Michael Seidlinger - The Strangest

They all agree with Rios, and then they turn against him. I type nonsensical words just to type them.

When I try to post them I see that I have no signal.

There’s no signal at Rios’s place.

Maybe I start to doze off, or maybe things progress rapidly; I feel dizzy at first and then a series of actions bring together the difference, subtract what I see and feel versus what I don’t and the difference is quite great.

It’s a number that could fill the food court.

Rios asks me something.

I hear myself saying, “Yes.”

The others mumble and shout profanities.

Rios slaps me on the shoulder.

One of the others punches Rios in the face.

The liquid dripping from his eyebrow aren’t tears. I am the one with tears streaming down my face. I try to stop them by closing my eyes.

I hear myself saying, “I don’t fit in here,” repeatedly.

Rios is shouting.

Open my eyes to see two of them trying to pin down Rios.

Rios looks at me and that’s all it takes. I do what I do because it all seemed to fit into place. It was what was “supposed” to happen next. Like drawing a line, to keep it linear, it must be straight. And the next action was for me to become Zachary the friend.

Rios and I leave the place.

I leave behind what happened.

I keep thinking that I’m blinking too much as Rios pulls the car out of the driveway and speeds down a lightless street.

“Shit man,” I hear him saying.

“What?”

“It wasn’t supposed be this way. Fuck!”

Rios isn’t acting like himself.

Am I acting?

Am I acting … like myself?

I have trouble forming the question and when I reach into my pocket I feel the phone vibrating. Signal is back.

It’s her.

Rios says, “Don’t answer it.”

The blood on his face has dried and it looks fake.

I receive a text from Veronica, “I’m at the door. Let me in. I brought food. Your favorite ”

Rios isn’t driving in the right direction.

Rios asks, “Who is it?”

I tell him.

“Look, we got to get the hell out of here. They’ll be after you as much as they’ll be after me. What you did ain’t gonna be forgotten. They’ll be fresh on our tail.”

To that I say, “Where will we go.” It was supposed to be a question, but it comes off as a statement.

“My sister lives in the middle of nowhere. You’ll like it there. No people for miles.”

I tell him, “Veronica is outside and I need to let her in. She brought me dinner.”

“You’re a strange cat, you know that?”

“Can we let her inside?”

Rios doesn’t say anything.

“She’s at my door.”

Rios turns on some music. He turns it up.

My voice cuts through the music, “Veronica brought me dinner.”

I can hear Rios saying, “Then let her in.”

I look out the passenger side window. I begin to recognize the streets and the stores. When we reach my building, I refuse to leave the car. I text Veronica, telling her to meet us outside.

Somewhere Ben is there and he will wave in the sort of way that isn’t much of a wave but really a way to be suspicious.

I think clearly.

I type—

At the peak of adrenaline I can feel myself falling in line, everything fitting, and I don’t need even a single moment to interpret what each might be.

Veronica walks outside the building. Ben is talking to her.

I slouch in the seat.

Rios says, “He can’t see you.” Taps the glass, “Tinted windows.”

I sit back up. Rios honks the car horn, signaling Veronica to get in.

“Everyone’s got their own demons,” Rios grins.

Genuine and true, he narrows his eyes, “What did you do? A strange cat like you can’t get by without fucking up.”

Before I can respond, Veronica opens the car door.

She looks at me like I’m somebody else.

“It’s the moonlight,” Rios says.

“What … happened?” She sounds concerned.

Rios speaks for me, “Get in, got a long ride. I’ll preach it.”

But he doesn’t. We remain quiet for the entire ride. I ignore the likes and comments on my last post, the beginning of Meurks’s absence.

What did you do?

Rios’s words echo out, having stuck somewhere deep.

It feels wrong — all of it — so I change the nature of the prompt.

What will you do?

And then I am able to set the question aside, unanswered.

The drive seems to last forever.

We get there shortly before dawn. Everything falls into place, like the line continuing its path toward the bullet point at this sentence’s end.

Dawn looked like a dull light shining into my eyes, trying for acceptance. It wanted me to blink but I had already blinked too much. This was a time for not blinking. I sit with legs numb from so much sitting. Veronica is asleep in the backseat, the backseat all hers. Rios doesn’t look any different. Not tired from driving through the night. The road starts to narrow.

It’s almost time for Meurks to start posting.

I want to type.

Then I don’t really understand what that means, but the itch, the thought to do so, to type, runs through me. The phone pocketed is a phone with battery drained. Lost it an hour back. The phone doesn’t last long.

It isn’t new except for once.

Yawn, and I imagine something ahead of us.

It is a house that is more a castle, a castle that is more a house.

Finally I blink, and then we are there.

Rios is the first to speak, much like he was the last to have spoken.

“You’ll dig my sister,” he tells me.

I think of Veronica, who is still asleep in the backseat.

“She’s just your type, bud.”

He catches me looking over my shoulder.

Makes a noise, “You don’t fit in.”

He says it again, “You don’t fit in.”

The second time is louder than the first. Like he really meant it.

I have nowhere to look but down at where the phone should be.

He slaps me on the shoulder, “You don’t fit in, so you have nothing to worry about.”

When that actually makes any sense, Veronica is awake and we are already inside the place, which is Rios’s sister’s, her name, Nikki, and all the details blur to the point where there are only two considerations:

Nikki is different.

And:

What exactly is any different?

Nikki tours us around the place as if we can’t figure it out ourselves. Then I begin to see the differences and it’s greatly the opposite of my apartment. Or any apartment for that matter. Nikki doesn’t leave my side.

She asks me about things.

I tell her what she wants to know.

Whether or not it is true doesn’t seem like a problem until later.

Veronica stays behind with my phone and hers, letting them charge; she needs to catch up too. Meurks is too far behind and this information makes concentrating on aspects of the tour quite difficult.

Nikki’s voice carries, and she spends most of the time explaining the dollar value of each item. She would not make for a good Elite Aesthetics employee.

Rios disappeared when we arrived.

When I attempt to figure out where he went, I come up empty.

I don’t ask Nikki.

I don’t ask Nikki anything.

I only answer her questions.

And then she starts telling me about herself and it sounds like she said this all before, many times.

Says that she likes to enjoy life.

Says that she’s tired of how most people live.

Says that people are too judgmental.