If Duncan could open his eyes right now, his bedside clock would have not been much help. It was blinking 1:14. Their building was ancient, and the power must have blinked out again, after he and his roommate got home after last call and passed out. It had been excessively windy for over a week in Boston, though that was certainly preferable to March snow. He was lying on his back as his consciousness swam out of sexy dreams, but he found that he couldn’t move. His eyes remained shut despite every effort to open them. He started to panic.
He felt pressure on his chest. Marcy must have finally come to bed. His cat had been acting weird lately, hanging out under the living room sofa for the last few nights. Very unlike her. This was at least something soothing, if he was going to have to endure sleep paralysis once again, but she didn’t seem to be settling down. Then, her front and rear paws walked in opposite directions, crossing the other’s path. Oh, jeez, please tell me I’m still dreaming, thought Duncan, unable to open his mouth.
A high pitched voice called out from down on his stomach. “Go on, check ‘m. Paddy is running in the walls in the next room, but you know the guardians never fall for that routine for very long.”
“Okay, Paddy, okay. I wanted to make sure this one was actually under. You remember Paddy? He didn’t wait, and his mark raised an alarm. Two Paddies died that day.” Duncan felt a small tap on his left cheek, as if from a doll’s hand. The same cheek was pinched, painfully so, and something else tugged on his moustache. OW! I’m sorry, Mom. No more jagerbombs.
He screamed in his head as tiny hands worked their way between his lips and grasped top and bottom front teeth. His lower jaw was pulled down. “See? Wait, Paddy, did you bring a torch?”
“Do I have to do everything, Paddy?” The weight on his stomach moved to join the other at the top of his chest, nearly cutting off his windpipe.
“Careful, Paddy, we need him alive. We might not be able to finish tonight, if there is gold to harvest.”
“Shove it, Paddy, you gobshite. Are you even looking where I am shining this thing?” Something reached into his open mouth and knocked on the top of a back molar. “He is hardly free of dental work, but yet again, it’s all that ceramic crap. Not a gold crown in sight. Third mark this week with nothing for us.”
“If I ever find the dentist that invented that stuff, Paddy, I’ll extract the trace gold from his ashes.”
Both weights moved back down to his stomach. “What do we do now, Paddy?”
“I am not sure. Maybe the roommate? That depends on where Paddy is with the guardian.”
Duncan was already fairly sure he was in the middle of a full-on psychotic episode when he managed to open his left eye. Two identical looking, very tiny men were standing on his belly. They were dressed like the freaking guy on the cereal box, bright green three-piece suits and hats with large gold buckles over thick heads of red hair and forked red beards. Matching pipes hung from the right side of their mouths. They couldn’t be more than four inches tall.
“Maybe we should regroup, Paddy. Say, try that new family down the hall, tomorrow night? They don’t have – what do the marks call them? Pets?” This one was swinging a little flashlight.
His twin looked up at Duncan’s face and his beady little eyes widened. “Aw, bollocks. Paddy, he’s seen us.”
The flashlight completed its swing backwards, illuminating two wide green eyes at the foot of the bed. Duncan heard a low growl start to rise.
Both men jumped in place and grabbed their hats. “Cheese it!” They slid off his stomach and jumped down from the bed, just as Marcy lunged forward. She rebounded off Duncan’s testicles and bounced off the bottom of his bedroom door to execute a 90 degree turn. A furious high pitched scream erupted from the living room, followed by the sound of glass breaking and another growling yowl.
“Jaysus, Paddy! The fecker took my arm!”
“I said, cheese it! Up here!”
Duncan could finally roll into a ball under his blankets and cup himself. He heard another larger, more expensive, sounding crash.
“What the hell, Duncan!”
Great, Trevor’s up. With effort, Duncan rose from bed and limped to his doorway. A lamp he had had since college lay on its side, across the room from where it normally sat. The lampshade was torn and bloodied, its clear base smashed. His collection of paper drink umbrellas, previously displayed inside the lamp, were flung about the vicinity. Their lush, very white, carpeting was blotched and wet in several places with a deep crimson. The television had fallen off the wall, screen cracked in four places, uncovering a two inch hole in the wall plaster where an installer must have screwed up placement of the television mounting brackets. A tiny bloody handprint was dripping down the wall next to the hole. Marcy was on the couch, purring, and washing her face.
Duncan realized that he was still cradling his junk, and let go. He scratched the back of his head. “Sorry, I thought the super said he filled that in.”
Trevor said, “I’ll call an exterminator in the morning.”
A cautionary tale for people in New England, maybe. Brush your teeth, kids!