Frightened Boy

Chapter Three - Encounter

3. Encounter

“Lunch, breakfast,” Erika said, pointing at two different brown paper bags from her nesting place on my couch. She groaned as she leaned over, blankets and pillows draped around her, ass exposed, to grab an enormous pitcher of water she constantly sipped from.

“Thanks,” I said.

Inside the breakfast sack were two bags of pretzels and a bag of cookies. Inside the lunch bag I found sour cream chips mixed with one-third jalapeño chips. Erika was a culinary disc-jockey when it came to vending machines, but had never touched a stove in her life.

“What’re you going to do at work today?” she asked.

I sat down next to her. “Sit and watch monitors,” I said, reaching for the remote. “Let me get warmed up.”

She grabbed the device out of my hand. “No news, I told you. We watch cartoons or nothing.”

I wondered how God must have felt when it was just Him and Adam kicking it. How long had it taken before Adam got bored, and how much did that depress the Big Guy?

“Alright… well, I’m gonna be late anyway. You stay out of trouble. Find a job or something.”

“Worshipping you is my job. I told you that already. I tied all of your ties for you. They are hanging on those hooks in your closet door.”

“That’s weird.”

It was weird, but it only scratched the surface. I found little altars, shrines, and prayers scattered about the house, some with scented candles burning alongside them, others with crude drawings of my face. I think she was bored.

As I prepared to leave, the phone rang. Erika dashed from the couch, slid across my tile floor and snatched up the receiver before I could make a step toward it.

“Is that for me?" I called into the kitchen.

“It’s no one. Just go to work,” she commanded.

I waved goodbye to her and stepped out my door to Banlo Bay. There was a choir of birds chirping, a sun shining. It almost felt like I was living sometimes, like I’d put the past behind me and I would really get a chance at a normal life. Never mind that I’d be one of the only ones who would.

A job, a pretty girl living with you… not too bad, considering the world is on the edge of collapse.

It was hot out already, even in the morning. The heat was relentless in Banlo Bay. There was hardly anyone on the bus, and half of those who were had face masks on.

I realized then I must have missed something. I grabbed a newspaper off the seat next to me, and saw a front-page reminder that it was migration season, and we were all supposed to be watching out.

Birds chirping. Shit.

Too many geese had flown through the chemtrails, and the feathers they dropped could make you sick or sterile. I’d forgotten my mask, and half of my coworkers wouldn’t even be coming to work.

Still, no point in going back now. Instead I went on to work, and resolved to fix the television issue with Erika as I sat down at my desk. If I could have watched my news like I usually do, this wouldn’t have happened. She thought it was too negative. Except, now stuck at work with no coworkers and no work to do.

So when three armed figures appeared on the cameras outside of the building, I was alarmed. Two of them were tall, cloaked and with wide-brimmed hats. Strangers. The third was a man who seemed to be leading them, a man who flung open the lobby doors and strode in with purpose.

Normally, the tower would be surrounded with security, but because of the migration threat, the place was barren.

Between his short beard and wide aviator glasses, it was hard to see any face buried behind the accessories of the man who led the Strangers. He may very well have had kind, small eyes or a weak chin, but I couldn’t tell you. His long legs stretched out in front of him like an insect antennae, and he sauntered everywhere he went, never rushing—even with a gun in his hand. At times, the leader seemed to move about the room as though dancing to music only he could hear.

I pressed the alarm that would send the police to the tower. Sweat dripped from my face and onto my keyboard, and my fingers trembled. Years of working here, and never anything like this. Still, I was locked away in the center of the sprawling skyscraper, and surely I was safe. Right?

Right?

I watched their leader leave the two of them in the lobby, travel up the elevator to the eighty-third floor, shoot two men, and use their computers.

Then, with my knot of dread tying itself tighter and tighter, I watched the leader take the stairs, slowly working his way down from my top set of monitors to the very bottom left. And that’s where he stopped.

These were the cameras that watched the floor I was on. He was heading toward me.

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