A Quarter Past Madness

         “Alright, that's going to be $37.50. Cash, check, or charge?”

         “Cash. Here's two twenties.” John remembered the change in his pocket at the last second and said, “Oh, wait, I have the change.”

         The clerk gave him that look that all cashiers get when a customer does that, and stood waiting.

         He reached into his front pocket, and had to dig deep. The jeans were getting a little too tight and the pockets were long.

         “Shit!” he cried out.

         “What?”

         “Ouch.” He nursed his sore finger in his mouth, a copper taste standing out on his tongue. It was deep enough to bleed. “I don't know. Something... I dunno. It bit me.”

         The clerk laughed, although he had now donned an expression of worry and perhaps fear. You could almost read what was going through his mind: Uh-oh, not another crazy, not today.

         “Never mind about the change, man.” John said around the finger in his mouth. He tongued the cut. It wasn't too bad, his tongue told him. Shallow, but it still hurt like hell.

         The clerk gave him his change. He took his bag and left, giving the clerk a nod of thanks as he walked away.

         His mind was troubled as he got into his car. What the hell was in his pocket that cut him? And why did he think something bit him? He turned the car on, the air conditioner blowing almost hot air at first, then cooling down to a reasonable temperature.

         John leaned back in his seat and reached very carefully into his pocket. His fingers worked slowly down between the cotton material, like they were crawling through a soft cave. He realized he was sweating.

         “Probably nuthin',” he said to himself. “Nuthin' at all.”

         The seconds, then minutes, slowly creeped by. His pocket seemed to be miles long rather than a few short inches. Time dripped by, each second like a drop of water from a leaky faucet. He could almost hear the sounds of the seconds as they hit present time and slipped into the past - plink . . . plink . . . plink.

         His fingers, one sore and throbbing, touched metal. Cold metal. His mind registered it briefly, then glossed over it, refusing to think through why a coin in his pocket would be cold when it should be at least body temperature.

         He grasped it and pulled it out gently. Time resumed its normal pace, now that the object had been verified and attained. He looked it over, rotating it in his fingers.

         It was a quarter. A shiny brand new quarter. It had George Washington on the front and an eagle on the back. Its date of production was listed as 2007. Nothing unusual here. The emblems stood out and there wasn't a scratch on it, unlike most coins which were smoothed down and banged up by years of use and changing hands.

         John reached into his pocket again, his fear abated somewhat. It was empty now. However, he was sure there had been at least a couple quarters and a dime in there.

         He shook it off, put the quarter in with the rest of what he called his “car change” in a cup holder, and left. He laughed at his ridiculous behavior and forgot about the cut on his finger.

         Sometimes it's dangerous to forget.

         It was late night now. John had run a few errands, gone to a friend's house and watched the game with him. He'd hung out for a while, enjoying his friend's company, and the strange event at the store had completely left his mind by the time he arrived at home.

         He unlocked the door and stepped inside. It was dark, very dark. He forgot to leave the hall light on. It always creeped him out and gave him the shivers when he walked into a dark house. It's done that to him ever since he was a child. He'd been ten years old, and he and a couple of mischievous friends had broken into old lady Sampson's house down the street.

        He'd lived in a cul de sac, and her house was at the very end, hogging up the end lot, as his mother used to say. It was a large home, built over a hundred years ago by the old lady's grandfather. All the kids in the neighborhood shied away from it. It exuded malevolence like a sweaty fat kid stunk of body odor.

        Most of them were sure it was haunted. They thought that the old lady had killed her father and that his spirit lingered still, tormenting her.  It seemed that was why she was such a grouchy old woman. Years later, after the old lady finally shouted her last “Get off my lawn you lousy little punks!”, they would find out she was grouchy because she had been suffering from cancer for the last fifteen years.

         He reached for the light switch and it came on, illuminating the hallway. He stopped at the side table, kept there for holding his keys, mail, and the other miscellaneous material he picked up throughout the day. A small dish, picked out by an ex-girlfriend and paid for by himself, was a quarter filled with change, assorted quarters, nickels, and dimes. John didn't keep pennies. He always left them in the “take a penny, give a penny” dishes at the stores, or told the clerk to save them for other customers, just in case they needed them. He thought it was a rather noble practice of himself, helping others by leaving his pennies.

         He dropped his keys on the table, and reached into his pockets, his mind still thinking of old lady Sampson, (he remembered his mother making him go to the funeral with her, and this strange woman with graying black hair staring at him the entire time, with a cruel look on her face), pulling out his wallet, a pen, a scrap of paper with a girl's phone number, and a shiny, albeit cold, new quarter.

         His eyes were magnetized to it and old lady Sampson's funeral, where the woman with cold eyes had stared at him, was forgotten. Hadn't he left that in the car? It was the same new quarter, he was sure of it. He'd even pulled it out of the same right front pocket, although he hadn't put anything in that pocket since earlier that day- since the cut on his finger.

         He stood there for he didn't know how long, just staring at the quarter in his hand. He realized later he'd stood there for nearly ten minutes, his eyes glued to the quarter and its eye on him. He tilted his hand and let it fall into the dish, and it was now surrounded by other change, another quarter comfortably snuggled up against its edge.

         He shook his head, clearing it, and went on his way, grabbing a Coke out of the fridge, and heading to his bedroom. He got undressed, sleeping in only his boxers, and watched some late night television. It was some talk show, and a pretty young actress was describing her latest movie to an older host. He finished his soda, and leaving the television on, he lay down and closed his eyes, and soon fell asleep.

         He dreamed of the night he and his friends had broken into old lady Sampson's house.

         He was standing, a shadowy apparition in the dark back yard of her home. It was Halloween night, twenty one years ago. He watched as a group of boys approached the window. He remembered, as only dreamers can remember, that they had watched her leave, going to her weekly bingo game where the kids thought all the mean old ladies congregated and hatched their cruel plans on torturing the neighborhood kids.

         The tallest boy in the bunch, Billy Tanner his memory told him, picked up a big decorational rock and heaved it through the window. The tinkling shower of glass had both shocked and surprised them all, including his ghostly self. He remembered feeling bad, yet excited by this criminal behavior.

         It was been completely dark inside. Ms. Sampson had always been Scrooge-ishly cheap and kept the lights off unless it was absolutely necessary to use them. He watched the boys crawl through the window carefully, clearing away the leftover glass in the pane and throwing it on the lawn. He could hear Billy from inside, he'd gone through the window first because he was the biggest and that meant bravest of the lot, whispering encouraging words, telling the boys they'd show that old woman and to hurry up. He could almost feel the exhilaration and guilt seeping off his child self in waves of hot and cold.

         Suddenly he was in the home, standing in the shadows. He could see everything clearly in the moonlight, although in his memory it had not shined so brightly this night. Her furniture, just a couch and a few reclining chairs, where threadbare and worn. They sat on an ugly purplish flower rug.

         He took a step back, and felt a table behind him wobble and then lean on him. He could see everything so clearly in this dark, it was strange and startling. He watched himself debate whether to crawl in the window, the fear blazing in his eyes, or to go home. His conscience lost and the boy crawled through, the last to go in. He could see the goosebumps raising on the boy's skin, shivers rippling through him. He could hear himself whispering to his friend Garret that they should leave, it wasn't right, they'd get caught. Garret just laughed and told him to chill out.

         In his sleep, John turned over, flipping from back to stomach, side to side, tangling himself up in the sheets.

         He was a silent conspirator. He just watched as they floated through the room, moving from shelf to shelf, looking at this woman's personal things. He felt the hairs on the back of his own neck standing up, a chill racing down his spine. He walked around, remembering to right the table behind him, ignoring the boys for the moment. He saw nothing, but the feeling of being watched did not leave him.

         Small knick knacks adorned shelves and tables throughout. Small dogs, cherubim, babies, children, cats, horses- the old woman had been quite a collector of ceramic statues. It was disconcerting, the way the little ceramic eyes of each fake creature or person followed the boy's progress through the room. As an observer and perpetrator, John had the distinct feeling the statues could see him as
well. He came back to his place, next to the same round table.

         He turned back to the boys, but something in his mind, something he'd seen, disquieted him more than before.

         Billy picked up a small wolf statue. John remembered this moment, the moment everything had changed. He tried to say something, but found his vocal cords locked tight with fear.

         Billy held it high over his head- then let go. It crashed and shattered on the wooden floor. Its original form, that had been kitschy in its appeal, was lost forever amid the pieces of cracked ceramic.

         He watched as the other boys followed Billy's example, picking up and dropping, throwing, or stomping on the small statues. One boy, whose name he could not recall in his dream, ran his hand over one shelf and knocked all the ones there to the floor.

         Their faces shone brightly in the odd light of his dream, painted with glee, seeming possessed by the revenge that held their hearts captive. The veins in their temples and necks bulged; their faces flushed with blood.

         John glanced around, half expecting old lady Sampson to run out in this . . .
dream, he knew it was a dream . . . and attack. But no one walked out. His eyes search in the gloomy hallways, up the staircase; he saw only the glint of something (were those eyes?), but nothing he could be sure of.

         The frenzied destruction continued. The sounds of shattering ceramic animals and people prevailing over the boy's high pitched giggles. John could not take it anymore.

         “STOP!” he yelled. It was a dream, surely only that, but a part of his mind remembered that voice- the voice that had stopped the chaos, the voice that had not come from any of the boys.

         The boys froze, and put down, gently, whatever they were holding. John watched as they looked around, the floor covered in ceramic pieces that crunched under foot.

         Suddenly the boys all ran for the window at once, grappling with each other in order to leave first. John took one last look around, knowing intuitively he was about to leave, and saw that on the table behind him, there were no knick-knacks, no ceramic babies or animals. Just a quarter. A shiny  new quarter. He reached for his, and the temperature dropped. He continued stretching his hand. He should've touched it already.

        But it was dreamtime now, and in dreamtime, time is irrelevant.

        His finger drifted, working it's way through future and present to leave a centimeter in the past. He was close now, he was sure he would be able to touch it now. He heard an odd, old cackle from somewhere in the house (you know who that is, his mind told him) and he pulled his hand back.

         The dream jumped.

         He saw himself lying in his old bed, staring at the ceiling. Listening. At first it was just a muted noise, like the subtle creaking of a house settling. Then it grew stronger.

         His child self rolled up into a fetal position, his eyes focused on something outside the window.

         John could hear it easily now. It was the same sound that had haunted his sleep from time to time, that had kept him from sleeping peacefully for two years - until she had died.

         Old lady Sampson was screaming. She screamed. And screamed. And screamed. She had found her living room in shambles and her ceramic statues - her collection that was meaningless to anyone but her- destroyed. Oh how she screamed. Not the scream of fear, or regret, or grief, but madness.          

         The child sized John clapped his hands over his ears and started crying. Dream John looked around the room, admiring his old decorations and toys. The paper airplane above the bed, the cowboy hat in the corner, the pictures on the walls. Anything to keep the screams out of his mind. He noticed the bed side table- the reading lamp was off, a book shoved to the side, dangling over the edge, and a shiny new quarter.

         The screams broke through into his mind once more. Dream John fell to his knees and cried.

         “Those screams” John mumbled. He rolled over again, and finally settled into a dreamless sleep.

         Early morning finds the sky just turning a rosy orange red with sunrise, and John sipping at a cup of coffee, dressed and ready to start the day, his nightmare recollections of the night before forgotten. He refills his traveling mug and heads to the door, stopping to grab his keys and wallet. He notices something inexplicable and frightening. The only coin left in the dish is that shiny, brand new quarter.

         “What the hell?” he said, questioning the empty house.

         He picked the dish up and looked under it, around it, and on the floor. Nothing was left. Just that one quarter.

         He looked at his watch, realizing he would be late, and set it down. He didn't have time to worry about the odd circumstances just now. His mind rationalized it as he left, speaking to him in kind whispers, telling him a friend or himself probably took the change a few days ago and he just thought he'd seen more change there.

         The memory of the old quarter sitting companionably beside the new quarter would not leave his mind and stayed with him throughout the day.

         It wasn't until some hours later as he was getting into the car to go home that he realized the “car change” was gone as well. He'd stopped the car at a nearby car wash, and searched under the seats, in the compartments, even digging down in the seams of the seats to find that change. He'd had at least three dollars in change there, not just a day ago. He felt fairly sure of that.

         Finally, confused as hell and scared - perhaps for his sanity, he got back into the car and drove home.

         The sun was still up, although dipping low to the ground now, perhaps twenty minutes from sundown, and the house was dim, but not dark when he got home. He went inside and turned on the light, this time without the frozen hand of fear wrapped around his spine.

         He stopped at the side table and dropped his keys, took off his watch, set down his wallet. He walked into the kitchen, draping his suit jacket over a chair and undoing his tie. He opened the fridge and pulled out a Coke. He opened it up, it's phsst sound reassuring in its ordinary predictability.

         He paused in his drinking, and set the Coke down. He could see the hallway table from here and he glanced at it, looked away at the Coke, and then back to the table.

         The glass dish was gone.

         He walked over and looked around for it. It hadn't broken on the floor, there were no pieces of glass glittering in the light. He ran his hand over the floor, risking a stick with a shard of glass, just in case (and his mind told him this was a irrational notion) someone had broken in, knocked the glass dish off the table, and then swept it up and buried the remains of the dish (he was sure the trash would not have any pieces of broken glass in it, although he had not yet been near it) and left without taking a thing.

        But John's luck was not with him today.

        There were no shards of glass on the floor. Not even the most minute speck of it.

         He stood up and stuck his hands into his pockets and felt something cold touch his healing right finger. He jerked his hand out of his pocket and almost ripped his pants apart in his haste to get them off. He threw them into a far corner, afraid of what might be in that pocket. He chose not to investigate.

         He left the pants there, tiptoeing his way around them, unwilling to even touch them. He went into the kitchen again and finished his soda. He made a cold sandwich for dinner, not bothering with adding chips or fruit. He had a weak appetite.

         He stared at the pants while he ate, possibilities turning over in his mind. What to do? He could throw them away. But the pants had been expensive! It was worth losing the pants to keep his sanity. Did he still have his sanity? Was he really thinking that the quarter had . . .eaten the other change and then the dish? Did it really bite him that day at the store?

         He left his sandwich half-eaten and ran, not walked not sprinted not jogged, ran into the bedroom. He donned a pair of shorts and tennis shoes, leaving on his business shirt, and ran back into the kitchen. He looked at the sandwich first, scared to turn and look into the hallway.

         He grabbed at the bits and pieces of courage that he had in him, and walked into the hallway.

         He screamed, a loud girlish scream of fear, wordless and unintelligible.

         The pants were gone. In their place sat the quarter.

         “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” he chanted. “No, no, no, this isn't happening. It's got to be a delusion. I'm hallucinating. My friend must have put LSD or crack or heroine or marijuana in the food he gave me yesterday cause this is NOT HAPPENING!”

         He started screaming again. The neighbors next door would later tell the police they thought someone was being murdered.

         “Oh my,” the elderly woman would say, her eyes twinkling at being interviewed by this handsome young police officer, her hands reaching up to poof up her mostly sheet white hair veined with black, “That screaming sure kept us up most of the night, dinn't it Georgie?” George, an even older man sitting in a rocking chair on the porch behind her, just swayed in his chair and grunted.

         But at the moment, John was still screaming and the quarter moved. At least, it seemed to. He rubbed his eyes, his screams quieted by the sudden motion. He opened them again, expecting the quarter to be back in its corner. He could live with that, even if the pants were still inexplicably gone, he could live with the quarter in the corner.

         It was now only six inches away from him. He didn't take his eyes from it this time. The quarter and John held a stand off, right there and right then. John had no idea how much time had elapsed, but he knew he hadn't blinked in at least five minutes. His eyes had that dry, sucking feeling you get when you're a little dehydrated and swollen. He needed to blink, and he needed to blink badly. He wasn't quite sure whether he could keep up his stare. He felt each mote, each teeny tiny speck of dust land on his eyes. It burned each time.

         As it had yesterday afternoon, time felt like it was slowing down to a dead crawl. Each dust mote landing on his eye was a second that was sucked into himself. He was aging dust speck by dust speck.

         Just when he thought he would go insane if not blind, the quarter scooted forward another inch. Perhaps an inch and a half. It had closed nearly a quarter of the distance in that little scoot. He felt it was safe to blink now, since he knew the quarter was moving, he'd seen it with his own eyes. And he could resume screaming.

         The quarter, seeming to run out of patience with this cowardly sack of man before it, jumped into the air, flying towards John's face on a preternatural wind. It bit his earlobe and latched on. He grabbed at his ear, but he couldn't keep a hold on the quarter.

         He could feel its cold metal body sliding, slowly, up his skin, lodging itself into his ear. He had no idea, he could not see it, but its tail side stood guard at the entrance to his ear, while the face side was turned to the ear, speaking into it. Communicating.

         He heard it whispering. A part of his mind logged that it was impossible. Quarters, change, coins. . . they don't talk. Obviously, he'd gotten high the night before and this was simply a hallucination. Or he was dreaming. He'd wake up out of it soon.

         “No,” the quarter whispered. It had a voice like the creaking of a rusty door
hinge, swaying back and forth in an empty house.

         “It is not a dream. You are not hallucinating.” The voice was thin, almost inaudible, like it was frail with age. The level of his mind that was believing in this, that felt whatever was happening was real, found this confusing. The quarter was a brand new one, it should have a fresh voice, redundant with youth and frivolity.

         “You don't recognize my voice John? How can you not you LOUSY LITTLE PUNK?” It bellowed the last part into his ear. He jerked his hand to his ear in reaction, and his hand was sliced again. Presumably by the eagle's beak or talons.

         Now I know where that cut came from, he thought. He blocked out the sudden flash of memory from those last words. He had been thinking selectively lately, and refused to quit now.

         “Yes, Mr. Fluffyfeathers has done a very good job of protecting me, hasn't he?” the quarter whispered in a gently crooning voice and it clicked in John's head. He recognized the voice now (chose to recognize, he knew who it was already, he'd just chosen not to accept it, his mind growled at him). It belonged to old lady Sampson. She'd spoken like that to her cat; Fluffykins, she had called it. The cat had died shortly before the boys broke into her home.

         “That's why I'm here John. Do you remember what you did? Have you forgotten it already? I don't think you have John. I think you remember. I think you feEL GUILTY FOR WHAT YOU DID. I THINK YOU'RE GOING TO PAY JOHN. YOU'REGOINGTOPAYJOHNRIGHTNOW!” The voice blended its words together at the end, in a drunken slur.

         John had no idea how to handle this. He had no idea what he could or should do. He could hardly think.

         The quarter just went on, whispering things silently into his ear. He heard stories about his old friends, the old crew from elementary school. The crowd his parents had disapproved of. He hadn't kept in touch very long. Eventually everyone had a falling out with the others and the group just didn't meet one day. But John knew, oh yes he knew alright, that it was because of that house, the Sampson home.

         Because of what they did. It wasn't the breaking of the knick-knacks. Those things could be replaced, if given enough time and money. They'd taken something more important, more valuable, to that woman than her precious collection- her sanity.

         The quarter whispered to him.

         “Hey Johnny boy, you rotten punk, do you remember Billy? Well, he used to work as the foreman of a steel mill, and was pretty successful. One day his wife came home and found him sitting in a tub full of cold, red water. She never found out if the tub had been full of hot water or he had sat down in ice cold water, but she did know that he'd sliced the vein in his left arm all the way from wrist to elbow. He hadn't been able to do his right side as well; it was just one small deep gash over his wrist, but it'd been enough to let the blood pour from both arms.

         “Oh how she screamed Johnny boy. She didn't even notice the quarter sitting on the counter.” It cackled that same spine-tingling witch's laugh that the old lady had tormented her neighbors with.

         “They're all dead, Johnny. They've all killed themselves one way or another. You all drove me mad so I've driven you all mad! And you're the last to go, Johnny, you're the last to go!”

         Johnny started to lose the will to think. He just wanted that laugh, oh god, please make that laugh go away. If only I didn't have to hear it anymore, I'd keep my sanity, he pleaded with whatever external forces existed. Please!

         He tried digging the quarter out of his ear, and it fought him for a second and then seemed to fall away, but the laugh did not stop. He could still hear it, echoing through his skull, reverberating in his bones, vibrating through his teeth.

         “Oh, God, make it stop!” He screamed.

         His eyes darted frantically around, looking for something, anything he could use to stop that awful, horrible laughing! There was a pair of scissors sitting on the side table. He had no idea how it had gotten there. His mind was beyond working in rational, logical ways.

         He knee-walked his way to the table, not quite crawling or walking, but something animalistic and in between. He picked up the scissors, careful to keep the pointed edge pointed away from himself (mother always told him to always keep the sharp edge and points of thing directed away from himself otherwise he would lose an eyeball).

         “Yes, Mama,” he said aloud, “I'd hate to lose an eyeball. It sure'd be gross.”

         His hands moved with methodical grace, the laugh still crashing around his skull, gaining momentum for its finale. The pointed end of the scissors came around towards his ear, and taking careful aim, he. . .

         “Mrs. Willow, did you hear any other noises that night, ma'am?” The police officer asked the elderly woman.

         “Call me Sarah, Sarah Sampson. I haven't gone by the name of Mrs. Willow in years.” She smiled at the police office, her teeth glaring through her lips.

         ”I can't believe what that ol' boy did, can you Georgie?” Sarah said, while looking the at the police officer, who looked impatient and tired of her circulatory answers. “Uh-uhm. Hurting hisself like that, it's a shame. That's all that is. A dirty shame. But he brought it on hisself, yes he did, dinn't he Georgie?” George grunted in agreement again, his mind apparentally not there at the moment.

         Her eyes glinted in the light. They were bright and filled with laughter. The officer looked away a moment, unable to keep gazing into the woman's face. He was startled by what he had seen there. As he looked down at her hands, he noticed she was caressing a small silver coin. A quarter.

         “Oh yes he did, you better believe that Mr. Police Officer. You better believe it.”

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