Tom Lichtenberg - Freak City.pdf - Tom Lichtenberg - widez2

Freak City

by Tom Lichtenberg

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold

or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person,

please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading

this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you

should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for

respecting the hard work of this author.

One

It's hard to control your destiny while you're waiting for the bus. It's especially hard when it's a Monday

and it's way too early in the morning and it's cold and gray and windy out there on the commuter-ridden

sidewalks.

Twenty two year old Argus Kirkham was lining up to get on board along with all the rest of them. He

was trying his best to notice nothing and no one. Who were all those people anyway? A lot of them

wearing suits or nice enough clothes, likely taking their professions all seriously with their cell phones at

the ready, their critical path decisions to make, their lofty goals to set and achieve. Chances were those

people weren't working at some Pay'n'Pay like Argus was. Crappy job. Crappy life.

Waiting for the bus. Thoughts were swirling around in his head like the cold fog out there on the

avenues. At least the pack of passengers crowding together now the bus was visible down the street

was providing some kind of warmth or at least the illusion. Feet were shuffling, papers folding up as they

all congealed into a heap of anticipation.

The bus came rumbling up the road, it's wheezing and lurching and grinding making pretty much the

only kind of noise out in the world at that time of the morning. Argus found himself in the middle of the

pack, right behind a clutch of overly perfumed ladies and right in front of a recent smoker; the

combination of odious odors might have been enough to sedate a wild cat.

As the bus reached the gaggle the jostling began, although everyone knew there was plenty of room and

really no hurry at all. The bus wasn't going to rush off without everyone there getting on it first. Argus

felt himself tilted from the left to the right, from the back to the front, and then suddenly elbowed in

the side by a stubbly old man in a pea green overcoat who pushed his face right into Argus' neck and

muttered something that sounded like 'Sorry, Charlie'.

The old man pushed something into Argus' hands and then he was gone and the procession continued

and Argus was two steps up and reaching for his bus pass when he realized he was holding a small

cardboard box. He tried to look over his shoulder to see if he could spot the old man but there was only

the smoker behind him, and a couple of large guys behind that one, and no sign of anyone outside on

the sidewalk who wasn't in the boarding pack.

Argus shrugged, shifted the package to one hand and fumbled around finding his pass and flashing it at

the driver, a scowling young woman who was paying no attention at all. He stuffed the bus pass back in

his pocket along with the other junk he carried around in there; a few forgotten keys, an old silver ring, a

tiny compass and a black plastic toy ninja for luck. He followed the seatmongers towards the rear,

figuring he would probably have to be standing all the way downtown. He made it to the back door

where all at once a little old lady who'd been sitting there calmly jumped up and pushed her way down

the steps and outside. Argus took her seat before anyone else even noticed. The window seat was

occupied by a snoring office worker, a young fellow in his early twenties also, dressed up nice in suit

and tie but had forgot to comb his hair and was drooling down his chin in his sleep while his head

bounced off the glass at every stop and start. The bus driver seemed to be in training. Passengers were

holding on tight and Argus had to keep pushing the drooler off his shoulder as they slowly crawled down

the road. In between pushes he examined the little box.

It was maybe six inches by nine and a couple inches thick, not much bigger than a paperback book. The

box showed the residue of multiple usages, bits of packing tape and labels and addresses heavily

blacked out with thick marker, but nothing legible remained written on any surface. The box was barely

sealed with tape on either end. "It isn't mine", he thought. "I shouldn't open it", but naturally he was

curious. He held it up to his ear and shook it a little just to make sure that nothing was ticking inside. He

heard some tiny rattling noises inside and made some haphazard guesses like a kid on Christmas

morning. Couldn't be money, he thought with a sigh. No one goes around handing out boxes of money.

Or boxes of anything, for that matter.

He tried to remember the man who had shoved it at him but only came up with the pea green of the

coat and the stubble and the age. No other details remained in his mind.

"I might as well open it", Argus decided. It was easy to do. The tape was old and pulled off easily. Inside

were several small objects each wrapped in its own page of aged and weatherbeaten newsprint. As he

carefully unfolded the items, he tried to keep them all straight on his lap, but the heaving of the bus and

the jostling by his neighbor made it bothersome. After revealing a few items he decided to leave the rest

for later, and put them all back together as they had been before.

He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes, shaking his head. The little he'd seen had not given him much

to go on. There was a typical looking brass house key, a couple of little toy men and a couple of old

cereal box tops. The remaining items were probably just as random and as meaningless. It might have

been all that was left in the world that belonged to some sad homeless man. Maybe he was just passing

them on, his own kind of tragic ceremonial event. Lost in the world, Argus thought, and he felt that he

knew what that was like.

Two

"That's just some crazy shit", Mikael commented when he heard the story. "And believe me I know my

crazy"

"I believe you", Argus replied, smiling.

They were taking a break from their shipping and receiving duties in the back room at the Pay'n'Save

convenience store. Surrounded by an endless mountain of incoming and outgoing boxes, the two men

huddled around a snot green card table where Argus had laid out the full contents of the mystery

package. He had only barely saved it from the mischievous hands of the little neighborhood brats Karly

and Kansas, who seemed to think it was their job to greet Argus with some petty thievery and make him

chase them around the building practically every morning. Argus had made it a habit to carry something

he didn't mind losing, some random object off the street for instance, as a decoy to protect anything

else more valuable. It was Kansas who had snatched the box and pulled the usual disappearing act

around the corner.

Argus could never guess where the kids would get to. They seemed to have a new vanishing act every

day. This time it was Karla who reappeared just as Argus was starting to get steamed. The child was

suddenly at his side in the back parking lot, holding out the box with a blank expression in her big brown

eyes. As soon as he touched it, she lifted herself on her toes and dashed away. He'd stashed the package

in his cubby and spent the rest of the morning opening other boxes, counting items, checking off

invoices, typing and filing away records of the items as they arrived: candy bars, Kotex, chips, frozen

burritos, laundry detergent, anything and everything that filled the shelves of the local branch of the

national chain of mom and pop replacement shops.

It was a stupid job. Not the thing he had in mind exactly when he'd ditched his home and family and left

to start a new and different life. It was different all right, sharing a small house with five other people,

none of whom he'd known when he'd moved in, working away for peanuts, coming home dead tired

just to drag his ass to the bus again in the morning. What really got him was the lack of a future. Here he

was only twenty two years old and he couldn't see a day beyond tomorrow.

"I like the little robots", Mikael said, picking up one of the red and black plastic toys and examining it

closely. The robot was all one piece and had a smooth head, a grimace for a mouth, and peculiar round

spectacles for eyes.

"It looks like a bad guy", he declared.

"No way", Argus said, "he's totally harmless"

"Bad guy", Mikael repeated, putting that one down and picking up the other, nearly identical to the first

except for its yellow and blue coloring, and square spectacles instead of round.

"Good guy", Mikael pronounced.

"It's just the colors you like", Argus told him and Mikael beamed.

"Why not? What could be more natural? You see a thing you like you call it good. You see a think you

don't you call it bad. So what? Who cares? You could change your mind tomorrow, call the good thing

bad and the bad thing good. You could like the Lakers all of a sudden."

"I don't know about that", Argus murmured, "really, the Lakers?"

"Anything", Mikael continued. "What is like and not like? It's just made up stuff. You see something, you

decide what you think of it. This is all"

"So what do you think of these?", Argus asked, holding up a couple of Bite Size Shredded Wheat cereal

box box-tops. At that moment, Celestina walked by and practically shouted,

"That is not food!"

"Try it you'll like it", Mikael dared her, turning to yell after her as she brushed past him on her way to the

rest room.

"I like shredded wheat", Argus said.

"So what? Who cares?", replied Mikael. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

"What is all this?", Argus asked himself again.

Each of the items from the box were now before him. Seven old photographs, a handwritten note that

was barely legible and made no sense, two toy robots, the box tops, a house key, and the newspaper

wrappings themselves, which once he looked closely at noticed they were clippings, complete articles

from different newspapers from different cities, different dates.

"It's either garbage or clues", Mikael suggested, picking up the photos and flipping through them briefly

before tossing them back on the table.

"I would say it's most likely garbage"

"What's all this?" somebody said, and Argus and Mikael looked up to see their boss, Ahmed Atta,

towering over them.

"A long story", Argus said.

Tom Lichtenberg - Freak City.pdf

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