Skitter-scatter

 

The skitter-scatter of feet woke him.

It was still dark out, somewhere in that time between midnight and morning, when most everything was at rest. Those few that aren't where the creatures that haunted your dreams, that always lingered at the corner of your eye, and left you unable to settle once you were aware of them.

He tried not to be aware.

There came another skitter-scatter, and he closed his eyes. If he ignored it, it would go away. Such was the way of these things. They only had power if you fed them, and he wasn't the kind to give handouts.

Tomorrow would come soon enough, and he'd be back to work, whiling away the hours until he could clock out and go meet his friend for their trip to the lake that weekend. It would be nice, even though they never seemed to catch anything.

They could skip stones, like when they were kids. When was the last time they'd done that?

He rolled over to find a better position, for his mattress had this one lump that always seemed to find just the wrong spot and keep him awake. The neighbor's light was on, and he could see flickering shadows as multiple figures moved about.

He rolled to his other side and closed his eyes, recalling that his neighbor lived alone. That's why they would split a bulk order between the two of them, because it was more cost effective to buy such common pantry items in bulk and split it than to buy the amount they wanted individually.

Sleep dragged at his eyes, and his last thought was that he'd need to find someone else to split bulk order costs with now.