Sharkman

My neighbor was a Mexican; a man who bore a striking resemblance to Carlos Mencia. I never really got his name, and he never argued when I called him Carlos so I assume it was his name. I doubt he was the actual celebrity though, because he would often come over and watch him with me and say, "Damn, I hope I meet him someday."

Aside from watching TV shows and playing Guitar Hero every once in awhile, Carlos and I kept to our own apartments. He stayed in his side, and I stayed on my side across the hall. The one ritual we always had was to watch football together on Monday night. Tonight was going to be my homeboy Patriots vs his dumbass Bears. I was really looking forward to this, just getting back from the Sunset Mart down the street with a bag of sour-cream-and-onion chips and a 6pack.

Usually he was in my apartment, eating my pizza and waiting for me to sit down. As I entered, I noticed Carlos was not in his spot. I turned around and knocked on his apartment door.

It swung open so suddenly that my hand shattered a dozen chips inside the bag from my squeezing. Carlos was inside, with a worried expression on his face and babbling in that Mencia-like voice of his. Some spanish or other. "I need help, amigo! El Diablo (something in Spanish) in my motherfucking TV!"

I was not a man to be afraid of anything. Over time, I had gotten into the spirit of being able to beat the shit out of anything that could frighten me. Carlos kept babbling in Spanish, shouting about his TV.

Tossing the chips back into my apartment, I walked into his room. The TV was a good 35-inch flatscreen. How he afforded this shiny toy, I'll never know. It struck me to ask him why the hell we didn't use his place for football instead, but he was panicking like a little girl and probably would get mad.

"What the hell is wrong?" I said in a more uncaring tone then I meant.

Carlos was behind the couch, looking at his TV over the rim. In his eyes was the look of a man who had just experienced something terrible. The murder of his girlfriend. A family member burned alive. Something not right. This wasn't something caused by a scary movie.

"I told you, amigo, El Diablo inside my TV!" he was almost on the verge of tears. Shaking. What the hell had he seen?

"What exactly did you see?" I asked finally, giving him the attention he probably deserved.

He crouched down behind the couch, hugging his knees to his chest. Rocking back and forth. Like a child watching his first Freddy Kreuger movie. Finally he spoke.

"On the X-files. I watched it years ago. There was an episode of some creature...that mutated in the sewer. It had a face that sucked the life out of people. It was so white...so nasty..." he paused to wipe a few tears from his eyes. "I swear to god and diablo that I just saw it there, looking at me. Like it was coming for me next."

Ah, I knew what he was talking about. The Flukeman. I'd be damned if I said that creature didn't give me chills when I first saw it too. Like a human with no limbs, but a gigantic sucker face. It would inject tapeworms into someone's body and have it exit orally. Pretty nasty shit. I could see why he was freaked out.

"Hey, man," I started consolingly. "I saw that episode too. I know, it was some pretty freaky shit. Don't worry dude, you're a tough-ass motherfucker. You can handle this shit."

He wasn't looking at me though. He was looking past me, eyes frozen in place. I turned to look as well. All I saw behind me was his bathroom with a shitty mirror covered in toothpaste stains.

Carlos suddenly let out a blood-curdling shreik. This wasn't some stupid yelp, this was a long, rasping scream that rattled my bones. I'd never heard anyone scream that way before. In half a second he was on his feet, running away like a man possessed.

He didn't even stop to look where he was going. The idiot fucking crashed through my door, stumbling onto my floor. The only light on in there was my TV, casting an eerie luminescence over his face.

I'll never forget that look on his face. Pure, repulsed horror. Like his brain had shut down. Eyes wide, mouth quivering.

"Carlos!" I shouted, running over. "Chill the fuck out man!"

"It's a curse!" Another shriek. He shoved past me and ran out into the hall. Luckily, before he could see where he was going, konked himself right on the nose in his doorway. My fat neighbor crashed to the floor, unconscious.

I wasn't really sure what to do with him or how to check what drugs he was on. I nosed around his apartment, found some weed on top of a desk, nothing else. I dragged his body onto his couch and left him there, turned his TV off, and went back to my apartment. The Bears won by 2. Fuck that.

After some Keystone, I floated off to bed.

And something jolted me up. My alarm? No, the sound of my neighbor screaming his stupid head off. 1 in the godamnded morning. I jumped out of bed, trying to wrap a blanket around me should any old ladies be in the hallway.

More screaming. What the fuck was going on?

I opened my door just in time to hear the window in his room shatter outwards. Like something had crashed through it. I crashed his door open and looked in.

Jagged glass in the window. TV on. Blankets leading toward the window. Some blood on the edge. I dashed over and looked out of it.

Carlos's body on the street, five stories down. Some pools of blood coming from it. The fucker had just thrown himself through the window. I dialed 911 as quick as I could.

The rest is a blur. Cops, lights, people asking me shit. I tried telling them everything I knew. I was able to get back to sleep about 6 hours later, trying to sleep off the confusion.

The next day was somewhat more normal, aside from the absence of my neighbor. I wasn't really sure what had happened, just that it was some fucked up shit. The day was mostly normal. I did my job at Taco Bell, went home with a Tostada in my tummy and ready to watch Unbreakable, which I had rented from Blockbuster.

I turned out the lights. I like watching TV without the lights on. It just makes it easier to see. Others seemed to bitch about this kind of thing, but I enjoyed it. I flicked them off and then popped on my TV.

Static for a moment.

When I was a boy, my brother terrified me in my early years with a story of his about a certain kind of man that lived in Japan. The Sharkman. Regular body full of blood vessels and skin like any normal person, however his head was enlarged like a balloon. Instead of a regular mouth, he had row upon row of razor-sharp teeth, a smile stretching from ear to ear. Blood red eyes pulsating at me. I used to hide under my blanket at night, vividly picturing the Sharkman crouching over me with his drooling jaws, ready to bite my fucking head off if I showed it. Sometimes I could even see the red glow of his eyes through the blanket, staring through it into my head. I talk about this because it was the only fear in my life that I could never overcome. The man with eyes like red flashlights and a smile made of scissors permanently etched on his face. Sharkman.

Sharkman was suddenly in my TV, looking at me straight in the eyes. For that one hideous moment, his red eyes widened slightly and his lips pulled back, grinning hideously at me with that razor-sharp smile.

My heart suddenly beat a million times in half a second. Adrenaline, fear, every fucking emotions shot through my veins like a cannon. I had to get away from that thing. I yelped. I admit it. Like a girl, I squalled and dove backwards to my couch. By the time my head hit the cushion, the image had disappeared.

I sat there for at least a minute, breathing the flames out of my lungs. The image was so vivid, so real. My worst fear in the entire world, projected onto that screen. And yet it was gone, as though it had never been there in the first place. I unclenched my hand from the sofa, feeling like I was prying my fingers off a metal can. Sharkman biting my fingers. Fuck. Sharkman invading my thoughts.

I tried to watch the movie, couldn't do it. Every time the camera switched to Bruce Willis or Samuel L Jackson, all I could think about was glowing red eyes and a stretched mouth full of shark-teeth.

I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and hopefully sleep off the feeling. I don't think I'd ever been this scared in the last twenty years, not even the two times I'd had a gun pointed at me. As I looked up into the mirror to spit my toothpaste, what I saw made it dribble from my mouth.

Sharkman.

Looking at me with his shining red eyes. His huge fucking teeth grinding against each other. He blinked once, eyes like a strobe light. Mouth snapped open, jaws ready to tear my fucking face off. Sharkman looking back at me through my fucking mirror, holy fucking fuck.

I turned around and dived. Random direction. Didn't care. Had to get away from that fucking THING. Couldn't let Sharkman catch me. Not with those jaws. But those eyes could search me out. They could see me anywhere.

Tumbling to the ground, I tried to find a way out. Something. Anything to get away from him. Fucking logic and drugs be damned. Had to get away from Sharkman.

I felt a sudden hot breath on the back of my neck. Then the sound of something gnashing together, like two chunks of metal. Or two sets of teeth. A red glow illuminated something behind me. Sharkman standing right fucking behind me about to chomp on my fucking neck. Jesus fucking christ in a fuckbag. Get me out of here. Anywhere.

The window.

That was escape. Escape from Sharkman and his fucking jaws of death and his eyes that could see fucking everything.

I hurled myself at it.

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