Nightly Stroll

 A story based on a random thought.

Nightly Stroll

 

By Nick Pulsipher

 

 

           The streetlight reflected off a tin can lying idle in the road on an otherwise dark and lonely night. Jackson kicked it with the force of a football player trying to score a field goal in a big game. As it bounced off the road it sent a tink, tink, tink, echoing through the air, providing soundtrack to an eerily quiet street. Someone yelled through an open window for him to keep it down. It was the most anyone had said to him in a while.

           He didn’t mind being alone so much. He didn’t do well with people. He figured he was one of those rare people that wasn’t meant to journey through life with other people by his side. Still, he could get lonely without good distraction, so he started playing video games. They didn’t make him feel out of place and most had the single player option he had come to love so much.  He loved the arcade more than anything. He may have to play around people, but they were as stationary as the machines they played on. He could get sucked in a game so well that he would be at peace with himself. He could forget the nonsense of life, and it really was nonsense. He could forget about responsibilities he didn’t want any part of but would eventually have to embrace anyways.

The only problem was if he wanted to hit the arcade, he would need money and that meant working for people, becoming visible and uncomfortable for the invisibility and comfort that he sought. That wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst part was making the money would use up all the time that he needed to enjoy it. It made no sense to him. Rent payers, for example, had to spend all their lives working to afford a place to live but as a result would have to spend more time away from their place to keep it, rather than live in it and enjoy it. Basically, their home was a storage place for all their things during the day, and for their body as it rested to prepare for the next work day.

Weekends off didn’t make up for this sacrifice because in some sick joke the great God in the sky never tired of, the timer of life always moved quicker on those few days of respite. Jackson couldn’t take part in that. The very idea sickened him to his core, but that also meant he would have to find some other way to get the release he so desperately needed.

It wasn’t chance that brought him to lurk on a dark and seemingly vacant street. The wheels of his brain drove him here to perform a different kind of work that would bring him the same reward. A queasiness took residence in his stomach. It was brought by both fear and dread. He knew what he was doing was wrong and yet that also excited him. Once you got past moral guilt, it felt good to be bad. He knew he could get in trouble. He knew he could cause other people discomfort and unpleasantness as well. He also knew that if he played his cards right and all went exactly as planned, he could get exactly what he wanted and truthfully, when he considered if the risk was worth the reward, the answer was always a resounding yes.

As for being morally conscious, he also believed in karmic retribution. He would take his lumps if he got them but if he got away with it, then he knew that they had it coming. In the type of world he lived in, deep down, they always had it coming.

 

Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.

 

           His thoughts were suddenly broken up by a new sound that entered the night. He ducked further into the shadows to focus more and hone in on where it was coming from. Off in the distance, two light blue figures came into view. At first they were this blur but as they got closer, they came into focus.

 

Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.

 

           The all too familiar track suits senior citizens wore as if they were part on an exclusive club of which they were the only members, filled Jackson’s view. They wore saccharine sweet smiles pasted on faces filled with fake teeth and looked far too happy for people who could croak at any second and athletic shoes that looked like they had just been picked off the shelf at the nearest supermarket. Perhaps the most confusing part of the scene was that they were even exercising to begin with. It seemed a pointless thing at this point, trying to stay healthy so close to the end of it all. That should have been the time to splurge, to take part in all the delights they would never get the chance to experience again. All that aside, they dressed clean enough and presented themselves in a healthy manner which to Jackson meant that they had money. Probably shopped at a health food store too and those weren’t cheap. If they were health conscious it said they had a strong desire to live which meant getting the money off them shouldn’t be much of a challenge.

           They moved past him without so much as a glance in his direction. A strong scent of talcum powder was left in their wake. He fought back a building urge to sneeze and followed, moving to the cadence of their track suits.

           As he settled to the rhythm they had set, he felt around in his pocket for that familiar lump of metal, a folding knife he’d had ever since he was a boy, a gift his father had handed him for joining scouts. He knew it was still sharp because he had never used it. He humored his dad by joining the group but never had any intention of attending. There were way too many people and they weren’t a good substitute for the flashing glow of a tv screen displaying animated gore and violence in all its glory, especially the kind he had a hand in creating. Still, he kept the knife because it was a gift and maybe even then a small part of him knew it would someday serve a purpose. The characters he played usually wielded similar things with similar intents. They stored them away until they needed them, just like him.

           In a way, the games groomed him for this, and he was really playing his part in a much larger game. His victims were serving their intended purpose. In the end you couldn’t feel sorry for someone playing out their intended role. Now he realized in crime people were more sensitive when it came to the old. They are the elders, the sacred; age and experience earned them a pass. Jackson didn’t see it that way. To exclude them, to grant them a happy ending, was discriminatory. A lot of these people fought to be equal. The woman in front of him might very well have been a part of the suffragist movement. In a way, excluding them might have been more of an insult than anything. They didn’t deserve a pass. They deserved a little more credit. They deserved to not have their dignity taken away. They deserved to still see the bad because experience would have taught them how to deal with it anyways.

           He started getting closer to where he began to pick up on their words as if tuning into a radio frequency. As he heard them though, they heard him as well. Heads were turned and bodies came to a stop. He came to a halt a little too abruptly. His body nearly catapulted forward. It wasn’t the natural reaction of someone simply out for a nightly stroll and his face must have told them that because theirs immediately filled with looks of alarm. As he fought for words, he scrambled for the thing in his pocket that didn’t need any.

“Can I help you, young fella?” the old man asked, his face not yet filled with fear but more with concern at this point. The lady squeezed the old man’s arm. Hers was the more desired reaction. The knife seemed to go down into the furthest reaches of his pocket. He glanced from the man, to his own pocket, and then back again. This had all been so well rehearsed in his head.

 

“Just hold on,” he said, realizing the absurdity of the words as soon as they left his mouth. It seemed to work though. They stood in wait. Perhaps old age reverts people back to the innocence of childhood, an innocence that makes them believe that the world isn’t a cruel and dark place to live, which explained why they so cheerily walked the streets at night. Finally, he grabbed hold of what he’d sought and pulled it free from his pocket, lifting the veil from their eyes at the same time.

 

“Whoa, you don’t need that,” the old man said, panicked, holding his arms out like human flesh was a suitable defense against razor sharp steep.  “You put it away and I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Money,” Jackson said, at last rediscovering the words from the script he had performed from so many times before. “Give me money and it goes away.”

 

           The old man reached into his pocket and pulled out a billfold, handing it to Jackson in one fluid motion. In his mind he felt the achievement unlock and a Cheshire grin spread on his face, his mind already making a mental list of all the games he was going to play. He could leave and start playing almost immediately and yet as thrilling as that was, and how much he really loved that idea, it all seemed a bit too easy. Greed woke from its slumber and told him there was more and that if he sought after it, he might not have to do this again for a while. He could have his peace and the unpleasantness of life could be placed off into the distance. For a moment he could forget that those things even existed and those were the kind of moments worth going after           .

           An infomercial popped into his head of an emergency belt people wore under their clothes in case of moments like these, a belt that might contain cash or cards, something a couple of old people might invest in to go as hands free as possible on a night of power walking. Jackson imagined a lot of old people keeping those as seen on tv products in business. They thrived on infomercials and game shows. The two went hand in hand because most of the old game show hosts moved on to infomercials before they died.

           The blade shook in Jackson’s hand as he raised it up and pointed it at the old man. Streetlight bounced off its factory polish.

“Unzip your jacket,” Jackson said, spitting out the words along with a mist of saliva that hung between them in the light.

           The old man’s eyes widened. Finally, there was that fear that Jackson had sought. If his eyelids stretched any wider there was the strong likelihood that the two gelatinous orbs would fall from his skull.

“Please,” the man pleaded. “You’ve got my money. Just let us go in peace.” Bingo, Jackson thought. No one would get that panicked unless they were trying to hold onto something of exceeding value.

“George,” the woman whimpered, fully embracing his arm. They were scared little sheep and he was the wolf that had them cornered. The hand holding the knife steadied with laser-like focus.

“Your wife’s scared, George,” Jackson said. “Do what I say and I’ll leave so she doesn’t have to be.”

           The man shook at his words. Even if he wanted to do what Jackson said, he had lost all control of his faculties and wouldn’t have been able to even if he tried. The woman would have been no help either. Beyond her glasses her eyes were drowning in a salty whirlpool of tears. Jackson would have to take the reins and even though it meant touching another person he didn’t seem to mind this time. He had broken them. There really wasn’t much of them left.

           He darted his hand out, grabbing the zipper, and pulled down before he could be met with any resistance. A collective gasp shot out all around as tubes of intestines spilled out of the windbreaker like sausage filling up casing. It fell to the ground with a sickly wet thud and as it continued to fall out, George looked like he was collapsing in on himself. The woman let out a shriek that was barely human but whose meaning could be understood in any language.

           As for Jackson, he didn’t care so much about the money anymore. He didn’t much care about video games either. He had just found the answer to one of the world’s biggest riddles as to why so many old people introduced track suits into their regular wardrobe. They needed something to hold in their internal organs after the skin lost its elasticity and turned into brittle parchment.

           As he turned and ran, he only had one goal in mind, he’d check himself into the nearest hospital and step away from everything. There was only one game he wanted to play now and that was the game of forgetting. The moment the intestines had hit the ground he had lost, and he didn’t have enough tokens to play this one again.

The End.