Michael Seidlinger - The Strangest

The person looks strange.

But I don’t.

Maybe I just wanted her to be seen. Maybe I just wanted it to be stranger. Maybe I just wanted things to be different.

Rios. Maybe I just wanted him to be pleased.

He looks pleased.

And because he does, I am too.

I feel like I am genuinely pleased.

The body and the gun are just things.

They are all looking at me.

Rios slaps my shoulder.

I hear him say, “Right on, right on.”

And then I hear her voice.

“Great, now you can pay me.”

Nikki. But I don’t look. The whole time my gaze is to the ground. Not hearing the gun, not feeling the recoil.

The line extends, the only thing to be said is what Rios already said:

Right on.

Right on.

But then Rios is paying attention to someone else, and the attention paid to me quickly turns heads toward someone else.

The attention filters back into the house.

Her voice I hear over everyone else. Her. There was only her. Veronica.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!”

It just took that long for it to be heard.

Rios slaps me on the shoulder, “Why the hell did you do that?”

Something is said.

“Shit man …”

And then another voice, muffled.

I look down at the ground.

I grip onto both objects in my hands.

Rios says, “Did you get it?”

Get what?

“Got it all on film.”

Rios sounds pleased, “Right on right on.”

In my left hand I have the phone, in my right hand, I have a gun.

The smell, it smells familiar. It makes me think back to when Rios showed up at my front door. When he first told me about everything.

When he drove me to his place.

When everyone got high. But did I?

The smell takes me back to the bar.

To when he sat down in the same booth.

It takes me back to the shadow cast over me that night, after work, when I couldn’t get myself to leave the break room. Like something in me wanted to stay there, where there would be no need for numbers.

But now, numbers are all I see.

I feel a rush of lucidity, and I count how many people are here.

4. Make that 3.

I see the body. I don’t know what to feel.

I drop my phone. I drop the gun.

There was a noise.

It was the sound of the screen cracking in three places.

There is a part of life that isn’t worth talking about. Not because it isn’t entertaining for others but more so because it isn’t pleasing — more so unsettling — for the person to speak of it. I have a habit that I didn’t have before. It takes time to build a habit but, for me, it didn’t take very long. I press the tips of my fingers into my overgrown fingernails. I dig the nails into my palms. I have done this, and I do this often. I do this for a long time, digging and drawing blood, before I realize it’s because I have nothing to occupy my hands. A lot of waiting happens before they put me in the cell. The handcuffs make a sound that’s a lot like a rusted door when I tug with my wrists. The metal digs in but it doesn’t cut.

There are 8 people in this cell.

They put me in a big cell with others that look a lot like me.

I have only the numbers to document the feeling.

8 becomes 16 becomes 24 becomes 32 becomes a cell too small for too many people. They are bringing in more, always bringing in more.

Nobody talks.

When somebody tries, nobody listens.

People talk only to themselves.

I hold onto my shirt collar.

Press my bloody palms all over my shirt, creating a nondescript pattern of brownish blotches. One light source keeps everyone on the edge of consciousness. I stay at the bars, letting the handcuffs hang against the small sliver of space between two bars.

Occasionally a rustling and others cursing each other and themselves, but that’s just because someone uses the toilet and we all have to hear it.

Those sitting close enough have to smell it.

I am at the bars.

I stay there, watching them lead people to and from places.

Without any way to check the date and time, there is just the waiting and after enough waiting there’s the feeling that this is all it is, all it will be.

Forget that I’m still wearing my clothes, I’m still waiting for them to get to me. They have a need for information; they have something in mind that I’ve done, and it means I’m here instead of at my apartment.

Here standing instead of sitting.

Here. There.

In both places, I would still be waiting.

He isn’t the first to question who I was, and what I had done, but he was the first to ask of more. I tell him what he needs to know but he asks me again, and insists that I think before I speak, form sentences, and make sense of the information I am giving to him.

He asks of my name.

“Zachary Weinham.”

He asks of my age.

I think about this. I have to count back. And then when I can’t figure out the number, I have to count forward. I settle for something that feels right. I tell him, “Twenty nine.”

He keeps his gaze on his desk, on the document where he writes in these details, the document that will become the only explanation for what I had done.

He asks for my occupation.

“I am an employee for ‘Elite Aesthetics.’”

He doesn’t seem to be familiar with the place. Asks for more information. I tell him it’s a store.

It sells new innovations in technologies.

“So it’s a trinket shop. You worked in a trinket shop.”

I don’t understand.

I explain that I’ve worked there for two years and that many of the products sold became common pieces of technology.

He doesn’t hear me, and finally looks at me.

“Short black hair. Brown eyes.”

Writes and tells me to stand up.

“6’1”, skinny.”

Writes in and when I go to sit down he tells me to remain standing.

He leads me down the hall to another room.

He stops to talk to one of the officers.

“You still owe me,” he grins.

The other officer rolls his eyes, “Shit — they were a surefire win. You know that.”

“What I do know is that we have unfinished business. You going to parlay the loss with tonight’s game?”

The officer shakes his head, “They’re nothing without their star quarterback. Fucking injuries the moment I decide to take a bet. I tell you it’s—” and he looks at me. Stops talking, takes a step forward and I feel something hard hit the side of my face. I see dots but I feel no pain.

“Don’t you fucking look at me!”

Then I hear the officer that had written in that document say, “Keep your eyes to the ground like you’re supposed to. Don’t try anything strange!”

First cold, then warm, and then nothing — the strike to the head didn’t seem like anything but an assertion. It asserted the fact that they all saw me and had already formed their first impressions.

I was like the rest in that cell.

Waiting.

Waiting to be told why we were here.

What had we done?

What carried such negative meaning?

What kind of meaning could there be?

Maybes and more maybes.

I just want to catch up.

There are already too many questions.

I cannot see why I should be having any of my own.