checks. And then, before you knew it, you were trying to eat
your napkin, and screaming at that awful person in the mirror
that won't stop mocking you.
But Burt's mind slips were not really in that vein, and so the
Alzheimer's threat usually stayed back there, safely tucked away
in the recesses of his mind, but it never really left completely.
Because it was a possibility. And one must consider all possibilities
when attacking a problem. Just ask Sherlock Holmes.
No, forgetting things wasn't his difficulty. And he still knew
his own reflection. It was an old and haggard version of what
he once was, but it was still him, and he knew it.
His problem was the night terrors. And, God, they happened just
about every night now. And always at that same time. That was
what really ate at him. The cold sweats were bad, but being scared
to look at your own clock… that was something else altogether.
Because of the knowing. Knowing that it would say 2:46.
He couldn't really put into words why it was so unnerving, but
he dreaded it with a sick anxiety.
Of course, he had tried to trick it. He really thought that he
could. At first. He had waited with his eyes closed. Had even
counted to 200 with the "Mississippis" and everything.
But when he opened his eyes, it was the same old number, and he
felt the nervous lurch in his belly, because now it was like the
clock knew that he was trying to trick it. Like it had
intelligence. But, of course, that was crazy. Or was it he that
was the crazy one? It was sometimes hard to tell these days. And
nights.
He stared at the number: 2:46. And suddenly a new fear arose.
What if it didn't change over to 2:47? What if he stared and stared
and it just stuck there? What then? He thought that maybe that
would drive him crazy. Or maybe, more accurately, confirm him
crazy.
His hair started to buzz again as he eyed the red numbers, and
a fear like he had not known since childhood crept into his brain.
And there was a funny thing about that: As horrible as it was,
it was also wonderful. Magical. Because, for the first time in
a helluva long time, he felt young. And even the most intense
childhood fears beat the hell out of the myriad afflictions of
advanced age.
He felt the worm of fear squirming in his belly. Ancient, dusty
memories of a fear of darkness flooded his mind. After all these
years and years of reasoning with himself that darkness was nothing
to be afraid of. Why, indeed, would the absence of light create
any danger?
Yet, here it was, after all this time, driving him to irrational
paranoia. And, suddenly, Burt had the strong notion that the danger
had been there all along. That the power of darkness—the
blindness of it, and the looming shadows, the sense of coldness
and emptiness—had enveloped him each and every night since
he had been that little boy with the sheet pulled tightly over
his face. Only, as he had gotten older, he had learned to block
it out. Not to dispel it.
As these thoughts rushed through his mind, the clock stood at
2:46. That terrible number.
As he willed it to change, squinting his eyes for extra mind power,
a great weight suddenly took residence on his chest, and nearly
scared the B'Jesus right out of him. He let out a terrified yelp,
and for that instant he not only felt like that little boy again…
he sounded like him too.
When his eyes finally registered, by the sparse light of the moon
coming through the window, what had caused the pressure on his
chest, he closed his eyes and let out a shaky, but thankful, sigh.
And then he laughed a little, and it sounded jagged because of
his pounding heart.
"Yellow, you crazy mutt," he half whispered, because
it just seemed proper to whisper at night. "You're gonna
kill me yet."
There was an unmistakable love in his voice—which now sounded
more like his age with the fear gone—as he ruffled the fur
in between Yellow's ears with one gnarled hand. The dog promptly
sneezed in appreciation, tail going like mad.
Gina had brought him the dog one day on a whim. Found it wandering
on the railroad tracks with a note attached to its collar. "My
mommy can't take care of me," it said in blue ball point
pen scrawl. "Please give me a nice home."
Underneath the note was the capital letter "R" and half
of what looked like a lowercase "a" like the composer
had considered signing her name, and then thought better of it.
Gina said that she just couldn't bear to leave the pup on those
tracks with that pathetic note pinned to it. Said she would have
nightmares of the poor thing getting run down by a big silver
Amtrak, or of it slowly starving to death as it padded down the
rails, eventually crawling off into a thicket of overgrown weeds
to die.
So she had put both palms up in a non-threatening gesture, and
slowly walked toward the leery pup, mumbling niceties in a calming
voice, until, after a good half hour of cooing, she had finally
gotten close enough to make a quick grab at the collar. And then
she scooped him into her station wagon, where he peed on the passenger
seat before the engine had even roared to life. Gina, being the
sweetheart that she was, only patted him on the head gently, and
forgave him aloud.
Burt supposed that Gina's mild manner eventually put the pup at
ease because when she brought him into the house for the first
time, he immediately took to Burt, running toward him with those
goofy oversized paws of his. In fact, Burt never saw that cautious
look in his eyes that Gina had mollified with her charm. The only
look he saw was an innocent playfulness that was refreshingly
disarming. And right then he fell in love with the darn thing.
Not soon after that, he named the little guy "Yeller,"
after that story, "Old Yeller," but quickly took to
calling him "Yellow" because "Yeller" made
it sound like he was prone to yelling fits, howling at the moon
and such. And that couldn't have been further from the truth because
the only sounds that Yellow ever made was an adorable gurgling
sound that reminded him of some kind of exotic bird, and the rare
bark or growl saved for only the most threatening of situations.
He had had Yellow now for… gosh… had it been five years
since Gina passed? Time got away from you fast when you weren't
paying attention, measuring it with clocks and calendars, and
documenting its passing. And at the very same time, it crawled
when you spent your days alone without your beloved wife. Burt
could never wrap his mind around the duplicitous nature of time.
It made his brain hurt when he tried, so he left quandaries like
that to those crazies like Einstein who reveled in the stuff.
At any rate, he had been six years with Yellow. One year with
Gina, and five without. And although a dog is no comparison to
a soul mate, Yellow did a fine job of being a loveable companion.
In fact, he was the closest friend Burt ever had that walked on
all fours.
So, it was great relief that filled him while he scratched that
patch between Yellow's ears. And, within a short measure of time,
his heart rate returned to normal, and he felt almost himself
again. And when he looked at the clock again, it stated 2:48 am.
Time was marching on like it always had. Slippin' into the future,
as the song says. And that was fine with Burt. Just fine.
By 3:00 am, Burt was asleep again, dreaming contentedly about
some pleasant nonsense. Yellow was still on his chest, with his
muzzle nestled deep within the folds of Burt's neck, snoring lightly.
* * *
About a week later, Burt was again ensnared in a dream about
nonsense, but it was anything but pleasant.
In it, he and his old friend Buzz (called so because of the fact
that he usually had one) were ice fishing in the center of a large
lake that had no existence in the waking world. At least none
that Burt could recall. Although he and Buzz had been fishing
on scores of lakes during their 52-year friendship, so this could
very well be one of them. But the exact location, if real, had
slipped his mind.
In the dream, Burt was dressed in green suspenders, no shirt,
plaid Bermuda shorts, and dark dress socks held up by a pair of
sock garters. He wore no shoes, and one of his big toes was protruding
through a large hole worn in one sock. And the hell of it all
was that the frigid temperatures, made apparent by the swirling
snow, had no effect on him. He was toasty as a bug in a rug.
Buzz, on the other hand was dressed in the proper gear: snow suit,
heavy gloves, knee high boots, and ski-mask.
The dream seemed to be moving along on track with the occasional
absurdities that make perfect sense to the dreamer at the time,
but are later the source of bewilderment. Things like bits of
conversation that don't quite mesh, and humorous bits that have
no meaning in the waking world. Things like that.
But nothing was especially amiss for the first portion of maybe
five minutes (but who can really measure time in a dream? Suffice
it to say that it felt like five minutes). And then, without warning,
Buzz picked up the large blue and orange auger, and rammed it,
point end first, directly into Burt's bare chest.
The pain, which in most of Burt's experience, didn't exist in
dreams, even when landing from a forty-foot free fall, was piercing
and very real. As he looked down at the tool embedded in
his chest, he saw that it was twisting like an enormous screw.
This was because of the fact that Buzz was spinning the auger,
as if he were boring a hole in the ice. There was a look of pained
concentration on his face as he twisted.
Burt was about to beg his friend to stop, when he suddenly awoke,
sweaty, in between the sheets. And then he knew why the pain had
been so real. Because he was still feeling it.
He clutched a hand to his chest as little lightning bursts of
pain shot through what felt like the very walls of his heart.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the digital clock read:
2:46 am. It didn't hold its eerie power of fear over him tonight,
though. He had bigger things to worry about than a possessed clock.
Sweat began to bead on Burt's forehead, and under his nose where
a mustache would go, and his breathing was cut into short gasps.
Somewhere in his mind it registered that Yellow was whimpering
softly on the pillow beside him, perhaps sensing that his master
was in distress.
God, the pain was bad. But, worse, it was scary. Pain is
really nothing without fear. It's the fear that gets you. Even
a swift kick in the balls can be dealt with after the initial
impact, because you know that the pain isn't going to kill you.
Might make you barf, but won't send you away in a hearse with
a one-way ticket.
The thought "So this is it?" had just crossed Burt's
mind when he happened to glance again at the clock just in time
to see it switch to 2:47. And a funny thing happened. Only it
was more wonderful than funny. The pain stopped. I mean it shut
off like a valve. One second, heart attack city, the next, painless
bliss.
Burt blinked in disbelief, taking a deep breath of the cool night
air coming through the screen. It tasted sweet in all of its life-giving
splendor. Yellow even stopped his nervous whining, now cocking
his head, as if to ask, "Is it over?"
"I think so," burt answered to the unstated question.
"I think so."
* * *
Burt's confidence in the general health of his ticker grew throughout
the next day. In fact, by 7:00 that night, the whole episode seemed
like nothing more than a realistic nightmare. He had himself almost
convinced of this. Almost.
He was convinced enough, however, to have forgotten the whole
mess by the time he hit the sack that night. He had chalked it
up to "one of those things," and then had driven it
out of his mind. No sense in dwelling on sickness. It came and
went like the tides—especially at his age. You just had to
roll with it.
So when he awoke that night with a pain in his chest even worse
than the one the night before, he was not only scared, but shocked.
Two nights in a row. That was no fluke. That was no harmless tide.
His mind began to race to the point of near panic as the spears
of pain in his heart spiked, pricked, and ached. Out of some primal
urge to know, he looked at the clock. The big red numerals read
2:46 am. Of course.
Suddenly, he knew, but could not explain how, that it was the
clock doing this to him. He was destined to die at 2:46 am. Hadn't
he known that all along? Wasn't that what all those night terrors
were all about? Wasn't that what all of this was leading up to?
The sudden understanding felt like a lead ball. His mind had been
trying to prepare him. To ease him into it. And now it was happening.
Really happening. He had a vision of his death certificate. On
the line that said "Time of Death," it stated, 2:46
am, in bold black typeset.
Maybe I could wait it out, he thought desperately. Last
night, I waited it out, and the pain went away… It went away,
dammit!! Meanwhile, the pain in his chest was like an angry
bullet train. Wait it out until 2:47!! Just one minute!!
But the longer he stared at the clock face, screaming in his mind
for it to change, dammit, the longer time seemed to stretch. It
was as if the minute were an hour. And then two hours.
The pain was increasing exponentially at this point, and Burt
was about to succumb, to let it ravage his poor, weak heart. To
hell with it. You can't delay the reaper. His last sight would
be of that number. That indelible number. 2:46.
And then the number disappeared. The clock face went black. And
with it, the pain. Burt locked his gaze on the clock with utter
wonder. Black. And the pain: gone completely. It couldn't be.
But it was. He sipped at the air, thanking his lucky stars for
the chance to inhale it once more. He poked at his chest, testing
for any discomfort. Nothing.
And that was when he noticed Yellow for the first time. The mutt
was sitting on the floor by the bed, his chest barreled out proudly.
In his teeth was clenched the cord of the clock. The plug was
dangling limply from his jowls, coated with a thick droplet of
doggy drool.
"You unplugged it!" Burt broke into a lunatic smile,
and a healthy laughter burst forth from his belly. "Ha! You
unplugged it, boy!"
Yellow dropped the cord to the carpet, and wagged his tail at
top speed. His lips were stretched to the point that it looked
like he was smiling, and his long tongue was bobbing up and down
happily. Burt thought that he had never loved anything more than
he loved Yellow at that moment.
* * *
Burt and Yellow lived long into the next decade, growing older
together, and keeping each other company through the days, and
always through the long nights.
The digital clock that once adorned Burt's bedside table was replaced
with a clear glass "treat" jar that held all kinds of
snacks for Yellow. And every night, Burt woke in the night and
fed Yellow his midnight snack. Although he surmised that it was
probably about 2 hours and 46 minutes past midnight, without the
clock, he never knew for sure.
