So it turns out I randomly write fiction once in a while. Enjoy?
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Roy lived alone in a third-floor apartment overlooking the narrow city street below. The apartment was small, with a warped hardwood floor and water spots on the walls. Through his windows, which had been painted shut years ago, he could hear the screams of cars and people alike. A solitary chair accompanied a small round table. Roy didn’t care much. He and the world maintained a policy of mutual indifference, and, for the most part, Roy was pleased with it.
He left his single room only at night, when he went out to perform his act. He checked the painted-shut windows—though he knew there was no point—and carefully locked the door behind him, pocketed his key, and set off down the hall with a boxy brown case swinging at his side.
It was on these nights that Jacques emerged. Roy would unbuckle the case backstage, prop it open, and pull him out. He would check that the paint on the large, glossy eyes was not chipping, and then slip his hand under Jacques’ flamboyant striped shirt. On stage, they were a pair, each as human as the other. The dummy was Roy, Roy was the dummy, and there were no others but the laughing faces below them.
Roy returned home as he left it each night; feet striding forward strongly, as if to spite his sullen, bowed head, and his brown case beside him. He would carefully unlock the door and step slowly into the room, eyes searching for anything out of the ordinary. Then he would set the case in the corner nearest his bed and throw his coat across the lonely wooden chair.
On one particular night in late August, Roy returned home long after sunset. His performance at a local theatre had earned rounds of applause. The sound of clapping was still ringing in his ears like the shriek of a telephone as he stepped slowly into the room. His eyes scanned the kitchen sink, the table, the windows. With the swift movement of his hand, he flicked on the single electric light bulb.
He rested the case in the corner as usual and collapsed on his bed with a sigh, still wearing the coat. He was sweaty and uncomfortable; for a moment, he felt the urge to throw open the windows. Shaking his head at the notion, he closed his eyes and turned over on his bed, sweating through the coat’s thin fabric onto the sheets.
Hours later, he woke to discover that he was still in the same position. Wearing the annoyed expression of someone who has fallen asleep without expecting to, Roy craned his neck to look at the alarm clock on his bedside table. The green digits were fading; they no longer cast the same glow that they once had. It was after two in the morning. Roy stretched his arms back to shimmy out of the coat, but he paused; something seemed wrong. He strained his eyes, but the street lamps outside offered little light. Cursing the alarm clock and its dim glare, he stumbled out of bed, heading for the cord dangling from the light bulb fixture.
He had just grasped the cord in his fingers when he stopped, the string pulled taut in his hand. A click had just echoed around the room. Roy shivered. It was an old building, he reminded himself. One click among thousands of creaks and lurches was not out of the ordinary, was it? But then he heard another, identical click. He turned his head back towards the bed, attempting to locate the source of the noise.
He relaxed the string and let it go. Sweat appeared, uncomfortable and chilly, on the back of his neck. Something was wrong, but he didn’t dare turn on the light. He turned away from the bed. His eyes were becoming more accustomed to the dark; he could see the glimmer of street lights and of the neon sign across the street reflected in the white wall opposite the windows. The skeletal wooden chair was still in its same gloomy position next to the table. Roy turned back to the bed—he saw not the bed or the pathetic incandescence of the alarm clock, but a pair of shining, glossy eyes inches from his own.
He let out a silent scream of disbelief and shock. His eyes darted to the sides, as if searching for an explanation. The brown case lay open on the floor, its two latches undone. His eyes returned to Jacques’—was it his imagination, or was the dummy breathing?
The slow, dragging breaths were certainly not his own, for he was sure he had stopped breathing. “Jacques,” he mouthed. The dummy’s own mouth fell open. Roy felt two wooden hands grip his jaw. He reached up, desperately trying to force the dummy, which seemed suspended in midair, away from him. “No!” he yelled, aloud this time. A scream issued from the dummy’s mouth as he gripped the ventriloquist’s neck in his carved fingers, shaking the man from side to side.
Roy stumbled backwards, legs dancing a macabre jig, for he suddenly could not control them. He could feel slivers driving into his neck as his mouth opened and closed of its own accord, voices that were not his own issuing from it. His shoulders met the windows, and he fell down, down, until he met the sidewalk below amid the crunch of bones and the high, ringing clatter of broken glass.
