Gerald Feathers stared at the raindrops running down his window, watching them change pathways at random and sometimes split into smaller pieces. He watched them and felt that their ramblings were a suitable conceit for a life of mistakes such as his, but felt also that he was incapable of learning anything from them in his current mindset.
It was mid-afternoon, and his apartment was partially lit by its few remaining lightbulbs, the rest of it the terrible grey of English Rain; a comfortable shade of depression. He had even lit a couple candles on the window sill. There was something about fire that did his soul good, whether it was in small or large portions. One of the candles was shaped like the Buddha, though it held no spiritual significance for him. Just something he had accumulated, along with the other objects littering his home. It was a large but old apartment. It could be large because it was old. And it could be old because it was overpriced. It could be overpriced because his family owned it. Or rather its price was priced accordingly. The outlier was himself, living in a place over his price by birthright. Gerald felt no particular gratitude at this fact; only guilt at his lack of gratitude.
He pressed his hand to the window pane to feel the cold outside. It refreshed him momentarily, a wave of energy that passed straight up his arm and then out through the top of his head, gone in moments, leaving behind the same lethargy as before. He could see himself, his edges lit from behind, in the window whenever the lightning stopped. His hair was light to dark brown depending on how much sunlight it absorbed. It was getting long, frizzy and curly by turns as if calling out for attention. He was also cultivating a moustache: a lighter shade and styled like an old paintbrush. He hated the moustache, but kept it anyway, on principle. What principle, exactly, was unclear.
He turned back to the dining room and wandered toward the kitchen. Along with a living room with its own fireplace, these constituted the bottom floor. Upstairs was an unnecessarily long hallway that led only to his bedroom. He stood in the kitchen for a moment and wondered if he was hungry. A cup of tea sat forgotten on the counter, next to his abandoned coffee mug. He took a sip of one then the other, then wandered into the living room. The hearth had been cold for some time. Two Christmas stockings still hung above it. He took one of them down and threw it into the fireplace, promising to burn it at some point in the future. The other one had his name on it: G. Feathers. Impersonal for such a personal item. He reached inside and pulled out a small bottle of whiskey. It too was abandoned, and held no spiritual significance. Still, he broke the seal and took a couple swigs. It made him feel disgusted, with the drink or with himself, perhaps with the general concept that his act represented. Whatever the root, it exacerbated his tiredness, increased his nausea. He moved to the card table at the front of the room, took a drink from a glass of water he found there. Next to the glass was three quarters of a poem he had written. It was a bad poem, he thought, and he made sure not to reread it. A window of the same form as the one in the dining room stood here, looking out onto the same street, behind an entirely different pattern of raindrops, but indistinguishable to him.
This was when the thunder started, preceded by the lightning. Distant at first, he watched and heard the strikes approach their own rumblings. Each time the increasing dark lit up, the streaks of rain turned black against their background, pools of ink oozing through the air outside. With the next strike, one of the pools appeared to take a human form, standing between two parked cars across the street. Even though it was only a silhouette, something about its shape was familiar to him. A trick of the mind. She would not be standing in the street outside his apartment, nor anywhere else. The shape was still there with the next strike. By the third, it was gone.
He completed his circle by stepping back into the dining room. One glance out the window, then he went on to the kitchen, again wondering if he were supposed to eat something. When he opened the fridge, there was a knock at his door. "Who could be calling at this hour?" he said, then realized that it was only 3 in the afternoon.
He opened the door, and there, with the rain still pelting his back, was a man of his own height. The man had long hair of his own color, frizzy and curly by turns, like his own. The man had a longer moustache than his, waxed to points, and must've been at least 20 years his senior. "Greetings, good sir," he said, doffing an unusual hat. "You don't know me, but I'm you from--" Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by the appearance of a horrid beast whose entire head was a round orifice full of eyes and surrounded by two rows of fangs tearing in circles like chainsaws, throwing spittle, accompanied by a scream of myriad pitches, all dissonant. Still screaming, and eliciting a similar scream from its victim, the beast drove its chainsaw teeth into the top of the newcomer's head, straight through his hat and into his skull. The fellow was still looking at Gerald while this happened, but his eyes began to vibrate and revolve as the teeth scrambled his brains. A crash and a sound he would later describe as a 'schlup' came from next door. The screams mingled until Gerald couldn't tell whether they were coming from his own open mouth. Gore spewed out across his face and bathrobe, into the teacup he had carried with him. Making pleased grunting noises as it chewed up the head of the man who was now very dead, the creature pretended to eat even though there was nowhere for the flesh to go. It gored and munched, and scooped hunks of brain between its teeth, all of which smeared across its collection of eyes and then slid out and onto the ground. Meanwhile, its ink-black skin seemed to be rearranging itself, a smooth surface that became hexagonal scales that bounced through the rainbow, streaks of pink, then neon orange and green and purple, then back to pink, fading into the original black as spines and hairs arranged themselves before disappearing.
Having destroyed the upper half of the strange man's head, the beast decided it was finished, dropped the body, and turned its eyes/mouth toward Gerald. Gerald backed up slightly, careful not to trip over his own feet, and tried to say, "Excuse me." As he did, yet another scream joined the scene, in the form of a striped orange cat, of all things, that lept out of the night and latched onto an inky shoulder, clawing and biting. The horrid creature, receiving a taste of its own medicine, flung its gangly arms in the air and hollered, looking a bit like an amateur mime acting out a death scene.
A gunshot announced the bullet that drove into the space where the creature's ear should have been. A wave of orange cascaded out from the point of impact and across its skin, followed by an explosion of fire that sent its head flying off in every direction. Eyeballs and inky gore joined the brains on Gerald's face and collecting on the front of his robe. He dropped the teacup and continued to soil himself.
As the already stinking corpse dropped to the ground, the orange cat landed on its feet and pranced proudly through Gerald's front door, still holding a hunk of shoulder meat in its mouth. Before he could parse its appearance as anything more significant than another cloud of particles drifting in the aether, another lightning strike announced a new visitor at the still open door: in all ways identical to the original caller, except for the smoking rifle balanced on his shoulder. "Greetings, good sir!" he said. "You don't know me, but I'm you from the future." With a reassuring smile, the fellow attempted to push the two bodies off the stoop with his boot, but gave up when they refused to move. "Sorry about the interruption." He grabbed Gerald's limp hand and shook. "I would not suggest you call me by my given name. Why don't I go by Mr. Feathers?"
"Zzzzzuuhhhhhmmm?" Was the only noise Gerald could manage. He was still urinating, had already shit himself twice.
"Yes, well...." said Mr. Feathers. "Quite."
This caused Gerald to nod.
"Shall we?" Mr. Feathers marched across the threshold, wiping his gore-laden boots on the rug and heading for the living room. Gerald shut the door and stood for a moment, wondering if the rain would let up before morning.
