Altan was late to get up this morning. It was the weekend, it was rainy, and he ran his own business, so there was no need to worry. Though he did feel guilty about missing the first two prayers of the day. So he bowed his head, asked Allah for forgiveness, then shuffled across the room to poke around in the kitchen and perhaps find something to eat.
Shouts, the sound of breaking glass, and other odd noises floated up Wilshire Tower and played about the windows of the residents inside. Altan didn't think anything sounded out of the ordinary from the usual back alley commotion. The rain deadened the noises anyhow, and Altan settled down to peruse Heating and Air: A Beginners Guide. It occurred to him the other day that he lacked in this area of maintenance, and rifling through a few old boxes, he found the solution to his problem.
As soon as he turned to the first page, something in his mind clicked... Ms. Evans! It came flooding back now, that she asked him to fix her heater, him not knowing how, his forgetting their appointment, and now he feared for his life. People say many more things around a person who they think can't understand them than around someone who they think can. Atlan, being Turkish and old, heard a lot of things of that sort, some of which were about Ms. Evans, none of which were good (being chased out of the library by a white-haired midget with a letter knife was a common one). Altan sat frozen for a long while, deciding whether he should face her or flee the country. A bright flash and a sharp crack broke his trance.
Immediately the screams from the street grew in number and volume. Altan turned his head toward the window, but before his gaze reached the crowd below, his eyes caught a sea of brilliant flames dancing in the sputtering rain.
"Bok!" Altan cursed in his native tongue, "No, no, no, Allah not now..." Altan fell to the floor, in prayer before he hit the ground. Within seconds, he was up again moving as fast as he could toward the door. He grabbed his coat just before he slammed the door shut and rumbled down the stairs. Oh, his legs hurt, arthritis was painful, but there was no time to wait for the elevator - the mosque was on fire and the only conclusion that Altan could come to in his hasty thinking was that the world was about to end!
Flying through the exit of Wilshire tower, Altan landed among chaos. Ragged men, naked women, and Asians pushed past him hurriedly, some shouting, some shrieking, some with cameras glued to their faces, clicking away. It was like one of those bizarre dreams where nothing going on makes sense, yet that wasn't important; the dreamer's mission and purpose unified and organized the nonsense so that it wasn't distracting. At this point in time, surrounded by madness, Altan's mission was to find Edith E. Evans before it was too late.
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This was it. This was everything that Louie had dreaded, this was why he moved from the city to the miserable town, the reason he decided to work at a simple bowling alley instead of the family business, like his mom always wanted. Every aspect of Louie’s life needed to be planned. Calculated. Organized. Predictable.
ReplyDeleteFrom the very beginning of his day, down to the simple clothes he wore and the items he carried, each and every element was perfectly synchronized and uniform. The hustle and bustle of the city that he lived in before was too much. One day, there was street construction that altered his entire route to work, making him change his direction, therefore setting off his entire day. Even the most mundane irregularities of life, like uneven pavement or a creaky stair stimulated a haywire effect that went off through Louie’s whole body like a virus. Like a corruption. Like a takeover.
What Louie’s neighbors didn’t know – never knew – was that within all of those moving boxes stacked high in his room, teetering dangerously, and obstructing almost all possibility of movement in the apartment, was that they contained journals, scribblings and diaries of each day of his life, all of his thoughts, all psychotic. The ramblings were irrational and paranoid, and they were his outlet for these electric thoughts. As he looked out his window, from room 1201, from the godforsaken Wilshire Tower, the record player spun, and from it sang…
“This is the end,
Beautiful friend,
This is the end,
My only friend…
There’s danger on the edge of town,
Ride the King’s highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the goldmine
Ride the highway west, baby..”
The rattlesnake tambourine and the hollow vocals drove Louie into explosion. The world was ending, as he predicted. His thin frame began to shake and rattle, it was all over now.
“No safety or surprise…
the end…”
The scene below surpassed what he expected, but he knew it was to come. Grabbing the only box that wasn’t packed with his journals, he threw the contents onto his bedspread, looking for.. searching for.. just what he needed. No more waffles, No more bowling alley. No more simple, happy life. Exactly what he predicted was upon him. He needed everyone to know that he was right, all along. All of the religion in this town was phony. It disgusted him. He needed to find those lost, stupid lemmings and give them his writings. It had taken him years to filter through his warped mind a coherent writing that he could share with others, and yes, yes, this box contained exactly one thousand printed copies of his predictions. He would scatter them everywhere. He would throw them from the heavens! Ha! The heavens! As if such a thing existed! The boy with the lemonade, the alcoholics, the floozy women, they would all burn! He knew it! He knew it all along! He gathered them in his arms, they littered the ground with their explosive truths. He pushed the old man in the stairwell, another lemming, he thrust upon him the truth. Stupid old man. Now he knew. They all would know.