4/365 - Hell Street

They hired me for my street connections and then put me up in a five star hotel with a two hundred a day per diem. Total idiots. My street cred would be ruined if I even came with walking distance of this palace. Typical mistake made my employers with too much money out to impress the help.

I walked into my room, laughed, walked back out, and went out through the lobby. I had everything I traveled with in my small backpack. I gave most of my per diem to the first homeless person I saw. That took six blocks of walking. My only hope that was that this neighbourhood was so far outside the realm of the people I’d been hired to talk to that I’d never be seen or connected to this place. If I was caught outside the front of the hotel, it would have been over. Maybe I could have faked that I was looking to steal something.

I caught a cab to the warzone.

Hell street. Every city has one. The place where capitalism meets the cold hard truth. You could still buy a working VCR here for two dollars. Bartering was the most common form of payment, haggling was the most common price tag, and services were traded in lieu of assets. No government stamps, no visa trails, and no mercy. A person would never come here without knowing what he or she was doing and if they did, they’d go missing. Their IDs and cards would show up in a collage around crime scenes and fraud cases later.

It was the kind of intersection that would sprout corpses if high-quality drugs came anywhere near it. The doses of the stepped-on garbage that the addicts here were used to had to be huge just to get a semblance of a high. It was a slave market and the best bargains allowed themselves to be humiliated or beaten for spare change. The hookers down here were a combination of Picasso and Pollock from the beatings.

Lost at sea, all of them. Pirates stranded in port. The only true friends I’ve ever had. You knew where you stood with these people. Every single one of them was insane with grief or need and they were all horrible liars. If they said they were going to kill you, an attempt would be made. If they said they’d let you break their arm for five dollars, they’d let you. It was refreshing to be amongst this type of honesty after my meeting in the boardroom that brought me here.

I found a pimp there and gave him the key to my hotel room. His mouth twitched around an archipelago of sores. He could have girls working out of the room all week if he was discreet. Only his best-looking workers. He might have to pull in favours. He could get a thousand dollars a trick in that hotel. Put the word out, place an ad. The angles were there.

He was grateful. I got information. I guess the room was useful after all.

The hunt was on. My employers would have their mark by the end of Wednesday.




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5/365 - Time Machine

God give me patience, she thought, as Peter ran into the living room with what he probably thought was another great invention. Peter was wearing a flanged-open broccoli steamer on his head with a crude system of wires sticking out of it like dead flowers in a vase. He was also wearing what looked like most of the entertainment system strapped in pieces around his left arm and joined together with more wires. The iPhone duct-taped to his right wrist was glowing in a series of rapid colour flashes. A bucket was on one of his feet and it sloshed water on the hardwood.

I’m going to have to call the police again, she thought. He’s going to have to go back to the mental hospital. I barely made it through the last stretch. This was supposed to be Peter’s last chance.

“What is it this time?” she sighed.

“It’s a time machine!” he shouted gleefully. His eyes were wide and it looked like he’d chewed most of his nails down to the bloody edges. His lips were raw. He’d shaved part of his head. “It was the capacitor. If I reverse the polarity on it, this should work. I’ve got a line running up to the satellite dish turning the data into energy. That was the power problem I was talking about, remember?”

“No.” she replied. She was actually a little worried. He might electrocute himself this time.

Peter chuckled at his own brilliance and actually danced a little jig of anticipation, splashing more water around.

“Peter, let’s just calm down a little.” She said, starting to stand up and walk towards him.

“Wait! No. I have the prep field humming. Don’t come any closer. This is going to work! Now, I’ve set the reception point to be right here in the apartment in one minute. It’s going to take a lot of power so be prepared for a blackout. It takes a lot to send but it shouldn’t take any to receive. I’ll be okay on the back end. Oh MAN, this is the GREATEST! Honey, we’ll be so rich!” he shouted.

She looked at him warily, really worried now. More worried than she’d ever been, even more than the time with the knife-juggling.

“I’m going to start a song and hit the button. I’ll disappear and then in one minute, I’ll appear right here. For you, there will be a one-minute pause but for ME, it’ll be as if nothing happened! Are you ready? On the count of three.” He said.

“Peter, I’m not sure-“

“ONE!”

“-this is such a good idea.”

“TWO!”

“let’s talk about this.”

“THREE! JINGLE BELLS! JINGLE BELLS! JINGLE ALL THE-“

And there was pop, a shower or sparks from the light socket in the kitchen, the lights went out, and the bucket that Peter’s foot had been in clattered onto its side. Peter was no longer standing in it.

She stood there with wide eyes staring at the spot where Peter had been. She dropped her coffee.

Thirty seconds passed.

She picked up the phone to call the police and actually forgot what number to call. When she remembered, she stopped after the first number when it occurred to her that she had no idea what to tell the police. She waited.
Twenty more seconds passed.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

One minute. Nothing happened. Two minutes. Nothing happened.

She waited for an hour. She waited for a week.

That was a year ago. He never came back. Christmas is a hard time for her. She pictures him lost in some cosmic time vortex like in a movie single Jingle Bells over and over again. She keeps thinking he’ll pop back into existence with the rest of the carol on his lips. She thought that maybe he set it to a month instead of a minute. When that passed, she thought maybe a year. Now that’s passed, too. Maybe it was a decade.

Maybe it was a century. Maybe he’s off dead in space somewhere, frozen in the act of singing. It was the not knowing that was eating her from the inside.




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