Insomniac Ink

By Catherine J. Gardner
© 2009, All Rights Reserved

The curmudgeon, a two-legged creature with a rumble in his belly and a three-day-old beard, lay on his bed sweating out a self-induced fever. He had turned the thermostat up to eighty and refused to cross the room to turn it down. The reason for his laziness: it was midnight and the store across the road had turned on its light and opened its door. Henry Layton rolled over onto his left side and wiped his arm across his forehead. He kicked his legs over the side of the bed, hitched up his pajama bottoms and waddled to the window. He should have pulled the blinds down before the night crept on.

With the cord wrapped around his fingers, he hesitated. The man in the white jacket stood in the store’s doorway framed by the words ‘Insomniac Ink’; he looked up at Henry’s window. The blind snapped down. In his rush to hide beneath his duvet, Henry had forgotten to alter the thermostat. He ached for sleep. Since his stroke in 2001 each night was like a mini-death—dreamless, without nightmare. He had sought innumerable cures, none seemed to have worked.

Sweat dripped off his nose onto his pillow. Henry blinked to find morning had entered his room. A droplet of water, without doubt having waited for him to open his eyes, dripped from the ceiling and hit him square in his left pupil. His nostrils vacuumed up the second drop. Above him, the plaster cracked and he received his morning shower without having to get up; his ex-girlfriend, Amelia Brown, would say he’d thus achieved his life’s ambition. Bits of plaster sputtered from between his thick lips, joined by expletives when he saw a second hole in the ceiling, that it was located above and had dropped its load down onto his computer. The air sizzled with the scent of fried electrics.

“Bloody brilliant,” he said, scratching his fingers through his stubble.

He picked chunks of plaster off his manuscript. The pages were sodden and the handwritten notes in the margin were indecipherable red smudges. His fist smashed against the wall.

“Real smart, Henry,” he said. “Break your fist and you’ll have to retype it with your toes.”

* * * * *

There was a shortage of plumbers in New Bedlam, along with a definite lack of plasterers, laborers, odd-job men and handy women. The yellow pages were more of a yellow pamphlet. Shining a flashlight into the dark of the attic, he discovered the water tank rolled on its side. More important was the dusty footmark imprinted on the side of the tank; someone had kicked it over. He picked it up, replaced the plastic lid and then directed the flashlight beam to the opposite end of the attic. It fell upon an old friend—The Olivetti Lettera 32, a pale green goddess that gleamed in the thin light and proved impervious to dust.

A sheet of crisp white paper was rolled into typewriter with the byline ‘Nightmares by Henry Layton’ positioned a third of the way down the page. If she hadn’t been living on the other side of the street for the past four years, he’d have thought it Amelia’s doing. As he tucked his flashlight under his arm and lifted the typewriter, the trunk on which it had rested tipped over and spilled its contents. Dog eared DC comics, a yellowing tuxedo, un-spooled mixed tapes and retired short story manuscripts (his and hers), things long forgotten, pooled around his slippers. He kicked them aside and carried his prize down the ladder.

A polished typewriter, a stack of white paper and a mug of coffee were, at that moment, more beautiful than his editor handing him a fountain pen and a contract. He flexed his fingers. The ribbon disintegrated beneath the weight of the H key.

“Damn it.”

His slipper somersaulted across the room as he kicked away from the desk. A breeze rattled against the blinds, drawing his attention to the store across the road. Insomniac Ink: For All Your Typing Needs. Much good it was to him when it didn’t open until midnight. Coffee sloshed in his empty belly when he realized there was one other person he could call.

“Amelia,” he grunted. “You have any ribbon for the old lady?”

“A hello would be nice, Henry Layton” she trilled.

“Well, do you?”

“Pink or yellow?”

“Huh?”

“The ribbon, and while I have your attention, who is she?”

“Typewriter ribbon for the Olivetti,” he sighed. “Damn computer’s blown.”

“Try the store. It’s only across the street.”

She slammed the receiver down. Fair enough, he thought. He stood at the window and looked down at the store. Children played in the gardens of the houses adjacent to it. He wondered if the man in the white jacket lounged on a chair in the backyard.

* * * * *

Amelia’s black hair and pink curlers bounced. She didn’t look a day older than when they met sixteen years before. Henry spat on his fingers and smoothed his errant fringe to the side.

“I was just…” they both said in unison. “I mean…”

Trying to appear nonchalant, Henry fell rather than leaned against the shutters of Insomniac Ink. The clang reverberated up the dark street.

“Store should be open soon.” He looked at his watch. It was one minute to midnight. “The proprietor is a punctual chap.”

“You know him?” Amelia asked.

Henry shook his head. “You?”

“I’ve had no cause to buy ink or typewriter ribbons or even paper. I hadn’t written a word since I moved out.”

“Hadn’t?”

“I wrote a couple of lines after you phoned. You always were my inspiration.”

A whistle and the jangle of keys broke into their reunion. The man in the white jacket walked with an affected limp. A scar ran down his left cheek and a twitch made it difficult for him to fix the key into the lock. He offered them a smile. They didn’t return it.

Henry looked back at his house. The blinds twitched.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome. Come in, you’re letting out the heat.”

“You’re a strange little man, aren’t you?” Amelia said in her typical fashion.

Henry sighed. He wanted this over and done. “Do you sell ribbons for the Olivetti Lettera 32?”

“I don’t answer sales enquiries on the doorstep. Follow me, follow me.”

The proprietor scurried down the corridor. The light flickered and buzzed. Henry noted that dead flies and dust clung to the flex. The door clanged shut behind them. Amelia jumped and grabbed hold of his hand, her rollers shivered.

“Where’s your stock?” Henry asked.

The man ignored him. The length of the corridor led Henry to believe the store led all the way back to Main Street. A bell rang somewhere within the building. Henry stopped.

“I don’t think we should go any further,” he said.

“But all my pens have run dry and I have a sentence rebounding around my mind.”

“I have pens,” he said.

The proprietor scurried back to them. “Oh yours don’t work either, Mr. Layton.”

Skeletal fingers scratched out, grabbed Amelia’s hair and pulled her through the wall. A cloud of plaster dust swirled where she had stood. Henry fell back against the opposite wall. A street lamp shone through the door—it would be so easy to run away, to slam his front door shut and bury this event beneath his duvet. Oh for the peace of an empty night.

The proprietor’s ghost-white face pushed through the wall. “One, two, three, coming ready or not.”

Henry’s scream shattered the bulb, plunging the corridor into darkness.

“Have you ever collaborated on a story with another writer? Or with an insane storekeeper? Isn’t it fun?”

“What?” Henry snapped.

The sound of fat fingers pounding against typewriter keys filled the corridor. “The disheveled man, smelling of sweat, pressed his back against the wall. Would he leave a stinking brown trail behind him when he fled?” The voice raised several notches. “Oh, it’s so much fun dictating what a character will do. Shall I let you run away? I don’t think I will.” He began to type again. “To outsiders, Henry Layton appeared to be a bear of a man. Things are not always what they seem. Oops, just deleting that second line.”

“What are you?”

“I’m the thing to replace your lost nightmares. We’re going to have so much fun.”

“Where’s Amelia?”

“Miss Brown is asleep in her bed. She’s moved on to a different dream. You always were my inspiration, Henry.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

Again, fingers bashed against the typewriter keys. A light illuminated the writer who sat at a metal table positioned at the end of the corridor. He looked like Henry had ten or twelve years ago. Thin, reedy, eager to maim and injure his characters. “The curmudgeon lay on his bed trying to shake the feeling of déjà vu. Sweat beaded on his upper lip, but he didn’t want to cross the room to turn down the thermostat. If he did, he knew the proprietor of Insomniac Ink would be looking up at him.”

---

Catherine J Gardner is a writer of all things odd. You can find her stories online at Arkham Tales, Three Crow Press and Flash Scribe. She also has stories forthcoming in Postscripts, Fantasy Magazine, Dead Souls, Necrotic Tissue and Space & Time. You can find her on the web at http://fright-fest.blogspot.com.