Quote from Indy on January 16, 2019, 12:54 am

Art

 

 

Quote from Indy on September 14, 2020, 10:31 pm

STORIES

"The One Eyed Man and the Youths of America"

[takes place ~1-2 years from present day]

Sometimes punks just get ideas in their head.

Even with my single eye, I can see him as plainly as daylight.  He’s a young kid, probably no older than 14, but you can tell by the deep set scowl on his brow, his baggy low pants, backwards baseball cap, and slow casual strut that he’s trying to play with the big dogs.  He glances at me, as though observing me like a tree, then continues to walk past me like he has every right to be. And I suppose he does, for now… but in that glance I glance back, and in that moment we both know, there’ll be trouble later.

Guilt has a certain odor.  I can’t describe it. It starts in the look in their eyes and then it pervades right down to the strut and not-smile in their lips.  Even if you aren’t what I am, any good security guard can sense it. And that kid reeks of it as plain as garbage. He turns his back to me, sidling back past the door with a crowd of people and he thinks he’s lost me.  I dare a small pointed smile, the kind where if the boy had looked just behind him, he’d have known to put that idea right back where he found it. He was a puppy trying to play with a wolf.

But he didn’t look back.  And that’s a shame, because that’s when I start following him a few paces behind without bothering to drop my coffee.  Procedure calls for me to yank the radio on my waist and report suspicious activity to my supervisor. But I suppose reeking of guilt isn’t definitive evidence to call in, nothing I’d care to explain anyways. Besides, I’m curious on what sort of shenanigans a lone 14 year-old kid could get into in a mall. There’s a bit of a uncertainty in the way he looks at every shadow. He’s new to this, doesn’t quite not know what to expect, and it’s just bravado carrying him forward. And it will, to an extent, but that bravado will fall a few yards short of me.

The kid pauses in front of the food court, pondering the free soft pretzel samples in a young woman’s arms as though taking one would somehow reveal his guilt.  He stares at the woman so long from the lip of the food court that she starts to shift uncomfortably, though she doesn’t realize what it is her subconscious is telling her.  The predator shifts, scuffing his shoe into the tile in feigned innocence. My left hand keeps a firm grasp on the coffee but the other one is considering the radio at my waist again. It itches over the transmitter, but I held steady, watching the kid with baited breath. The kid sniffs, sneezes, and moves on.  Good. My hand falls limply away. He’s not yet a committed criminal.

He walks further into the mall. A few times, to his credit, he throws a glance over his shoulder.  He doesn’t see me, but some part of him must be itching to be followed this way. He doesn’t see me hiding in the shadow of the crowd.  But he does change his pace and starts twisting and turning awkwardly. I give him credit. He might not be able to see me, but he can feel me on some level.  He just doesn’t yet have the well honed sense to spot me yet in all the places a human’s eyes knows not to look.

He walks into a women’s department store.  Somewhere he won’t be caught dead in. I can see the way he stiffens the moment he enters, but he pushes himself inward with the grimace of a deadman and a stiff walk reminiscent of a marionette.  Clever, I think, but not clever enough. He wants somewhere more isolated, but not alone. Enough to see me without those hidden corners, somewhere where I’ll stick out like a black mark against white paper.  But I’m not going in there – I don’t need to. I just need to wait. I take a slow sip of my coffee, watching the crowds enter and leave.

He lasts five minutes which is three minutes longer than I was anticipating.  I don’t know if it was the rude, unkind gaze of a worker wondering why he’s been staring at women cut jeans for the last five minutes or simply an out-of-placeness he couldn’t shake.  He tries to duck out like an action hero as a group of people leave. I grimace. Tsk, getting sloppy kid. You were better when you snuck past me. He looks wildly around, missing me sitting casually just a few yards to the left on a bench next to a woman with a shopping bag (looking very much, for a few moments, like her bemused boyfriend). I keep my good eye facing the kid, so I can keep a good eye on him but also to keep those frantic eyes of his away from the eyepatch.  I can blend just fine when I need to, but that’s the only thing I need to be mindful of. People remember eye patches. I blame pirate movies.

The kid sees nothing and continues on his way.  He’s relaxed now and stops weaving so strangely.  He thinks he’s thrown a clever ruse and lost me already.  Which is fine enough for me if he wants to think that. That just encourages sloppiness, which means I can go back to my post all the sooner.  The kid doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s being followed on borrowed (lunch-hour) time. Much longer and I’ll either have to confess his obvious, odorous guilt or let him go.  I don’t like letting a hunt get away from me so easily.

 

The kid finally stops at his prize.  I can’t help but allow myself a sad, wistful sort of smile.  There’s a lot of stores in this mall and many good targets to select depending on skill. If he had any skill and friends, he’d try the jewelry store.  But that’s too high security for the likes of him. At his level, he’d be best off trying to rip off high-end makeup samples and reselling it at his highschool for half the cost. Instead, he’s picked something that is an easy target, which is to say has invested well in the plastic boxes and sensor tags.  He’s stalled in front of the Nintendo store. From the big gaping eyes, I can tell he’s there for personal pleasure rather than personal profit.

He marches into the store without looking behind him.  I follow, a few yards behind. One of the sales associates gives me a double take, but the kids’ eyes are only on the contents of the shelves.  I could have been a marching elephant and he wouldn’t have noticed. He starts at the nearest corner, moving his hand over games I know he’s not interested in and glancing at the price as though he’s not interested. Then he’ll put it down.

This persists for approximately 15 minutes, which I suspect is his overall attention span in most ventures, all the while moving closer and closer to one of the store’s more forgotten corners.  He stops putting things down as much, especially as we move more into Mortal Kombat and other, fun versions of war that have been made into a convenient and easily digestible video-game form.

The sales associate has lost interest in the boy.  Foolish him, but I suppose he’s new enough to think it’s not his job.  Or maybe he’s still of the optimistic flavor to believe in people. Meanwhile, I am beginning to appreciate the secret genius of the boy’s baggy pants. No matter how many boxes he casually slips in the pocket, the apparent sag of the garment will never appear more suspicious than they already were.

The sales associate moves to the back to check the stock.  The kid takes that as invitation to make his move. I glance at my watch. Perfect timing.  As he starts trying to sidle out the door, I come up just in time to cut him off at the exit.

“Drop it,” I growl with such tenacity I commend him for not wetting himself at the spot.

He stares at me with an unyielding glare that does not betray his terror.  He looks me up and down, sizing me up right from my eye-patch to my impressive stature and capable muscles.  For a moment I wonder if he thinks he can somehow slip out by my blindside. I think the look does cross him, as though he’s stuck in some videogame level, but the impulse dies.  Instead he just looks at me with those hard eyes, as though right then and there he’d take me, if only I weren’t making things so inconvenient by being a towering hulk of a man.

“I’ll say it again,” I explain slowly like he’s a toddler, “Drop ‘em and I’ll let you go, no questions asked”

“Yeah?” the boy tries to hide the high crack of his voice, “Yeah? Get off my case, man. If… If… if you were followin me this whole time, then you’d have done somethin by now if you were gonna”.

I grin, “I am doing something. Right now.  So are we going to go the easy way, or the hard way. Your choice, man”.

I glance casually at his spoiled loot, peeking up from the hem of his pants, “Mortal Kombat… I guess that’s what you kids are into.  War don’t look like that, you know. Now, I could tell you a few interesting stories,” I shrug, pointing casually to the very apparent eye patch, “But I wouldn’t want to give you nightmares”.

I think somewhere between the eye patch and the strong implication I killed man with my bare hands was where he lost it.  The fear went straight from his feet, which were kindly rooting him in place, and then jumped the gun from flight to fight.  He flings his fists up, coming at me wildly as though he’s not sure if he wants to grab me by the shirt or punch me in the nose.  I think the thought does cross his mind to tactfully kick me in the groin instead. I merely sigh, sidestep and he goes flying towards the entryway. But rather than allowing him to escape so easily, I grab him by the backside of his shirt, allowing him to spin in an arc until he redirects back to me.  My forearm catches him by the throat and has him pinned against a wall.

“So… how about you leave the videogames, huh?  Try some books for a change, put something useful in that head of yours, and maybe you’ll even be a productive member of society someday”.

He shifts and I hear a handful of somethings clatter to the ground.

“All of them”

A few more clatter to the ground.  He looks at me white-faced, trembling.  I release the pressure a little bit, leaving just enough to remind him it could return at any moment if he tries something fast, “Thank you”.

The boy shudders, “Please… please just don’t tell me my mom.  She’d kill me”

I look at him seriously, “Wouldn’t dream of it”

It is at that most inconvenient moment when I have a minor strapped to the wall with my forearm against his throat, a dozen overpriced Nintendo videogames splayed on the floor, and what I’m told is a very foreboding eye patch that the sales associate decides it is time to come back from the mysterious depths of the backroom.

I’m not sure who’s paler, him or the boy I have strapped to the wall.

“I’m calling security!” the red-haired pimple-faced gentleman shrieks out in abrupt terror.

I point to the radio at my waist to the very official nametag on my uniform with the hand still grasping my cup of coffee, “I am security. You’re welcome, by the way.  That looked like an expensive haul”.

“Then what are you doin?” he cries, surging forward to reclaim the stolen loot.

“Cleaning up the youths of America, largely,” I shrug, releasing the boy who’s too stunned to know if he should run or stay in place. His confusion manifests in staying rooted in place, but with a panicked expression in his eyes and a jitteriness in his limbs. I turn to the side quickly with a stern glare,”If I catch you again, I WILL call your mother”.  There’s hope for him yet, I think.

“And sometimes, I fight vigilante crime by night like a superhero.  It’s an interesting life,” I turn to exit and both the kid and employee stare at me like I’ve grown a second head, “But I’m out of coffee, so until next time”.

*** *** *** *** *** *** ***

"Sunflowers"

[Takes place between the events of 'Knocking on the Door' and 'Turning Leaves']

It started with sunflowers, of all things.  I’m an atrocious romantic. Anytime I see a romantic comedy on TV, I find myself rolling my single eye for all it was worth.  Blame it on my mother.  If you were given the name Valentine, you could only go one of two ways : give in and become the flowery embodiment of love, or grow into the Grinch-like creature that scoffed at Valentine’s day as the tackless corporate money-grab it was.

 

But something about those sunflowers broke an entire lifetime of beliefs about women and flowers. These were appropriately dubbed, the yellow scorching me right down to the retina. They must have been picked just this morning ; they stood high and proud, like soldiers in a line.  And I smiled.  And like that, I wanted Robin to smile too. She’d been working too hard.  I’d seen that hollow look in her eyes from scrubbing one too many dishes and making nice with people that wouldn’t do the same back to her.  She was more like a mom or a roommate, but I think the idea was the same—  Man gets a nice girl flowers to see her smile.

 

But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

 

And somehow this ended with myself, a bouquet of sunflowers, and the flash of police lights behind me.  I chewed back a swear, pulling over to the side of the road.  I ran through my mental checklist, wondering where I’d gone wrong.  Was my registration up to date ?   Was a tail light out ?  When had I last checked my speed?  I glanced to the bouquet, as if in accusation.

 

"It’s your fault," I grumbled.

 

The bouquet didn’t answer.

 

"I’ll take your silence as admission to guilt".

 

In the rear-view, I saw the police officer marching up to me.  It was a young woman, her long, wavy dark hair pulled back into a messy bun.  She looked like she was barely out of academy, even if her serious glare clearly meant business. I wondered if her inexperience would work in my favor or against it.  I suspected against. I usually had a "way" with people.

 

She came up to my window as I was rolling it down.  I saw the serious "police officer face" take a quick bow-out as she caught sight of me.  I tried to keep my face straight, but I couldn’t blame her.  Most people have opinions about a one-eyed pirate driving a car.

 

To her credit, she recovered herself quickly.  She cleared her throat in a very serious way, “Hi there. Do you know why I pulled you over?”

 

“ ‘Fraid not,” I replied evenly, “Anything serious?”

 

She threw a quick motion behind her.  I followed it until I was peering down the length of the cracked asphalt I’d just driven, “A few stops ago, you ran a stop sign”.

 

“Ah,” I replied evenly.

 

“License and registration?” she intoned briskly.  I handed it over to her.  I saw her eyes look skeptically at the driver’s license a few times, and then watched as she strode back to her car.  No doubt to check my driving record.

 

“Well sunflowers, it’s just you and me,” I grumbled to my tight-lipped passenger, “I hope you’re ready to do some hard time”.

 

Predictably, they offered no comforting words. I took them in hand, rolling them around by the stems.  I was trying to remember if there’d been a stop sign, but nothing came to mind.  I suppose if I’d remembered running it, I wouldn’t have run it at all.  Had it been in my (rather generous) blind spot that had done me in?  Or was it simply the exhaustion of not sleeping the last few days? I suppose people weren’t intended to survive off of coffee and willpower.  If only my life could be as simple as the silent, judgmental sunflowers sitting in my palms.

 

She came up to the window again, handing me back my driving license.  I took it wordlessly, not bothering to glance over the mug shot that was my DMV photo.

 

“Everything checks out,” she exhaled, “No points against your license”.

 

“I’d hate to start now,” I added with a whisper of a smile, seeing if she’d take the bait.

 

She offered a quick chuckle, obviously more for politeness than anything else, but I’d take it.  At least I could make one woman smile today.  Too bad it was the one that had pulled me over.

 

“Well… first time for everything. Unfortunately…”

 

“Yeah, I know,” I sighed, wearily and ran my fingers along my temples. Here I’d been concerned about budgeting in 5 bucks for a bouquet of sunflowers.  I didn’t know how I would explain to Robin a few hundred for a ticket.  The police officer must have seen my face, because suddenly her own changed.  She wasn’t wearing the policewoman face, she was wearing whatever face she put back on after her shift was over.  She seemed concerned, too, the way she was looking at me.

 

“Rough time?” she asked.

 

“Yeah,” I replied softly as if I was some hardened criminal confessing to a crime.  But the real thug here was life, “Just trying to make ends meet.  It hasn’t been my year.  I’m holding out for the next".

 

“You work close to here?”

 

“Sometimes,” I confessed, “I do security work for the mall sometimes, or for a few local bars. I don’t really stick to one spot, much”.

 

“Ah, thought so,” she smiled, flashing her teeth, “You seemed like you could be one of two things. Security guard one of them”.

 

That peaked my interest, “And what’s the other?”

 

She laughed, and I realized I liked her true laugh. It was warm and rich, like a cup of hot coffee. It was a lot better than the polite one, anyways, “Well... tell you what.  I won’t give you a ticket if you agree to come down to the station sometime”.

 

That was unusual. I offered her a strange look.  The kind where I was trying to figure out if this was a favor or a disservice.

 

“I’m not going to arrest you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I could do that perfectly fine here,” she chuckled, “Although, I might if you don’t get some sleep.  You look like you’re ready to see ghosts”.

 

“Can’t argue with that,” I shrugged, “Why the station?”

 

“I have a hunch you might like it there,” she smiled ominously, and that smile I didn’t like very much, “Do we have a deal Mister –“

 

“Val, my friends call my Val,” I said quickly, “Or Uno. Or whatever you like,” I stuck out my hand awkwardly, feeling some heat flooding my cheeks, “Just anything not on my driver’s license”

 

She took the hand, shaking it politely.  I could see her trying very hard not to laugh, and I was trying very hard not to turn scarlet, “Well then, Mister Val.  My badge says Officer Torres, but ask for Lyra when you come down to the station, hm?”

 

“Alright,” I smiled.  I shifted my gaze slightly, catching something yellow.

 

Sunflowers.  It was almost criminal how bright they were.  They were the loud, lost children of the flower world that had to wear that insulting color so they wouldn’t be forgotten.  I wouldn’t have minded that much, but this particular bunch had been poor company, hadn’t laughed at a single joke, and continued to look at me as if in superiority.  These flowers were ready for some hard time.

 

“Here,” I stuck out my arm with the bouquet in hand.  Lyra blinked curiously, as if I’d just handed her a flaming meteor rather than a bouquet of flowers.

 

“Oh, I couldn’t—“

 

“Please.  These guys have earned the jail time,” I said quickly, smiling just as fast and just as awkwardly.  After blinking a few times, she took them in hand. Although she still seemed mystified.  I was pleased; the color looked right in her hands.

 

“Thank you, Lyra,” I said, shifting my attention to the road so as to spare us both from the eye contact,“I’ll see you down at the station sometime”.