Thomas #2

Never mind that Thomas was just a teenager, there was no excuse for his brusque behavior. He only used the word ‘please’ to satisfy his carnal desires and never used it in the general context of proper manners. Thomas would fabricate a hideous canard anytime of the day, placing people in indecent positions and postures for his benefit.
From a distance he was being watched quietly by the man in the checkered shirt.

The man in the checkered shirt would watch Thomas from the back of a bus in the busy morning, through the bodies of sweaty students in a bustling canteen in the sweltering afternoon, in the malls as Thomas got his hair cut, atop a dusty construction site girder in the moonlight, at late night establishments till the vacant dawn, and not once did Thomas ever see the man in the checkered shirt.
In the early morning of the hundred and fourteenth day after beginning his survey report on the morality of Thomas, the man in the checkered shirt decided to make his move in the womb of the azure sky lining Tanah Merah. Producing what looked like an ivory amphora, reduced to the size and stretch of a toothpick, the man wiped it against his checkered shirt delicately. The anonymous object began glowing in the same tone of azure that the sky was, the glow at first being almost unnoticeable, until it got so bright it was hard to look at for extended periods. The man in the checkered shirt sat in a sturdy branch on the tree outside Thomas’ house as insignificant as a leaf.
When he saw Thomas leaving the house, as calm as any pedestrian with a destination, the man in the checkered shirt approached Thomas from his blind spot, pausing 2 steps before Thomas. He then raised the glowing object high in the air with his right hand, took a large stride, and with all his strength tore the object into Thomas’ neck right under his ear. Thomas collapsed in a heap, and the man in the checkered shirt left for a better place.

Thomas got up in precisely seven minutes and twenty seconds, with no idea what happened. He checked his pockets to find everything in its right place. In shock, he walked back home. Examining himself in the mirror, he found that everything seemed to be fine, apart from his skin which was sickly pale, not surprising considering he had been unconscious for seven minutes and twenty seconds.

Thomas then decided to rest, and not long after lying on the sofa, found himself in the abyss of a deep slumber. This deep slumber lasted exactly seven minutes and twenty seconds, after which his eye lids stretched open with no hesitation. Annoyed with his interrupted sleep Thomas poured himself a glass of milk and watched a cartoon on the television. An hour after the pointless broadcast had ended, he lay down again, this time drawing all the curtains and turning off all the lights.

He fell asleep, and once again in exactly seven minutes twenty seconds woke up.

Throughout the night Thomas fell asleep, awoke after 7 minutes and 20 seconds, and fell asleep again. This happened fourteen times. Thomas felt he was going insane.

On the second day he drank a bottle of whiskey, passed out, and awoke again in seven minutes twenty seconds. He vomited so hard there was blood in the vomit.

On the third day, Thomas went to a doctor, who prescribed him the most powerful pharmaceuticals designed to send any normal person into a slumber. Thomas slept for the deepest seven minutes and twenty seconds in his life before waking up again, his body screaming for something to do, any random task to accomplish.

On the fourth day Thomas mixed the Xanax, Prozac and Valium with a brand new bottle of whiskey only to achieve the same results as the second day. The only difference was his vomit was decorated with pills in gay colors, baby blue, lime green and purple.

In the afternoon of the fifth day, under the same azure sky as the day the man in the checkered shirt struck, Thomas wrote a suicide letter addressed to nobody. Getting into the old Honda Civic he knew exactly what to do. Driving at one hundred and seventy five kilometers per hour on the ECP he smashed his car into a road divider, only to find himself with no less than forty five shards of glass embedded his face, blood pouring out freely from his ears and mouth, exactly seven minutes and twenty seconds later.