Five Minutes Till Midnight

My name is Roland Thompson. I can no longer see and my mouth is dry. [[It is now 5 minutes till midnight.]]

My name is Roland Thompson. It is two weeks until my birthday. My daughter used to tell me that celebrating one's birthday was very special since the day of their birth is remembered only once a year. She would tell me it was something like Christmas, a gathering of people wishing you the best for the next year. My daughter would have been eight this year. [[We share the same birthday.]]

My wife prepared a big cake for her. The frosting tasted like [[strawberry]]. It was never long until our daughter would wake up and rush to find the cake. She expected it every year because we celebrated our birthdays the same each year, except for [[last year]].

My wife grew the strawberries she used in our garden. She used to complain that the ones we bought never tasted juicy enough. I would offer to help her in the garden but she always turned me away. Sometimes with a certain look in her eye, the kind that kept you up at night. My wife never rose her voice at me. That was until I had found a foul smell in our trashbin and questioned her about it. It smelled foul, like [[something had died]].

It was a hard year. I worked at a shoe factory, putting together soles of all kinds using machines that spewed toxic fumes. I always made sure to wear my protective gear. One year production was really slow. Twenty of our best guys were suddenly let go. There was a big meeting a few weeks later and twenty more were fired. The company was going under. The big boss said it was because no one wanted to buy our shoes anymore. I felt it was inevitable that I too would face the same fate. A few days after the big meeting, the big boss suddenly called me in. Told me how good of a job I was doing and asked me about my family. I told him about my wife and daughter and how happy I was to have them. He had a look on his face for a split second, but then smiled and patted me on the back, told me to treasure what I had. I could have imagined it, but he really had a weird look in his eye, [[didn't he]]?

I began to check the trashbins whenever my wife wasn't home. I never found the source of the smell. On days that it rained, the smell would be worse. On clear sunny days, it usually wasn't as bad, but for some reason it never smelled on [[Sundays]].

I would kiss my daughter good night every night until she turned six. It almost felt odd to me that she would never ask why I stopped as if it were natural that she grow out of it. One night she told me she had a nightmare. She dreamed that mommy didn't like daddy anymore and that we would become an unhappy family. The next day she drew a picture of mommy with another man and daddy with a knife. The man was dead and mommy was crying. I thought it was a little odd until I flipped it to the other side. On the other side both she and mommy were dead and daddy was alone. "[[Like you'd always been]]" it said.

The clock struck 11:00 AM. It was the day before I lost my sight. I walked in my wife gathering large black trash bags in both hands. She didn't notice me walk in the room. I followed her out to the back in the garage. She pulled out hoards of dead rats from the bags and dropped them into a steel drum. I didn't even know we had those. I watched her for an hour. When she was finished, she stirred the waste and then scooped the contents into plastic bags, the one's you'd get from the grocery store. She brought them to the garden and mixed the goop inside the compost bin we have for the strawberries. I watched her feed the strawberries what would have been the bodies of the [[dead rats]].

It was Sunday and I got called in to work. The big boss came to me personally to say that I had been let go. I couldn't remember if I showed any emotion on my face, but he grabbed my shoulder and squeezed it, told me he felt sorry for me, felt sorry for my family. He told me he was sad that I wasn't going to have a happy family anymore. I told him that I didn't understand, but he only smiled and said nothing. I went to my locker to grab my things and remembered I had left my boots back inside by the machines. When I went to grab my boots I felt someone push me. I stumbled and grabbed the arm of a machine to hold myself from falling into a saw blade. I spun around to look for the person that pushed me but they were gone. I was on guard. Before I could leave, someone hit me in the back of the head and I blacked out. I became conscious and heard the ambulance outside, but I blacked out again from the intense pain. I awoke in a dark room. [[I could not open my eyes.]]

The clock struck 1:00 PM. My little girl called me into her room to show me a picture. It was mommy holding a dead rat. I asked her how she knew about mommy and the dead rats. She said she always knew. I decided to go for a drive out to the lake to get my thoughts together. So my wife had something to do with the smell. I wasn't sure how to process any of this. I decided to drive back home and confront her. It shouldn't be a big deal. She wasn't hurting anyone, [[was she?]]

The clock struck 3:00 PM. I searched everywhere for my wife and daughter. I called the police. I even went in the garage to take a closer look at the steel drums. Gone. Everything was gone. They were gone. It was as if they had never existed. I became frantic, looked through photo albums, looked in my wallet, looked for reciepts. There was no evidence that I had a wife and daughter. I called my friend Alec, asked him if he remembered coming to our wedding. "What are you talking about? You never got married" he said to me. I hung up and walked around the house. They did not exist. [[I became worried.]]

It was 9:00 PM. My mouth was dry. The water and electricity had been shut off for some reason. I tried calling someone but the landline was dead too. I tried looking around the house for a clue as to what happened, but then I remembered pocketing the drawing my daughter had made. [[I locked myself in the bathroom]] and used the light from under the door to see. I took out the folded paper from my pocket. There was a drawing, but instead of mommy and me there was only a picture of me with blood dripping from where my eyes should have been. On the back was another picture of me smiling. I did not understand. What happened to my wife? Where was [[my child]]?

The doctor said there had been some accident. The big boss explained to him that I had slipped and fallen into one of the machines. The doctor said I could never get my sight back. The big boss said the company would cover it. He squeezed my shoulder and told me it was going to be okay, [[but why did it sound like he was smiling when he said that]]?

The funeral was on a Thursday. It rained that day. She died on our birthday. After the funeral my wife left me for another man, said that maybe his genes wouldn't kill her next child. I was frantic. I became an alchoholic, a complete loser that couldn't take care of himself anymore. I lost my job. A few weeks after losing it, I lost the power and water to the house too. It wasn't our fault that our daughter died. Her heart just stopped beating. A couple of months later I found out that the garage was infested with rats. I didn't know what else to do so I bought rat poison to spread all over the place. When the rats started to die off I found a steel drum hidden at the back of the garage. It was completely empty. I didn't remember getting that steel drum from anywhere. The garden was a mirror of my mental state. There was nothing but overgrown weeds and grass. I didn't even want to think about the strawberries. I recieved a call from my friend Alec. [[I did not pick up.]]

It was 11:00 PM. I heard footsteps in my house. I was pretty sure I locked the front door. Someone was walking around the house. They would walk into each room, wait, and then walk into the next room as if looking for someone. Looking for me. I hoped that they came to rob the place instead. I didn't have very much to begin with. I hoped they would take the stupid steel drum. It was now 11:50 PM. "Roland." The voice would call to me. I would not open the door. Sometimes the voice would sound like my wife. Sometimes it sounded like my daughter. I really wanted to open the door. I almost did a couple of times. I got up to grab something from the cabinet above when suddenly the doorknob rattled. It startled me so much I backed up and tripped into the bathtub. "Roland Thompson. You live alone. You've always lived alone." The voice was tempting. It drove me insane. I needed it to stop talking to me. "Go away!" I fumbled to my feet and searched for a weapon in the cabinet. The door knob rattled again. "Roland." I grabbed a nail file and was ready to yank open the door and stab whoever was behind it. When I threw the door open I jammed the nail file in both of that prick's eyes. I suddenly screamed and staggered backwards. Blood dripped from my eyes and I could not see anymore. My face paled. I was thirsty. My hands were clammy with sweat. "Roland." The voice was in my ear now. "Who are you? What do you want?" I called out desperately. "[[My name is Roland Thompson.]]"

My friend Alec called me to wish me a happy birthday. Had it already been another year? I told him that it was nice to hear from him again. He asked me how I was and I told him that I was still coping with the accident and the death anniversary of my daughter. Alec told me I didn't have a daughter. I told him that he came to my wedding five years ago. He told me he didn't even know if I ever had a girlfriend and I explained how I met my wife. He told me I was losing it because it was the second time I was telling him about my wife. I didn't remember calling him to tell him about my wife any other time. I got mad and told him that maybe he was crazy. I hung up on him. I felt bad for telling him off. [[Maybe I should call him and apologize tomorrow.]]

My wife came to visit me. She told me that she couldn't handle the marriage anymore because our daughter had passed away and now that I was unemployed and had to be taken cared of, it was too much to bear. She said she would pay a really good caregiver to take care of me. I told her to heck with that and that we could make it work. The big boss came in the room and told me that it was going to be okay. He said he was going to take care of my wife and then they both left. I thrashed and yelled after him. I told him to stay away from her, but they were already gone. It was 7:00 PM when I was released from the hospital. A cop dropped me off at home and told me to call if I needed anything. I called them and told them I needed my wife back. They told me not to call anymore. At 8:00 PM the cops showed up and told me they came because of a rat complaint. They said there were rats all over the place. I told them I couldn't see the rats and they told me it wasn't funny. They let themselves in and I couldn't do anything because I was blind. After a few minutes they began to arrest me. I asked them why they were arresting me. They said it was because of the body in the bathroom. I was convicted of killing my wife and daughter. During trial they said that I killed my daughter a year ago on my birthday. They said I killed my wife on the same day a year later. [[I could not stop smiling.]]

It was my birthday today. I celebrated it with a slice of strawberry cake. I bought some flowers and visited the cemetary after I ate the cake. I brought flowers to my daughters grave. I found out that my wife died today. I brought some flowers for her grave too. Before I left the cemetary I saw another man approach my wife's grave and leave flowers on it. It looked like the big boss I used to work for. I followed him to his car and then followed him home. I waited until it was dark before sneaking to his car and cutting his brakes. The next morning I heard there was an accident on the I-95. At 11:55 PM I recieved a call from an unknown number that went straight to voicemail. I checked my voicemail and listened to the message. "My name is Roland Thompson." "I can no longer see and my mouth is dry. It is now 5 minutes till midnight." I check my watch. 11:55 PM. "If you are hearing this you are about to relive the one worst year of our entire life. You were never married to her. You never had a daughter. You followed them and forced them to live with you so many times you have deluded yourself into thinking you really had the perfect family you had always wanted. The rats were her way of trying to kill you, but you were smarter than her. You never ate the cake. She ended up killing her own daughter with those rats. You weren't sad the first time. You strangled her real bad the first time you caught her trying to kill you. After a couple of runs, you got used to it and now you've succeeded in brainwashing yourself. You never had a job like that to begin with, and Alec was your old cellmate before you busted out of prison again, don't you remember? There never was a wedding to begin with." I check my watch. 11:59 PM. "It's about that time, huh? Now, repeat after me. [[My name is Roland Thompson.]]"

I called Alec while I was in prison. I told him that he was invited to my wedding. He told me not to call anymore. After I was locked up in my cell, my cellmate asked me who I was. I answered him with a big smile on my lips. "[[My name is Roland Thompson.]]"

My daughter had died the day of my accident. My wife said she wasn't breathing. I missed my little girl. I heard the rain pour outside all day today. [[It had been raining then too.]]