April 2007 Archives

John Kowalski woke up early on the day he ruined his life, early enough to watch the sun, red and swollen, pull itself over the horizon and transform the idyllic suburbia outside his window into a maze of stark contrasts and long, ominous shadows.

This was a noteworthy occurrence, as he had never been a morning person. He usually saw the alarm clock as a mocking adversary that could never be defeated. Since he would spend the next night and countless more after it sleepless and miserable in an unforgiving prison cell, it was meaningful somehow that on his last morning as a free man, he had experienced something new.

At least, that's what Mr. Kowalski thought later, leaning numbly against a concrete wall, clad in what he had heard a guard call the Anti-Suicide Apparel, an ugly, sleeveless suit made of some kind of unrippable fabric.

It seemed that now he would have nothing but time to think, and think he did. When he grew tired of thinking about all the things he had done and shouldn't have done, he thought about water.

When I first met Melinda and Marcus, the famous sister and brother bounty-hunting duo, I did not want to kill my wife, I was just hungry.

I was standing in line for the chili dog stand two blocks from the office. It was a chokingly humid August afternoon and the line was long, longer than usual. As a lone drop of sweat slowly rolled down the back of my neck, I weighed how much I wanted a chili dog against how much I wanted to be back inside the sharp air-conditioned cool of the cubicle that was my prison forty hours a week. I craned my neck to see up to the front of the line. An overweight Mexican was arguing with the chili dog vendor in broken Inglés. I looked at my watch, which seemed to have melted onto the skin of my wrist. 12:59. Almost, almost 1:00. I'd promised myself that at 1:00 I would finish working on my latest project, an instruction manual for a do-it-yourself swing set. Slide Peg C into Slot B, that kind of thing.

As I was about to turn around and head back, three things happened in very quick succession, one might say, well, simultaneously. First, a thick, angry gray line of storm clouds swallowed up the sun, casting the unsuspecting sidewalk in sudden, ominous darkness. Second, a loud crash of thunder boomed, momentarily shocking and disorienting me. Thirdly, a heavy hand landed on my shoulder.