Home

12.27.2015

He approached the doors from an anchor department store and flung himself at the door. It shuddered against his shoulders but did not budge. He hit it again, but nothing gave. He tried the other door and realized the doors pulled outward to open. He yanked at them, and they swung outward.

The heat from the warmers in the doorway hit his head. Tern stepped over the carpets in the warmed area and pulled at the inner set of doors, to enter into the store. A piano’s notes wafted through the air, and he stood next to both the men’s suits and the women’s sleepware.

He didn’t see anyone as he glanced around, but he had to exaggerate his head’s movements to see past the white bars streaking down his vision.

“Hello?” he shouted into the open area, and he walked further in.

He stood on his toes and looked for anyone at all. He thought he might be able to tell them where he needed to go. No one seemed to be in the store.

“Hello?!” he shouted again.

He heard a sound to his right and caught a glimpse of a door shutting.

“Hey, hey!” he called. He growled when no one answered, and ran toward the door. It was the restroom, and Tern entered the room in search of the person who had just entered. Two urinals and a toilet stood before him. No one at the urinals and he pushed the door in to check the stall. No one there either.

In a rage, Tern whipped around to hit the door he’d come through, but his muddy shoe slipped on the slick, white tile with black grout. Both legs flew out from under him and he landed on his back once again. The impact sent a sharp pain down his back and stung even in his heels.

Tern scrambled to get up with mud spreading out on the ground below him. The tile was slick with mud and water, but he grabbed onto the sink to get his balance and some leverage. As he gained footing, the white scars blended with the bright fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling. The lights scarring his sight wavered and had the slightest touch of transparency.

A spout of static erupted from the stall and ran onto the floor. The door slammed shut again, and Tern pushed it back open. The streaks on his vision solidified again and widened with the pulsing of his heartbeat. The piano still wafted through the air.

He shouted, “Hello?”, once more and stood staring at the stall, which ran black and white with the eruption from the bowl. Nothing again. He picked up the top to the toilet’s bowl and the ceramic was cool on his hand. The static liquid bubbled in the tank.

Tern’s vision was more than two thirds solid white, thanks to the three bands. He swung the tank’s lid against the metal door of the stall and then to the tile side. The metal rang out, bulged, and screeched with stress. The tile splintered and fell to the ground. He pivoted and turned toward the bathroom mirror. Tern raised the lid above his head and threw it at the mirror, shouting, “Hello?!”

The mirror splintered and shards slipped to the tiled floor as Tern’s feet slipped out from him again. The weight he’d transfered to his toes when he threw the lid did not find traction and he pitched headlong toward the mirror. The sink’s solid ceramic trough connected with his skull and Tern slumped to the ground, only to roll over on his back.

The glass crunching under him. The fluorescent bulbs painted the small sliver of reality that had been left a flickering white color, before the black haze encroached from the sides. Contracting on his eyesight and narrowing his field of view.

He felt blood run from his nose and into his mouth where the metal taste was the most prominent sense. Tern’s vision faded, more and more to black, and the taste of blood stayed with him until even that sensation was yanked up the well and Tern toppled over into a cold well of unconsciousness, his body shuddering with each breath as the static and mud mixed on the floor with fragments of glass under him. And the ESL chip completed its most recent unit of work and sent it back to the Smokestack cloud for verification and reward redemption.