Category: fiction

Eyes dart around the room waiting for the show. From my hiding spot on the stage, it looks like a sea of hard boiled eggs, bobbing up and down across black waves.

This is my favourite part. The energy hasn’t yet built to a crescendo. The writhing fans haven’t yet begun to chant out our names. There’s an electricity in the air that I just love. So much anticipation.

As part of our contract the lights are off and the speakers are gently playing Russian classical music. Right now it’s Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2.

Damnit I love that concerto.

The band doesn’t really get it, these little rituals I force them into following.

It took a lot of trial and error to develop the perfect show. If you go on too late, the crowd might turn on itself. All that anxious energy builds and builds and if it isn’t satisfied, the audience implodes.

But, if you go on too early, the show isn’t satisfying. If the energy hasn’t built to the right level, when the lights go up and we hit that first chord, everything just kind of fizzles out. The people cheer, sure, but you can tell it’s not what it could be. And like, it’s not just that they don’t cheer loud enough. That’s only part of it. You can tell.

And that’s before you even start to consider the other details like pyrotechnics, screens, speakers, the setlist, and of course tone.

The other guys don’t get it. They’ve got more of what I’d call a “traditional rockstar mentality” wherein you like, kind of go on whenever you want I guess? They’re always happy to make people wait though.

Anyway, while they hang out in the back, I’m sitting on stage, in the pitch black, watching the sea. This is my favourite part.

It’s where we come from, you know, the sea. I read a book about it.

Okay, I didn’t read a book about it, but it’s true isn’t it? I feel like I learned it back in school. Like, a long long time ago, before there were any people or animals or whatever. Everyone was fish! And one day, some of us fish were like, let’s see what this land is all about! And we did it man. The rest is history.

But I think about that, when I look out at the waves. It feels like home. I think that’s what crowd surfing is. Going home, right?

It’s not an exact science, figuring out how to time a show. That’s why I sit out here. You have to feel the energy, you have to gauge the mood, and you have to keep an eye on the bar and the security. If you have a bunch of goons walking around the venue looking for fights, you don’t have much time if things turn. Same if the drinks are cheap or if you’re in one of those towns where they just tend to go hard.

This is my favourite part.

I love seeing the little puffs of smoke in the crowd. Some places will shut that down, some don’t seem to mind. It used to be cigarettes people would sneak, back in the day, and joints of course. Now it’s mostly vapour. It’s fine. Things change and you’ve got to change with them, I guess.

I think it’s time.

This is my favourite part.

Someone I deeply respected told me it would be good for my career. That’s the only reason I joined in the first place. I can blame her for that.

But I can’t blame her for my stumbling so badly on a last second excuse that I ended up actually agreeing to go to for drinks after the meeting.

It was a nice bar, no matter where you sat it felt private enough to plan a revolution or something. That’s not what we were doing though. They were talking about their kids, or dogs. I was thinking about how cool it was that no matter where you sat, you could hear the murmur of interesting conversations without being able to make out the words. Felt very cozy.

The kind of place where you could probably smoke at your table if you had enough cachet. But I didn’t have enough cachet. And I quit smoking.

Someone tapped on my shoulder.

“I SAID,” she said, enunciating each word as if I wasn’t paying attention, “HOW’S. THE. JOB. HUNT. GOING?”

“Fine,” I said, “I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek and I’m waiting to hear back from Safeway.”

Everyone around the table nodded slowly, you know the way. It’s kind of big eyes, raised eyebrows, and a tight smile. It’s like, “Coooooooool.” Long and drawn out, like this whole evening.

I’d already moved back to the bald man, sitting across the way from us. From my spot in the booth, I only had a direct sight-line to one table. And at that table, I only had eyes on one man. He was bald, the cul-de-sac type of bald, and wore a navy blazer over a white and blue checkered shirt. No tie.

He leaned on the table, elbows on the mahogany, right hand gripping his stemware like it was his oldest child who was graduating high school and getting ready to leave for college. Yeah, just like we were talking about at our table. I wished I was at his table though, because it looked like whatever he was talking about was the most important thing in the world,

I looked down at my tie. It was five dollars at the thrift store down the street. It had little motorcycles on it. I couldn’t ride, but I was “going to learn” one day. Okay. I was better dressed than the man across the restaurant but only if better dressed meant wearing more pieces. We both wore a shirt and coat, but I had a tie. We both had wristwatches, but I was wearing a pair of nifty cufflinks.

But under the tie, the shirt didn’t fit right. It bagged out over the sides and you could clearly see where I frantically stuffed it in the back of my pants. I ironed it every time I wore it but still deep creases cut across the front, the back, the sides and the arms. My chinos sat a few inches too high above the second hand black aldos that covered my twelve ninety-nine for a half dozen dress socks that were fifty percent off at the suit store in the mall.

I yawned, and stopped even pretending to follow the conversation.

There are different types of unease you can feel in different circumstances, right? Like, one version lives on a rollercoaster, just as you cross over the first hill. Another one you might feel sitting on the bus beside a stranger who really wants to talk to you about conspiracy theories. There’s also that feeling in your gut when you haven’t had anything to eat for a while, which is different, but similar.

It was another sense of unease entirely that I felt that night, as the branches rustled in the wind outside my window. The screen door to the balcony shook against its frame – something I’d been meaning to talk to the building manager about, but never got around to. Big thick dark clouds blanketed the sky, ready to burst like an overfilled salad roll that I put too much vermicelli into. But dark, like it was dipped in soy sauce or something.

We were deep into fall and I was still getting used to the shorter days. It was already dark when I left my office…

You know what? If I can back up just a second, there actually were a few things I’d been meaning to mention to the building manager. The heat was broken, which would have been fine as it was spring and I wouldn’t be needing it for a while, but somehow it had broken in the “on” position, so it was constantly pumping warmth into the apartment. It must’ve been over thirty degrees.

And he promised to replace the kitchen counters when I was moving in as well. That never happened!

Anyway, I couldn’t focus on the New Girl episode I’d put on the tv, so I turned it off and let the light fade out of the room. I turned and lay down on the couch, staring out the window. The wind howled outside. I hadn’t made dinner, wasn’t hungry. Still didn’t feel like anything to eat.

I watched the hanging fern I’d put on the patio that summer, now dry and brown, as it frantically swung back and forth in the wind. It was so lush when I’d bought it. Green and full. I’d overwatered and underwatered it, given it both too much light and not enough.

Maybe it was the warmth of the apartment, radiating through the windows and mixing with the cool air outside, but a steam started to form. It grew and lingered on the patio, thickening like a (vegan) chili.

I drifted off to sleep. It can’t have been for very long, but when I woke up the fog had seeped into the apartment. A blanket, at least a foot and a half thick covered the entire floor. I dipped my arm in it, slowly flicking wisps of fog and watching them dissolve as they rose towards the ceiling.

The dim yellow light from the lampposts outside hit the leaves of the still living houseplants in the apartment, casting grand shadows on the walls.

I’d been staring at the shapes the monstera shadows were making on the wall for ages before I realized that something was weird about the whole situation.

I was also dripping with sweat, so I grabbed my notebook from the coffee table, opened it to a random page, and wrote down

clean apartment and then text David re heat

But realistically, I had to do something about the fog. It was cool, but it wasn’t right. And maybe it was the shadows of the money tree interacting with the shadows of the prayer plant, but I was starting to get a distinct impression that there was something else in the apartment with me.

I closed my eyes for a second, figuring I’d try going back to sleep and waking up in a normal apartment. Or, maybe I was having a weird dream and I’d wake up.

It didn’t work.

And then I heard the balcony door slide open an inch, and then get caught. I listened as the door kept sliding open another inch and then getting caught, slipping, and getting caught again. I was too scared to think that this was yet another thing I needed repaired.

I kept my eyes closed. I figured, if I can’t see it, it can’t hurt me. Makes sense right?

I closed my eyes tighter as all the warmth in the room was sucked out the sliding door. Goosebumps covered my arms.

It’s kind of funny, earlier that same day, as I walked home in the twilight, I was thinking about how boring my life was. I watched too much science fiction, the type where a regular kid (and at almost thirty I still felt like one of those kids) is in the right place at the right time and is thrust into some sort of crazy intrigue and has to step up and save the world. As I walked home, I kept thinking, when will I be tested like that? I’m ready, aren’t I? I can handle anything.

Well, as I was lying there, eyes tightly closed, more goosebumps emerging across my arms like grey whales rising to the surface for air, I guess I found the answer to that question.

With visions of a cloaked murderer with grey skin and black soulless eyes coming into my apartment, I kept whispering it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real over and over again.

Who knows how long that went on, but the room got a little warmer, and then felt a little brighter, and the sliding door had stopped opening, so I slowly opened my eyes.

Outside, the sky was a brilliant pink. The sun was poking out behind the mountains. The fog was gone.

I looked at the balcony. The door was open, all the way. That definitely wasn’t me. A pair of pigeons stood on the railing, bobbing their heads as they walked back and forth.

Heat was once again radiating into the room.

I looked at my phone, it was almost seven am, too late to go to the gym, but I still had time for breakfast before getting ready for work. I wasn’t hungry, but needed the routine.

I stood up and caught something out of the corner of my eye. I swung my head back towards the patio. The pigeons had taken off. That was it.

Only end pieces remained of the loaf of bread I was keeping in the freezer. I put them into the oven and turned it on.

Weird dream, I thought. But if something like that ever happened for real I would definitely be ready. I wouldn’t just lay there with my eyes closed hoping for nothing to happen.

There’s a small building in the desert. It’s two floors with a little rooftop patio. There’s a small convenience store on the ground floor, and a few offices on the second floor.

Outside there’s a small parking lot, but no cars. The parking lot isn’t actually even connected to a road. Surrounding the building, in all directions, are dunes. They’re a short distance away. Walking distance certainly, but no one I know has tested that.

I first arrived as anyone does, walking the aisles of the convenience store, looking for something I couldn’t quite remember. I was shy when the shopkeeper asked me what I was looking for and told them I was just browsing. They smiled and disappeared behind the counter.

I read every box of cereal, investigated the caloric contents of every sleeve of cookies, sniffed the scents of each dish soap, laundry detergent, deodorant and shampoo bottle, and pondered the flavours of all the energy drinks in the fridge. I was trying to remember why I was there, how I had got there, and what I’d been doing before I was wandering those aisles. I couldn’t remember.

I bought a drink and decided to look around. With a little bit of difficulty, I pushed open the front door. It was being held back by a strong breeze. I got outside and a gust of wind blew sand into my eyes. With one hand, I tried to rub the grains out. The sound of a windchime startled me and I dropped my drink.

There was still a little left when I picked up the can, but it didn’t taste very good anymore.

I sat down at a dusty plastic table, on a dusty plastic chair, and tried to remember why I was there. The soft song of the windchime accompanied the wind as it whistled past my face. I watched patterns move in the sand on the pavement. They looked like hieroglyphics telling stories of ancient civilizations.

As I sat there, staring into the distance, two paramedics dragged a man through the doorway and outside. He was shouting, “I know what this place is! I know what this place really is!”

I watched them drag him outside and around the corner, but when I got up to see where they had gone, no one was there. It would’ve been nice to know what he meant. I looked around a bit and then walked back to my table. There was a woman sitting across from where I’d just been sitting all alone. She beckoned me to sit back down.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” she said, “we’ll see him in the store soon enough.”

I nodded, unsure what to say and certain that I shouldn’t say anything.

“You’re new though,” she said after a minute of looking me up and down. “Check out upstairs when you’re tired of being here. There’s a nice little patio up on the roof I think you’ll like.”

I said thank you and asked where the washroom was, then said I’d see her later.

The washroom had one of those old air dryers, no paper towel. The water pressure at the sink was good, but the soap smelled like a cologne a teenager might wear to a night club.

After that I went up onto the roof. There was a man there sitting at the same type of plastic patio set that was out front of the shop. He was humming to himself as he sliced into a pile of ground meat in front of him. He kept cutting it into strips and then folding it back into itself. I sat across from him and watched.

“It’s my dad,” he said to himself after a while, “he passed away recently and this was his dying wish.”

I shrugged.

“Who am I to say no to my dad’s dying wish?” he said.