Now you see me?
Another scene from a movie that only lives in my mind
This snippet continues from A clap that made no sound.
He stood there.
Hand still extended. Still trembling. Still touching nothing.
He looked left. He looked right.
The street was empty.
Of course it was.
He went home.
Lost in thought, lost in confusion.
He didn’t know when sleep took over.
The next morning, he woke up convinced.
Convinced it was the adrenaline. The near-miss. The brain doing what brains do when they’re terrified… filling in gaps, rewriting endings, inventing miracles.
“It didn’t happen.”
He didn’t feel like going to the office.
He told himself it was fatigue, even though his body had never felt more awake.
He got lost in work and he briefly felt normalcy coming back.
He ordered a burger for lunch.
He ate in silence. His mind was quiet now, the kind of quiet that stays alert but that keeps one eye open. He took a bite into the burger and started putting his arm back to rest. Then he stopped.
On his right hand — middle finger — there was a ring.
Pitch black. Faintly glossy. Light running along it in thin parallel lines, like a halo that had collapsed inward.
He blinked.
It was gone.
The burger was also gone too.
It had turned into fine dark mist and disappeared into his hand before he could even register the weight leaving his palm.
The burger box sat on the table.
The receipt. The extra napkins. The little ketchup packet he hadn’t opened.
That was all the proof that the burger he just held had ever existed.
He set his hand down very slowly.
Oh.
His thoughts didn’t arrive one at a time.
They arrived all at once, like a crowd that had been waiting outside a door that just gave way.
“Am I doing it?"
"Is the ring doing it?"
"Is something else doing it through me?”
The truck. The burger.
What connects them?
What if he can’t stop it?
He pressed both hands to the sides of his head under the pressure of his thoughts.
Then he stopped breathing.
He pulled his hands away from his skull like he’d placed them on a hot stove.
He stared at his palms.
He didn’t move.
“What if my hands disappear me as well?!”
… to be continued