Nocturne Read Free

The woman who had been giving the talk was gone, vaporized away. Only a negative shadow of her was left on the wall where she had stood, a bright red stain splattered on the blackened and tattered screen, and as he crouched there he wondered about her for the first time since meeting her that morning, this woman from Accounting who spoke with a slight mid-western accent and smelled of Irish Spring. Was she married? Did she have any children? Was it a son? He wondered what the boy would be like.
    There was an awful screech as the building jolted, tilted. Someone reached up, tore down the blinds in its—he couldn’t tell the gender—attempt to stand. Its body was shredded by the shattered glass. The wind was a vortex sucking the paper out the window. A shadow streaked by, dropping out of the sky somewhere above them, plummeting to the ground somewhere below. Then there was another, this one a burning comet. It was screaming.
    How could he still be alive? He looked at the charred remains of his hands, at the dull white and gray bone underneath. Numbness. His hands found his cheeks and pulled the hardened flesh away in chunks. How could he still be alive?
    They had had a son. They had given him a good, strong name. And the son had been as strong as his name.
    Someone tapped his arm. He looked up, startled.
    “Any recommendations before we wrap up for lunch?”
    The Man shook his head.
    “Good, then let’s break. Everyone, meet back here at one-thirty.”
    He gathered his papers, his glasses and his pen, and trailed the others as they filed out of the room.
    †   †   †
    In the past, he’d occasionally patronize the café on the ground floor of his building. They made good sandwiches there; good cookies, too. On the way in some mornings, he’d buy a coffee from the cart as a special treat to himself, but he hadn’t in a while; the coffee in the break room upstairs had a permanent bitter taste to it, metallic and thin, as if something toxic had leached into the water from the pipes.
    These days he rarely ate or drank anything at all, opting instead to spend his break time at the window in his office, hands clasped behind his back or in his pockets. He’d watch the people far below him, thrilling at the feeling of vertigo that would pierce his belly the first time he’d look down for the day, trying to trick himself into re-experiencing that feeling again but never quite succeeding; he could apparently only scare himself once a day. So he’d give up and just stand there, thinking of all the people on the sidewalks as tiny ants, how easily they could be wiped into oblivion. He knew it was cliché to have such thoughts, especially when he remembered how resilient people could sometimes be. Then, as always, his thoughts would inevitably lead to his son.
    But not today. Today, he would be one of those ants. Let the giants far above him crush him.
    He passed through the glassed front doors and out from the stunted shadow of the building. Looking up, he thought he saw sheets of paper floating down toward him, dozens of white sheets, but the shapes whirling above him caught the updrafts and did not fall. He stood and watched them for a moment as the crowd swirled past him on the sidewalk. Then, as if aware of his notice, the gulls wheeled around the corner and out of sight, leaving only the hard, grid-like shapes of shiny silver and black rising into an infinity of blue and the blazing white spot of the sun reflecting off the adjacent building, so bright in the center that it looked like a black hole.
    He didn’t have a plan for where to go. He turned right, though he could have as easily turned left, but since the flow of the traffic was mostly right that’s the way he went.
    Where were all these people going? Where did they come from? What were they hiding?
    He stuffed his hands in his pockets and wondered these things as he walked. And it was only after ten minutes had passed and he had waited to cross at several