Chapter 3

  I started running. I ran as fast as my legs would allow me to. I practically dived down the hotel stairs, out the door, and across the street, almost getting hit by a car. I was moving faster than a very fast object, too fast to think of metaphors. Already exhausted, I started briskly jogging to the back of the Walmart, it now being 12:04 PM. I reached the farthermost edge of the eastern wall and peered around the corner, silently panicking over the consequences of being late. It was mostly empty, save for a dumpster and a few cardboard boxes. However, upon positioning my gaze a bit higher, something else was brought to my attention.

  A woman was standing there, her back facing me. She was abnormally tall, at least a foot higher than I was. Her hair was dark brown and quite curly, though it looked slightly unkempt, and she had taupe skin reminiscent of wet sand. She was wearing an off-white sweater paired with fingerless gloves that were almost ripped to shreds and a long denim skirt that had at least a dozen pockets sewn onto it. All of them looked full. Suddenly, I coughed. This made her flinch and quickly turn around, putting up her fists for a moment before settling her eyes on my face and calming down. It was almost like she recognized me. She dropped the lit cigarette from the corner of her mouth and let it fall to the ground, crushing it with her boot.

  “You’re late,” she muttered. Her voice sounded husky, yet delicate at the same time. I felt my knees shake under me.

  “I- sorry, I was just- I was over there doing-”

  “You don’t have to explain it. We have matters to attend to,” she interrupted. She pulled out a small notebook from one of her pockets and flipped to one of the pages. “Your name is Lewis, correct?”

  “Uh, yes,” I muttered. Where did she get that information from? I’m certainly not one for social media. “What have you brought me here for?” I asked her, trying to make eye contact, though her eyes darted away whenever they met my own.

  “Do you happen to know a man named Blank?”

  “Um, yes, I think so. Unfortunately. I think he took something from me. What do you know about him?”

  “It’s a very long story. I do not like what he and his friends have been doing for the past several years. I intend to find him and do… something.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I believed her. Blank was surely a man who got himself into plenty of dubious schemes. I wondered if we would take down Blank as a team, working together to get the ultimate revenge on him. Keeping this in mind, I reached out my hand towards the woman for a handshake. She recoiled almost instantly, taking a few steps back.

  “Hold on, I don’t trust you yet,” she explained in almost a whisper. She retrieved a box cutter from one of her skirt’s back pockets and sheepishly handed it over to me. I noticed the messy, flaking black nail polish that adorned her hands.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked, bewildered and a bit concerned.

  “Cut yourself,” she demanded, “so I know you bleed red.”

  I hesitated. Of course I bled red, I didn’t need to prove that! But she would still be unsure, and how else could I prove that my blood was indeed red without using the box cutter? This was a bit much to be doing for a person I didn’t even know, but to be honest, I could use any kind of help I could get. I looked down at my fingers, quietly apologizing for what I was about to do. I made a small incision on the tip of my index finger, just enough so that a few drops of red blood would seep from the wound.

  “Great!” she exclaimed, with considerably more energy than she had before that moment. She began pacing around and giving an awkward smile that she tried her best to suppress, unsuccessfully. I couldn’t help but smile too, regardless of the pain she had just caused me. She saw this and jumped to give me a hug, catching me by surprise.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve had a real friend,” she said, head over my shoulder. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this way. She would probably say the same. Suddenly, she pulled away, as if she had just realized how spontaneous her actions were.

  “Sorry… it’s just been so long since I’ve-”

  “It’s fine, really, truly, it is fine,” I rebutted. She was looking down at the concrete now. I tried to lighten the mood a bit. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Isobel,” she murmured.

  “What a lovely name. Isobel.” I was telling the truth. If I could name myself, I would choose a name like that. She began to smile again, not trying to hide it this time. Her phone began to ring. She pulled it out of one of her pockets (one I hadn’t even noticed!) and answered it, looking away from me with her phone up to her ear. It was a one-sided discussion with someone whose voice I could not hear, Isobel only jutting in with the occasional “mhm” or “yep.” After about 30 seconds, she hung up the phone.

  “Who was that?” I inquired, trying my best to not seem like I was listening as closely as I could the whole time.

  “That was, uh, an old friend. I’m not sure why he still calls me.”

  “What was he talking about?”

  “I don’t know. He talks too fast for me to listen.”

  “Huh. Well, we should get going.”

  I started walking back the way I came, expecting her to follow me, but instead she grabbed my arm and pulled me over to a structure I hadn’t noticed in the trees behind the Walmart. It looked to be a dilapidated shed from the outside, but as Isobel used a key to open the door, I noticed that the inside had been repurposed to act as a makeshift living space. Directly forward from me was an old computer with a CRT monitor on a small wooden table, with what looked to be a plastic lawn chair sitting in front of it. To my left was a mini fridge next to a microwave, and to my right was a mattress laid directly on the floor, with a blanket and torn-up pillow on top of it. There were some drawers in the corner, which I assumed contained clothes. The floor was littered with plenty of stray objects: papers with scribbled writing on them, a sewing machine, crushed cans, wires with seemingly no purpose. Standing in this room felt like being inside someone’s brain, in a way that made me feel slightly uncomfortable.

  “This is where I’ve been staying for the past couple of months. Sorry if it’s a mess,” Isobel explained. She was wrong. This was a great room, one of the best rooms I had ever seen. I’d love to live in a room like this.

  I sat down on the mattress and took in my surroundings. Isobel pushed the chair to the side and logged onto the computer, apparently not wanting to sit down at that moment. She opened a browser which had an icon I didn’t recognize, and typed a URL into the address bar, referencing a torn-up piece of paper on her desk. She pressed enter, and the page began to load. It felt like hours spent waiting for this page to show itself, but it was probably more like 2 minutes. She gestured for me to come view the screen, so I stood up and approached the CRT’s glow. Looking closer, I realized what the purpose of this venture was. Here was an entire page of information about Blank. His birthday, his phone number, his job, his height, everything.

  “How the hell did you find all this?” I asked. I was never particularly bad at using computers, but this was far beyond my comprehension.

  “You just have to look until you find it,” she responded. This explained nothing, but I was content with this answer.

  “So, how much of this is actually useful?”

  “This is.” Isobel pointed to a section of the screen that read out the model and color of Blank’s car. Apparently, he drove a yellow 2007 Ford Fiesta. I could definitely believe that.

  “I still don’t get it,” I mumbled.

  “If you see a car that looks like this, it’s him. Especially if it’s following us. He likes to watch,” she replied, sounding gravely serious. Blank was truly a mastermind of these tricks. My hatred of him could be put onto a graph and identified as exponential growth. Isobel stood there for a few moments, looking blankly at a random portion of the wall, before turning off the computer and walking out the door. I began to follow behind her, but not before picking up one of the scattered papers off the floor. All that was written on it was, “i am not sure about anything.” I put it back where I found it, assuming it was important for some reason.

  We crossed the road to reach the apartment building’s lot where she had parked her car; apparently, this was where she worked. Now I knew why there was no front desk employee. She unlocked her car and dragged a backpack out from under the passenger seat. When I asked, she refused to tell me what was inside, only speaking cryptically about a “useful device.” She did, however, explain to me something else that we needed to do.

  “There’s a room in that apartment building that someone abandoned in the middle of the night. All of their stuff is still there. Wanna go check it out?”

  Damn right I did. Exploration was a core facet of my personality. If there was an area of which I was unfamiliar, and I was presented with the opportunity to become familiar with such an area, then what else could I do than take this opportunity to familiarize myself? If I didn’t know the world around me, was it even real? Probably not.

  We walked into the apartment building, my psyche once again soothed by its masterfully professional interior. I expected Isobel to go behind the desk to get the key or something like that, but instead, she just pulled it out of yet another pocket. Truly mind-bending. We took the elevator since the room was on the third floor. The walls were full of graffiti, and there were eclectic symbols and text no matter where you looked. I noticed one part in particular that simply read “SPOCK” alongside a crude depiction of an odd-looking planet. I wondered if the people who made this art were still alive today. Did that matter? Their art was still here, so they might as well be living through it.

  The elevator dropped us off and we sauntered over to room 313. Isobel didn’t even have to use the key to open the door, since it was already slightly ajar. As soon as we entered the room, the smell of rotten milk filled the air. I felt a pang of sadness as I imagined what greatness the milk could have been, only for it to be wasted in such a disgusting way. The lights were off, and the window blinds were all closed, so the room was pitch black. I could hear a quiet speaker somewhere in the room playing classical music. Fumbling for the light switch, I touched some sort of wet stain on the wall. I recoiled immediately, almost falling onto Isobel who was disassembling a vent. Noticing this, I looked down and asked her why she was disassembling a vent.

  “There’s definitely something in here. Why wouldn’t there be? Think about movies. People love putting shit in vents!”

  I couldn’t disagree. Of all the movies I had seen involving vents, nine times out of ten there would be something within that vent, usually of much importance to the person who finds it. I waited eagerly to see the contents of the vent.

  “I found something!” Isobel shouted, holding a singular strand of hair between her fingers.

  “Isobel, I think that was there because people just lose hairs sometimes,” I said, somewhat disappointed.

  “No, no, this hair was placed purposefully. Its usage was artful and done with much thought,” Isobel replied, rotating the hair in her fingers. “Though, I agree with you in that I don’t think the hair is the important part. Rather, its existence is what you’re supposed to pay attention to.”

  I had no idea what Isobel was talking about, but I nodded thoughtfully. Afterward, I turned back around to try and find the light switch, disregarding the dubious liquid of which I was now cognizant. I found what I assumed was the light switch, but after flipping it up and down a few times, nothing happened. Due to the lack of power in this room, this switch went from the provider of light to a mere fidget toy. I felt pity for the mechanism. Walking forward with my hands extended, I found another wall. At this point, I realized that I had a phone and that my phone had a flashlight, so I proceeded with this information in mind.

  My sight now illuminated, I noticed writing on the wall in black ink reading, “TO JANITOR I AM SORRY. FORGIVE Me.” There was also a cup of milk on the ground, though it did not look like a liquid. How terrible. However, directly beside the milk was what appeared to be a phone, lying face down on the ground. Picking it up, I expected it to be long dead, but it was somehow still at a 4% charge. Better yet, there was no PIN. Careful not to agitate the wound on my finger with the shattered glass screen, I opened the phone and looked at what it had to offer. Within the photo gallery, there were dozens upon dozens, hundreds even, if not thousands of photos of ducks at a lake. Scattered throughout these photos were ecstatic selfies depicting the man who apparently owned this phone and who most likely lived here. He seemed to be a happy man at some point, but clearly, something unusual had taken place here. I noticed that the last photo of ducks was taken 6 months ago. The only photo in the gallery after that, taken 13 days ago, was of a handful of assorted pills. It all came together in my mind. Here was a perfectly happy, healthy man, somehow driven by life’s strange whims to fall into a terrible habit. I thought of my father. That was what happened to him, I believed. My mother had told me as much. He hadn’t been in my life for as long as I could remember.

  Isobel noticed me begin to freeze up and came over to check on me. She saw one of the selfies the man took and apparently recognized him.

  “Oh, I know this guy. He used to always just walk around in the lobby, looking at random walls. It wasn’t a blank stare, though; I think he saw something. It was kind of scary.”

  That does sound concerning. I decided that I had seen enough here, and Isobel did not object. We headed out of the apartment, leaving the door ajar for any potential adventurers who may have come after us, and exited the building out the front door. I got into my car, Isobel in the passenger seat, having placed her backpack underneath her, and I began to drive.