[MS] Drawn
Why did his mind always tell him he’d forgotten something but never what he forgot? It was like a nudge from another dimension, a fuzzy signal scrambling the message through. He could have sworn it was in his pocket. It was always on him. He was addicted to his phone. How hadn’t he noticed it until now?
By this time, the panic had started, and he could feel his face heating up while his heart began to sink. The plastic yellow grocery bags sat on the floor of the apartment, still full and ignored, as Billy headed straight for the laptop sitting on his desk. The tracking app. He was hoping it would show him where he left his phone before someone else picked it up or whoever stole it got the chance to shut it off.
Billy logged on and instantly felt a bit of relief. The tracking app showed that his phone was still at the grocery store. It must have fallen out of his pocket sometime when he was leaving, because if it had been stolen, it would have been long gone by now. Billy was just out the door when he realized he didn’t have a way to keep an eye on the tracker. Without a phone, and his laptop useless without Wi-Fi, he hoped his neighbour Kristin was home. She would probably let him use her phone for this emergency, since they were close enough and helped each other out on a few occasions.
Billy ran over to the next house, where Kristin lived and immediately began rapping on the front door, hoping for an answer. It was a cool Sunday afternoon, and the sun was beginning to set early, casting an orange hue over the neighbourhood’s grand old trees and brick houses.
The grocery store would be closing soon, and he needed Kristin to answer her door ASAP. Peering into the small windows of her front door, Billy scanned inside the house for any sort of movement. He surely looked like a creeper or burglar to anyone watching, but at this moment he did not care. Finally, he saw Kristin trudging towards him, dragging her feet while rubbing her eyes. She unlocked the door, opened it, then turned and motioned for Billy to come inside. He stepped in and was greeted by the smell of yesterday’s cooking and stale cigarettes.
“Hey, Bill. I was napping, dreaming too, you know. I could fly just by jumping.”
“Hey, Kristin. Sorry for yanking you out of dreamland, but I kind of need your help badly. Can I borrow your phone?”
“Sure. Let me just get it from my room. Who do you need to call?” Kristin asked groggily. “What about that comet last night, eh? Woke me right out my sleep.”
Typical Kristin. She was always sleeping and dreaming. He had seen the comet last night. Well, he’d seen a green flash light up his room for a second, but when he looked out the window, the sky seemed normal. What if everyone had only dreamt that? Billy thought that was pretty beautiful because it meant everyone in the world was having the same dream.
Maybe he did sleep just as much as Kristin.
“I don't have to call anyone. I was actually hoping you’d let me take it for a bit.. I lost my phone at the grocery store and need to track it on that app,” Billy admitted, embarrassed.
“Ugh, Bill. I need my phone on me. My ex is supposed to drop the kids off tonight, and there’s always something with that asshole. God forbid I’m not in touch. But okay, I’ll let you take it for an hour. You’re gonna need to figure your shit out quickly.”
“You got it. Thank you so much, Kristin.” Billy said gratefully as she handed over her phone.
“No problem, Bill, but can you grab me some garlic from the store while you’re there? Please.”
“Ya. Ya. Of course, no problem, Kristin.” Billy mumbled distractedly as he was already logging into the app on Kristin’s phone.
The grocery store was ten minutes away if he ran fast enough. The evening sky continued to change colours as the sun set, and Billy used it like an hourglass. He watched the earlier orange-stained sky fade to red, then purple. Once it was dark outside, the store would be closed. If only it were summer, because in the summer the Southern Ontario sun doesn’t set until nine p.m.
There was an almost sick feeling in his stomach from the anxiety as he ran down the street and past the different storefronts. Billy had just bought the phone and would be paying it off as part of his billing plan for the next few years. It was almost a thousand dollars, and he told himself this would be the last phone he ever bought. That was the practical reason, but deep down, Billy felt naked without his phone. It meant no access to the internet, limitless information, endless distraction, or the ability to talk to anyone at any time. He was feeling the full weight of the world.
The young fall wind was refreshing and seemed to cool the internal flame generated by Billy’s panic. He was almost at the store, only two minutes away, when he noticed on the tracking app that his lost phone was moving up the street.
Someone had picked it up.
Billy fought off the self-pity as he imagined who could have picked up his phone. Out of all the souls out there, all the violet and amber glows, it was probably a dull one. A soul with a dying mustard-yellow light, a foul stench, and an insatiable appetite that would keep asking for more just to see how much it could get. Then he thought about the cost of living. Maybe he couldn’t blame them for selling his phone to eat or pay the bills. Everyone needed to eat in the west end of the city, and he had scanned meat as bananas at the self-checkout plenty of times. Enough times that he’d probably be considered a thief too. He often felt on edge walking into a grocery store, thinking the cameras had finally compiled enough video evidence to give him a criminal record.
He pressed on, eyeing each person he passed for signs of suspicion or a phone in their hands that looked like his. The problem was that everyone looked malevolent and suspicious to Billy’s hunting eyes. The old couple waiting for the bus laughed, and he couldn’t help but see their mouths warp into ghoulish caves jesting at his expense. He looked left. A group of teen boys ran past, and he thought they must be about to sell his phone for some weed or booze.
The sun had now set, and the night sky took over, making Billy feel even more hopeless. Without the sun illuminating the streets, the creatures of the night could slither around freely and escape his grasp. Cars zipped by, and the sewers released their plumes of unpleasant stench, which clung to Billy as he broke through them. What could he do now? The lost phone taunted him. According to the tracker, he was still within reach, but it could be in anyone’s hands or in any of the surrounding buildings or houses.
His target began to move again. This time it went east at a steady pace, and Billy assumed the thief had gotten on the streetcar. He’d missed his chance at the store, and it was now heading deeper into the city. He wanted to chase after the streetcar or at least wait for the next one and follow the route, but he was cutting it close with time. Kristin needed her phone back, plus the garlic. That’s when the tracker veered away from the streetcar line and towards a neighbourhood. Fuck it. Everyone said walking was faster than the streetcar anyway, so Billy took off running, following the blue dot on the tracking app.
Billy caught up quickly. The thief wasn't moving at an alarming pace, as they probably thought he was off their tracks. He cut the distance between them and found himself in an old neighbourhood by the art gallery. The trees were starting to lose their leaves, their arms twisting towards the sky as if in pain. He remembered his mother saying that in the winter you could see the trees’ souls. Only three hundred metres away now, according to his tracker, he kept his eyes alert. Anyone on these haunted streets could be a suspect, and he started to feel a chill in his soul. Maybe he had gone too far. Maybe he should let it go. It was just a phone, after all. But then he saw it.
On the other side of the street was an abnormally tall, slender figure moving at a slow, unbothered pace. He hadn’t noticed Billy, and Billy kept his distance. This had to be the thief. He was the only other person on the street, and the tracker said the phone was less than fifty metres away. Billy crept along, eventually crossing the street so he could stalk the figure from behind. Up close, the man’s body was a dark mass, but the dim streetlights highlighted the grey, sickly top of his head with thinning hair and flakes of dandruff. Gross.
Billy never expected to get this far, and hadn’t thought of a plan in case he caught the thief. In the moment, he was confident he would run up and tackle the motherfucker, then ask questions later. Now, as it was getting so very real, he thought maybe he should just ask the stranger if he happened to find a phone. Maybe that was the better idea. While Billy was planning what to do next, the stranger widened the distance between them. Billy saw him turn off the street and down the path of one of the old apartment buildings that made up the neighbourhood.
“Shit!” Billy muttered as he started a light jog, not wanting the stranger to get too far. It was one of these buildings. As he searched on, Billy was struck by something inside him, and the world seemed to reveal itself to him in a way he had not experienced before. It was almost as if he were being pointed in the right direction by something all-knowing, and he could see the steps left behind by the stranger like footsteps in the snow. In the snow, one can see the past vividly and retrace their steps to see where it all went wrong. Snow leaves the tracks of time.
“Do I worry when the Ice Man calls? Oh no, sir.” an old, shaky but wise voice crackled out.
Billy looked down and saw an older homeless man camped out in a bus stop shelter, but it didn’t appear as if he was talking to Billy. The man stared up at the night sky while he muttered some other nonsense, and Billy saw the tinted grey rot of untreated glaucoma consuming his pupils.
Billy pushed on, creeped out but determined to solve this mystery that had wrapped him up and dragged him along this evening like a spider’s prey caught in a web. His phone became an afterthought. He asked himself where this was heading, continuing to be pulled along the web by unknown forces outside him.
Rushing along the sidewalk, Billy saw the entrance to the old apartment building lit up by its front lights. It had a black-and-white striped vinyl awning shielding the glass front doors from rain or snow, with the name Keelesdale written across the front of the building in a lettering style that reminded Billy of old 1950s Hollywood cursive.
He saw the front doors close behind the tall stranger and heard the lock click as he got closer. Still, he ran up to the door and pulled on the handle with no luck. A strung-out looking lady wearing a ratty turquoise hoodie and baggy sweatpants came shuffling along, her eyes glued to the ground and moving at a wounded pace. Through the doors, Billy could see the stranger moving past the lobby, the elevators, and into the stairwell. Finally, the lady opened the door as slowly as Billy thought possible and shuffled out. Billy rushed behind her to catch the door before it closed.
“Uhhh, hey, uhm, you can’t do that, man. You need a code to get in, man.” Billy looked back and moved on. What the fuck was she going to do about it?
Now Billy pushed on through the lobby, past the elevators, and into the same stairwell he saw the stranger walk into. Unsure whether to search upstairs or down, he heard multiple sets of footsteps clacking in the lower levels and decided to explore that route. Confident that only the crackhead lady had seen him enter the building, he snuck on, ready to bring this mystery to light.
Billy descended the steps cautiously as the fluorescent lights hummed and flickered, casting shadows against the chipped white paint of the stairwell. There was that nudge again, sending a scrambled warning, but he pushed on. It was then that his head was pierced with pain.
“Oh n-” Billy’s mouth gaped in terror as he stood there, frozen stiff, feeling the most fear he had ever felt in his life. It was a soul-consuming, hopeless fear. He saw the face of the man he was following looking down upon him. Strangely, the man’s face stared at Billy in fear too, and this made Billy even more frightened until he realized the man was not afraid. The man’s face was mimicking Billy’s. With its soulless eyes, grey skin, and bent expression, it was a face Billy hoped he would never see again. And he never would. This dark being had eaten its way through to Billy’s core, and he knew it would stay there for the rest of his life. The stairwell lights continued to hum in Billy’s ears as his vision warped into a long-exposure tunnel, blurring the world, and then it was black.
Kristin never did get her phone back and never saw Billy again, for that matter, but she would go on to wonder what happened to him for the rest of her life. The day Billy went missing, and for about a week after, when she checked her tracking app, it said her phone was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing that always unnerved her. She thought of a million ways it could have ended up there, but she could never truly convince herself of any. She did recall that on the night it happened, after her ex finished chewing her out for not answering his calls and the kids were put to bed, she saw another green comet light up the sky in a flash before fading away into another lifetime.