Close Encounters
Page 15
He looked at his pinky finger, resting on the edge of the mouse. It didn’t feel any different. Maybe it wasn’t faded. Maybe he didn’t know what he saw anymore. Whatever he saw, it was consuming him. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. He barely left the house, except for rare occasions like tonight, when Sara forced him. He typed the word disappear into his search engine and hit enter. Dead Sea to disappear by 2050…How to Disappear in Six Easy Lessons…Learn How to Disappear Completely Without a Trace. He put his laptop aside and reclined on the bed. Sara would be home in a few hours. Time would elapse, slowly, quickly, depending on one’s perspective, and some of his life would elapse also, while he slept, while he did nothing. Sara would come home from her mother’s and try not to be cross at the fact that he was still not ready, but he would throw on some clothes and run a comb through his hair and offer to drive and more of his life would escape with little protest from his mind, his cells.
“Where do you want to eat?” he asked. He watched the road carefully, noticing the flat pebbles that, under their tires, gave them the illusion of solidarity and safety.
“I thought we might try that new place, the Irish pub—what is it called?”
“Hmm…OK.” He knew that the atoms inside the asphalt, the car, their bodies, were mostly empty space, and if they slowed their progress enough, perhaps the organism would cease to exist. It would be absorbed into the environment, into other configurations of air and gasses and space.
“What? You don’t want to try it?”
“I’m sorry; what place did you want to go?”
“The pub—you know, the new Irish pub.”
“Oh. It’s just…like every other place we go to.” He was slipping away, every second, every minute of this empty time, empty time in transit, transit from one memory to another.
“Well, we won’t know unless we try it, right?”
“Yes, but…I just want to try something completely different. Why don’t we just drive around until we see something?” He felt his finger tingling, but he could not stand to look and see.
“Umm…we can. But I’m kind of hungry now.”
“OK, we can go to the pub.”
“No, no—you’re right. We’ve been stuck in a rut.”
David pointed the car in the direction of the interstate. If he did not have to see his house, his job, this town again, it would be a blessing. He could not discern the reasons why these things were like carcinogens, even if he knew they were. What had started all of this? What would stop it? It would never stop. He would always be dying, quickly or slowly, depending on one’s perspective.
But he had to do something. He could be a better person, surely.
He could eat better, continue to exercise, try a new line of work. Maybe he’d sign up for classes, become an architect. Enough of this business culture. There were so many things he could do while dying.
“David, I think we should separate.” Sara’s voice was far from him, as if it came from the car speaker. He could not believe it had come to this. Could he not see this coming? Did he know Sara, or not? Did he know himself?
He turned to look at her, but she was not there, only a faint outline, and he exhaled quickly. She was not supposed to disappear. He was the one, all these weeks, who had been slowing fading, and she had not. There was no indication, no warning. But now here it was. David did not have a second more to speculate. It was coming to an end, his life unraveling, sooner, sooner than he could ever have expected because now, when he looked down, he was also disappearing sooner rather than later, like water escaping from an overturned glass. The only permanence in their lives was the car around them, which, in David’s confusion, had taken a new course. Gradually, it moved over the centerline of the highway, and a car in the opposite lane was coming toward them, faster and faster and yet in slow motion—a blur, but with a solidity and force, motion, and grace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEN MICHALSKI’S work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hobart Pulp, The Sommerset Review and many others. She lives in Baltimore.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Some of these stories have appeared previously, in Failbetter (“The Movie Version of My Life”), Unlikely Stories 2.0 (“In Fetu”), Swill Magazine (“The Assistant”), The Pedestal Magazine (“Discount”), Thieves Jargon (“Our Place in the World”), Lily (“The Situation”), McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (“Whitney Houston Commencement Speech”), Bending Spoons (“In the Waiting Line”), and Split Shot (“The Disappearers”)
Copyright © 2007 Jen Michalski
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5443-3
A Dzanc Books rEprint Series Selection
Published in 2014 by Dzanc Books
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