At Least They're Committed

I walk from the bus stop five blocks up the hill, pleased as punch each day by my lack of pain. Still I picture falling, twisting just the wrong way and landing in a growing pool of my own blood, the ball and shaft of my new hip protruding from my side like a stick shift. Up ahead I see a severed finger laying on the sidewalk. No, wait. It’s only a twig.

The elevator has double doors; the external, stationary panels close a split second before the internal ones. And as they close I notice the inside of the outside doors have dark streaks streaming ceiling to floor and I think “blood.” I picture someone getting crushed between the portal, their carcass being crunched and mangled as the lift makes its rounds, severed limbs ‘thunking’ onto the carpet as the panels open on random floors. Or maybe it’s grime.

Lunchtime! Walking to the gym, there’s a skinny young woman standing ahead on the sidewalk, her back is to me. She has mid-length, disheveled black hair; her shoulders are slumped forward and she is completely motionless for several seconds. As I pass her, I look back to her face, expecting to see gray, sunken cheeks, lifeless eyes rolled skyward, mouth agape with flies crawling in and out, and rotting bits of tattered flesh falling from her face and limbs. But she was just texting.

On the treadmill facing the window The Wicked End (Avenged Sevenfold) pipes into my brain through cheap headphones. As the bridge erupts, the winds of the Apocalypse sweep down from the heavens. And as I watch the darkness descend I hold my arms to the sky — still walking — my palms reaching to the heavens. “As the prophets shed the light on what’s to come the crowds did gather.” The glass in front of me disintegrates from the force and the black cloud strikes me, ripping my skin from my face and palms, stripping flesh and muscle and then organs away, tearing through my clothes, the threads clinging to my bone. “Your time is precious, they explained, no time to worry, Messiah’s coming.” And still my skeletal remains keep walking . . . until the bridge is over and I put my arms to my side, fully intact.

The workday is winding down. It’s been crazy but good. I look at my cell phone. The time says 4:44 p.m. and I think, “Well, better than 6:66.” Then I think, oh, oh yeah, there are only 60 minutes in an hour so that wouldn’t happen.

Heading home. A young man gets on one bus as I get off another. His clothes are ratty and psychedelic, he’s blonde and dread-locked, he’s pleasantly smiling and carrying a large guitar case. A moment after he boards, I watch, waiting for the bullets to shatter the Plexiglas followed by screams and blood and brains. But it takes off without incident.

Welcome to my world.