When Randy arrived at George's place, he had been running for two hours, in that rain. Cars rang their horns at him. The rain made his clothes cling to his skin. Wet and miserable, he ran as people yelled at him and children curiously reached out to touch him while their parents looked disapprovingly
At midnight, he reached George's place, old steel beams stuck into the dirt, with a rusty steel plate for a roof.
"Stupid kids", Randy shivered in the frost of the cold.
He heard the shudder of metal, turned around, and laughed at George's pitiful attempt to get himself out of the metal tent.
George walked out to him. Randy stared at his dirty grimy face. Until only sounds of rain dripping against the roof remained…
"They raided every place, every store, every restaurant", George said. His words were slow and calm. "God, they took everything! My bike, my things… God… Oh god…."
George leaned against the wall, staring through Randy. Tired, disheveled, wearing his familiar bandanna, quiet as ever. As he rambled on and on, while Randy heard and listened, his head stirring with anger and madness, he imagined the wreckage of dead police, thousands of tanks burned and destroyed, stupid, dumb, and all dead.
"God, If I could get a knife and kill any one of them. Just any! Any! I would gut them like fresh fish….They're everywhere now. God. I could hear it miles away, that gunsmoke, fading away into the air. Then, they were their, RATATATAa, screaming out some stupid in signum, some motto, some sign, some chant. God! I hid for hours, and hours, inside that hole of warmth, near the dead bakery… Paused to look at those metal bats, those boots… The blood, leaking slowly into the storm drain… Sticking against their uniforms..."
Randy sighed. George paused to drink further from his mug.
"What to do?", Randy sat down. "So many dead."
"All that police, all of them… Just marching like stupid protesters… Like brainless, corporate businessmen… Like some mongrel dog….", Randy shook his head.
George murmured and mumbled unintelligibly, as though uncomfortable with the thought of those words.
"The police again, and idiotic everything! Everyone! Why the hell! Why the hell do I have to worry about the police every day? I can't sleep on a bench without someone looking at me. I can't warm myself near a-. They'll murder me! That's what they'll do. When they come, they take and steal and kill. Horrible murderers..."
"We're safe here.", George nodded, smiling a little, "They'll never come back..."
"Do you like saying that to yourself? As you… walk along with naked in an alleyway, fearing the shots ringing out.....I don't know why you've still survived. You're an idiot..."
George quieted down and shuffled back into his abode. While Randy sat down, looking up into the crescent moon, nearly fully eclipsed...
"Quiet, George", Randy sat against the muddy wall, "I'm thinking..."
"Sorry", George whispered.
"I'm thinking...", He screamed aloud, "Dammit…. I'm tired of your jabbering mouth, your stupid, idiotic smile. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Shut-!"
A great pain filled his mind, like thousands of carved clay spikes stabbing through his skull. His grin turned to agony, pain like a thumping heart, stabbed by the world. His mind rambled… Rambled….
"What?!", George backed away, "Randy? Randy?"
George continued to ramble, on and on, spouting words from all places.
Ignoring this, he saw the world. A true place, where all was writhing, fiery, strange... In his eyes, Randy saw small fires, blazing lively inside everything. When he reached out his hands, he could manipulate each of them. First, he slowly increased the flame of a broken can.
As he continued, he began to see it slowly levitate.
George shook his head as the rusty can split apart.
"I think I've figured it out, George...", Randy jumped up, "I've figured it out!"
Bob wandered underneath the shadowy bridge and waddled forward in the ice of the water. The edge of his pants was wet, thick with ice, blue, as the snow gripped on like hard mud. He held a fork in his hand. A strange three-pronged thing…
Bob had waited an entire night for crime, not sleeping, listening to the empty whine of the radio. The newscasts, the worldwide web, and the soft noises of the city. But, there was only the endless rush of traffic, until he was swept away into a world of silence and nature. He was gone… Into himself, wrapped and shrouded, kneaded by a fist of warmth, as the tattered coat covered his face, his hands, his whole self… Where all was dark and black, warm like a beating heart, as he breathed on his hands, rubbed the numb things, while he shivered and cupped those hands around his ears, underneath the lonely place underneath the bridge, watching his city...
God, he remembered when he was a boy. When the Strontium Process was newly discovered, when the world was whimsical and new. There were parades, it was fun, and there was no need to worry about college. No need to worry about jobs. No need to worry about time. No need to worry about the world, the place, or about all things, where he could sit silently by himself, thinking, sleeping, away, away, away…. Asleep… Asleep… Asleep...
The stream trickled into a quiet pond. The ducks bobbed silently in the gray waters. Mud bubbled and squelched. The moon's reflection warped in the water. As the wind blew forth from the bottom of the hills and twisted away and around the bridge, as Bob shivered, he thought and thought. Holding that cold, dumb fork… By himself… All alone...
Bob skipped pebbles across the water. They bounced only thrice, before hitting a rock and flying into the air.
He wondered about nothing, thought nothing. His forehead dripped with sweat. He tried very hard to keep himself awake. In the silence, there was chaos, strange music writhing in the air.
As the blue sun came up, he slept.
"Are you sure?" George asked Randy.
"We're going! 'Don't try this, don't try this, George'. Jabbering about stupid stuff... Stop it! Go away..."
George stared helplessly as Randy muttered to himself in isolation. His hands twitched nervously, calloused and burnt with years of climbing and traveling.
"Randy? Randy!"
But Randy ignored him, concentrated upon that space in his mind, muttering "I'm thinking… I'm thinking… I'm thinking..."
"Quickly… Let's go", Randy muttered, and he slinked near the door and went in. But George sat by himself on a bench and watched Randy. The light of the gas station flickered as dead moths rustled from the deep crevasses and Randy appeared from a cloud of cigarette smoke to a quiet man, smiling happily, muttering to himself.
There were deep mumbles, mutterings, then one scream, the shot of glass against the pavement. There was something in the air, not the sprinkle of blood, nor the quiet shout of dogs in the back, or the strange gunshots that made George scream slightly. It was the great smell of money, the rich depth, the great ink that splashed forth from green banks…
George got off the bench, stepped back, into the darkness, where he watched and watched, waiting for the familiar ring of the alarm, waited for the thousands of policemen to come out with sirens, and the large rumbling of guns against the concrete, as shells bounced, ringing and ringing until blood seeped from thousands of riddled holes. Until they were all dead until he could see the world in fire… In horrible darkness…
But, there was a deep silence, quietly moving across his ears.
The door rang open softly… The quiet man was gone, and had disappeared… There was no blood, no stains, no broken glass… Only an empty store, dark, with all the lights off, closed… The store had been closed…
Randy walked toward George and unfolded money from his pockets.
The radio near him buzzed and whispered, rasping about something. He rose and awoke, groggily, he wondered where he was, and then saw the wetness of the river and the deep dirt in the cracks of the bridge. He lay against the stone, heard the splash and the receding of the waters, as the waves hopped up and down, twisting around the rivers. He listened to the radio, and then heard….
"Please contact our local police department for the whereabouts of a robber. Where thousands of dollars were stolen from a local ATM. Look out for a man with brown hair, over 5 feet, about nearly fifty years old, and wearing glasses… "
He grabbed the radio closer to his ear.
"He was last reported near Obrik's Lane. Eyewitnesses call him a polite, but extremely dangerous person. Violent, psychotic, and desperate, please report him to the relevant and proper authorities."
Bob held the radio in one hand, and a fork in the other. Running around the marshes and the mud, and to the trail again. Up the rocky hill, and then running on a bridge over the highway. Underneath him, cars sped past in random blurs. Trucks rumbled and spewed hot steam into the air. An advertisement from Treeflower(C) inc hovered over them all.
When he finally stopped, he had arrived at Obrik's Lane, a suburban place full of the middle-class, and foreign liquor stores. People biked, jogged around, and a police cruiser was neatly parked on the side of the road.
The stained concrete walls and tinted glass windows built up the silent neighborhood. A vendor selling hot dogs called out to him. He ignored it and walked around the nearly empty place. He saw the familiar faces of the working, a white-haired janitor, a woman vacuuming the carpets, a faded, brown clothesline blowing with the wind, and the neon signs of ENTER and OPEN. ATMs dripped rust onto the ground. Scratched pennies dropped from the rough road. Leaves stirred up an earthen, musky scent.
He looked around, envisioned the rusty and poor-looking man. He saw the large hands that snatched the money out of calloused hands. Saw the strange broken eyes, emotionless, gone from the world… But there were only people, the normalness of the world, with children, fathers, mothers, suspicious old men, men in suits, and a few more policemen who stared at him for a while out of their cruisers, before driving off.
"Get your Hot Dogs! Wrapped in Treeflower(C) inc Napkin Paper! Fresh, fresh! Every time you buy a hot dog, you might receive a ticket to that special, special football game sponsored by Treeflower(C) inc. Get it now! Get it now! Every time you buy, I earn money, and you earn money! It's a free deal, so get a hot dog now!"
The vendor stared specifically at him and approached him as he was walking around the block again.
"Hey!", waving, then smiling, "Would you like a hot dog? You could get a ticket from Treeflower(C)! Or maybe two hotdogs! Perhaps, a second hotdog to go down nicely with the second one! Why don't you buy a hotdog now? Covered in onions, mustard, and ketchup. Goes down nicely with a nice coke and sprite! Or maybe-"
"No thanks", Bob waved his hand and continued onward. But the vendor stopped him again.
The man rolled his cart toward him, huffing and puffing, wheezing as he did.
"I've noticed that you walk around the block a lot. You must be interested in my hot dogs! Why don't you try some?" The man just kept smiling as he talked.
"I'm sorry, but I don't have time. I'm busy right now. "
"It won't take much time then to buy a hot dog.", the man nodded, and his curious expression faded, replaced with a morbid fascination… Trudging silently behind him, while he continued to try and wander his thoughts elsewhere… But there was no place…
"Why not try one?"
"But- I…", Bob sighed, "Fine, I'll have one. But only one…"
He pulled out his wallet and saw that it was nearly empty. Filled with nothingness, but only four flat bills that lay ruffled…
But, he would figure it out. Perhaps, maybe. After he found that robber, after that, then there was a chance. Then he could go to his wooden home, shivering in the cold… Poor but comforted… Happy with himself and the world…
"Here you go…", he put his hands in his pockets, and shivered in the wind, as the vendor made the hot dog.
He ate with little relish, although he'd been starving for hours.