The Red Convertible

I was flipping through the channels when some news footage from the local traffic helicopter caught my attention. I saw myself, driving down the highway in my white car in the middle of rush hour traffic. The camera panned back to focus on a red convertible sports car that was speeding along, weaving from lane to lane, whipping around all the other cars like they were standing still. The camera tracked this red convertible until it came flying up behind my car, nearly hitting me. The car swooped around me into an opening in the lane to the left of me, and then it shot back into the lane in front of me in the narrowing gap between the front of my car and the rear end of a car in the lane ahead of it. It was only by grace of the fact that I slammed on my brakes that the car was able to get in front of me without taking out a huge chunk of my fender.

The news footage highlighted this encounter. It showed it again in slow motion, this time freezing on the moment that the car slipped in front of me and drawing a big circle on the monitor at the point where our cars nearly collided. A pair of commentators discussed this event as though it were the game winning touchdown. One of them drew an arrow on the monitor pointing to my brake lights, rightly giving me credit for preventing the accident. I remembered this incident. At the time it had just been a passing annoyance, forgotten five minutes after it happened. But now, having seen a broader view of the incident, having seen what a general menace the red convertible had been to everyone on the road, and not just me, and also just feeling generally impressed that the news had considered the incident important enough to commit an entire prime time segment to it, I felt much more righteously outraged about the whole thing.

I felt the need to vent this outrage somehow. Whenever anyone came over, I tried to show them the footage. But they would get fidgety and say that they had to leave. I took the TV with me when I went to visit friends. But as soon as I went to plug it in, they would start making excuses. They had to get up in the morning. They weren't feeling well. Someone had to walk the dog. And so on. No one cared about seeing the footage. They didn't care that this reckless maniac was still out there. They didn't care that I had almost gotten into an accident. They didn't even care that the event had been convered by the news! I was just left holding the plug, watching as a series of increasingly indifferent people left the room.

The frustration of not being able to show anyone this footage started to wear me down. I let myself go. I stopped showering. I stopped trimming my hair and my beard. I lost my job. I got kicked out of my home. I started to spend all my time riding the city bus with the TV in my lap. Whenever someone sat across from me, I would tap on the blank screen of the unplugged TV, grumbling and mumbling, "See there? He didn't even care that he almost hit me! He didn't even slow down." Eventually, the person across from me would nod, look this way and that, and then get up and find another seat. I would just hug the TV close and go on mumbling to it.

One day at dusk, I was down at the dump, picking through the trash heaps there, looking for scraps of food or for something I could sell or salvage. I had my TV with me, tucked under one arm, and I sorted through the garbage with my free hand. I saw some birds circling in the darkening sky a few heaps away. I figured that they must have found something good. I started to make my way over there, climbing to the top of the heap that I had been picking through. I was just about to scramble over the top when the loose cord of the TV caught on a wooden pallet that was lying on the heap. The stuck cord jerked me back and it yanked the TV out from under my arm. I tried to grab it, but it tumbled down the heap and hit the ground with a hard punch, shattering into pieces.

My heart gripped. My mouth and jaw worked without sound for a moment as I looked down at the wreckage. And then a terrible sick moan issued from the pit of my stomach and filled the dumping grounds. I clambered down, scooping up the broken pieces of glass and metal in my gnarled hands. I just kept crying, "No! No!" as I tried to cram the TV back into being by grinding the pieces between my fists. But then I looked up at the birds, still circling. A tear cooled on my cheek. I began to laugh and laugh. It was over! I was free.

Losing Blood

My wife and I were invited to a high society party at a penthouse in the city. The guests were all elegantly dressed and the air was ignited with an evening glow as the setting sun broke between the buildings along the city skyline. The host tapped his glass and got up to make a speech. Everyone turned to listen and I strained on the tips of my toes to look out over everyone's heads so that I could see the man. He wore a tuxedo and his thick, salt and pepper hair was swept back in a wave. He held up a martini glass as he spoke. He had such a free and easy way of speaking, like a musical harmony of words. It was impressive. It sounded like something from a movie. I'd never heard anything so polished in real life. And I thought that this was why the man was rich; this was why he had all this; this was why there were all these people at his party. He had made his fortune on that voice, on his suave and easy demeanor. He could convince anyone of anything.

Later, when all the guests were mingling, we ran into him in the hallway. He was still holding his martini glass. He thanked us for coming, and as I shook his hand, I had a moment where I realized that I had met him before. I had a sudden flash of his face, that same face, in another place and time. He had been sitting in an arm chair beside a window wearing an overcoat. The colors were faded in memory, and his face had looked somehow older in that quieter setting and in the cold light that had shone on him through the window. But it was him. He'd had that same smile. My wife and I had had bags packed, and we were about to go somewhere. We were moving away, starting new lives. I remembered that we had been joking with him about something, and then he had unexpectedly reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a check that he had already made out to us. I remembered that he had insisted that we take it. I remembered his warm smile. I remembered thanking him.

My wife and I were a bit starstruck, impressed that we knew someone so charming and important. We nodded to each other. In what seemed to be one fluid motion with life choreographing itself smoothly under his every move, the man discarded his empty martini glass onto a passing tray and waved for us to follow him with a casual sweep of two ringed fingers. He said that he wanted to show us something. He led us to a room down the hall, where a woman was lying in a hospital bed. The man explained that this was his wife. He told us that she desperately needed a blood transfusion. He didn't ask me outright, but I understood and I nodded. I felt that I owed him something for the money he had given us.

I was taken to an empty room next door. It was like an examination room in a doctor's office. The same equipment and white cabinets and jars of cotton swabs and tongue depressors. I took off my dinner jacket and sat down on a stool and rolled up my sleeve. A doctor came in and everything was set up for the procedure. They found a vein to tap and the blood began to flow out of me. The doctor left the room and left me alone. I had a moment where I thought that this was taking too long, that I was losing too much blood. I thought about calling out, but I couldn't seem to muster up the strength. Everything in the room started to seem like it was very far away. And then all the weight seemed suddenly lifted from my head, and I passed out.

It was cold when I woke up. The needle was still in my arm, but the line was dry. There were papers and scattered refuse on the floor. The light was different. The air felt different. I wondered how long I had been out. I was a little dizzy as I first got up, but my strength came back to me in fits and surges. I went back out to the hallway. There were holes in the ceiling there, and the daylight shone through. There were half-dried puddles on the floor where the rain had come through the holes. I passed down the hall through patches of light and darkness. All the party guests were long gone, and the house looked like it had been deserted for a long time.

I came to a room where a small group of people were fighting over a ripped up couch. They were dirty and wild and clearly just squatting in the penthouse. Two of them, a man and woman, were tugging one of the cushions back and forth between them until it ripped along a seam and the moldy stuffing flew out everywhere. They both tumbled backwards, cursing and laughing. I passed the doorway without entering the room or engaging in their dispute.

The elevator wasn't working, and I had to take the stairs all the way to the ground floor. The rest of the building was quiet and deserted as well, and there were more holes and places where the daylight shone through. There was no traffic out in the streets, and the few cars I saw were broken down on the side of the road, stripped, some with campfires burning in them. I saw people pass by dressed in rags, pushing their belongings in rusty shopping carts. They just glanced glumly at me as they passed and trudged on.

I couldn't understand what had happened. Where had everyone gone? Where was I? I looked up the face of the building to the penthouse far above. The party, the people, they had all faded off like a mist. I looked down at my arm. I could still see the pin prick from the needle. Had they taken that place, that world out of me somehow, extracted it with my blood? I had no idea how to get back. I turned and stared down the street. I passed some people huddled around a garbage can, fighting over some scraps of rotten meat that they had found at the bottom.

Problem Solved

I was told to go see someone who could help me. I followed the address I was given, and it led me to a cottage on a small, narrow side street. There were flowers in flower pots all around the railing of the porch, and just beside the door there were wind chimes that chimed softly as I came up the steps. I knocked at the door and an older woman in a flowery house dress flung the door open and stared up at me inquisitively. She reached up and clutched the door frame with her hand, as though to bar the way, and I saw her long black fingernails digging into the white paint. She made an insistent jerk of her head and shoulders and pressed her face forward, waiting for me to explain myself.

I started to tell her who had sent me and why, but she cut me off saying, "Yes, yes, yes," and she turned back into the house, impatiently waving for me to follow her. She led me into her cluttered living room, where there were a variety of old clocks and framed pictures crammed together on all the walls. She went to get something from the hallway closet, and she came back with a thick bundle of rope. She held the coils of rope draped over her outstretched hand. She held the rope up to me, expecting me to understand the significance of it. "You see? You see?" she said, punctuating each sentence by thrusting the rope towards me. I shook my head.

She sighed with abundant exasperation, waving her free hand about and rolling her eyes at the ceiling as though there were spirits there that could grant her the patience to deal with me. She decided that she would have to demonstrate. She held a finger up to me, and then she began paying out long lengths of the rope which gathered into a loose pile of the floor. She tied one of the ends of the rope into a lasso. She twirled it around like a rodeo performer, and then she tossed it out into the empty space in the middle of the room.

To my amazement, the lasso seemed to catch around something invisible in the empty air. I drew up and leaned forward, blinking my eyes. She gave the rope a slight tug, and I actually saw it begin to tighten on this invisible presence. She nodded at me significantly, knowing that I could see now. And as I looked, I began to see a little round man with a long beard caught in the lasso. It was as if the pantomime of the rope had suggested his presence so convincingly that now I was able to see him there. I held up my finger and came forward, wanting to touch the apparition, but the woman slapped my hand away and pushed me back. Her nostrils flared and she scolded me with a shake of her head.

"This is a problem," she explained, pointing at the round man. He scrunched up his face like a resentful child that has been caught misbehaving. "We all have these problems. Everyone's life, filled with problems." She waved expansively at the air. "You understand?" I nodded. "They are simple enough to deal with. You get the rope around them, as you see, and then you loop the rope around them five times. Five," she repeated, holding her hand up with all five fingers extended, stressing the importance of this specific number. Again, I nodded.

She circled the round man, looping the rope around him five times. On each pass of the rope around his head, the round man watched with interest, but he did nothing to struggle or try to break free. He seemed as curious as I was about what was going to happen next. He even glanced at me once, blinking his eyes. He seemed a little shy and embarrassed by his predicament. The woman just kept slowly working her circles around him, holding the rope up as high as her arm could stretch and coiling it in nice even loops around the man's chest and midsection.

Finally, when she had all five loops laid down, she stepped back from him with a satisfied shrug of her shoulders. She held the end of the rope loose in her hand. "When you put the rope around him five times, exactly five, when you have the rope around the man, you have to give it a quick snap." And before I realized that she was actually going to do it, she gave the rope a nice hard snap, just as she had said. The round man's eyes went wide as the coils squeezed around him. The rope tightened like a fist around the round man's chest, and his head and shoulders swelled up like a balloon. There was a look of fear and distress on his widening face, and then he just burst with a loud pop.

The coils of rope fell to the floor in a heap, and the round man was gone. The woman was shaking slightly as she gathered the rope up off the floor and began to loop it neatly over her hand. I could see that this ordeal drained her more than her casual demeanor would suggest. A few loose strands of her black and gray hair even clung to the sweat on her forehead. Once she had neatly coiled up all the rope, she presented it to me, meaning for me to take it. I thanked her and tucked it under my arm. She tilted her head and gazed up at me with a searching, concerned look. "You see how simple it is," she said.

An Abandoned City

I was leaving the zoo, and I walked out to the parking lot which sat on a high ridge looking out over the city. I could see all the buildings along the horizon, and I noticed that most of them were completely deserted and falling into ruin. There were great cracks along their stone foundations and huge holes torn in the brick where their windows had once been. It was raining, and rank brown water flowed from these holes, sweeping out rust and dirt and debris. Here and there among the ruins, there were a few buildings that were still intact, and I could see the people within in the lit offices in shirts and ties shuffling papers and files, trading them back and forth pointlessly with each other. I wondered why they even bothered. I wondered why they didn't just clear out, so that the city could officially and completely be declared abandoned, so that this wreckage could all be wiped clean and something new erected in it's place. I bowed my head and hustled across the parking lot in the rain towards my car. It was the only one there, parked all the way in the last row.

Masquerade

I found myself in a cramped closet filled with costumes and disguises. It was dark in the closet but there was a small skylight which cast down a narrow ray of sunshine, dimly hinting at the fake mustaches and spectacles on the shelves as well as the epaulets on the coat of a fake uniform hung on the clothes rack beside me. Another man came forward out of the darkness into the ray of sunlight. He was small and extremely frail. He looked as though no amount of food or nourishment could ever provide enough strength for his weak body. The light fell across his brow but left his eyes obscured in the shadows as he spoke. He told me that it was his job to follow people, to collect information about them, and he said that being small and hard to spot gave him an advantage. He pointed at the clothes hanging all around us and explained that he had to wear different disguises from the closet here to do his job.

At that moment, yet another man appeared. This one had a tailor's tape measure and he immediately hoisted the frail man up onto a tall bar stool that he pulled out from the corner of the closet, and he began to take the frail man's measurements, pulling his face into a long, sour expression as he read the tape. It began to feel close and crowded in the small closet, and I pressed back against the hanging coats and shirts to give the new man room to work. The frail man paid no attention to the man taking his measurements. He just went on talking to me and explaining how he needed to dress as a child for his present assignment. The man with the tape measure nodded to confirm this as he held the tape measure along the length of the frail man's thin arm.

We all emerged from the closet once the frail man had been dressed in his disguise. He wore a small blue dress and a blonde wig with pigtails. In the bright hallway outside the closet, I had a better look at the man, and I could see that he was just a little over two feet tall, and I could see now that his right leg was missing from the knee down and that he supported himself on a short black cane with a gold handle. The man with the tape measure hurried over and attached a prosthetic leg to the frail man's knee. It was a perfect match for the other leg, already dressed in the same white socks and patent leather shoes. The frail man hobbled forward a few steps on his new leg and then he handed over his cane to the man with the tape measure. As he started away down the hall, I watched him from behind, and I could tell the man by his walk, like picking someone out of a crowd, their face turned away, their back to you, nothing but their posture to know them by. And I could see it then. It was clearly an adult man with all the struggles and gravity and pain of an adult life. He would never pass for a child.