The Complex Read Free Page A

dark, Mom.”
    Terri glances up at the sky, and indeed, it is getting dark. Night is falling, and there is still so much to do. Luckily, they have already unloaded the big furniture. Some of their friends helped with that earlier. But there are still several rows of boxes to haul off the truck, not to mention unpacking, setting up the beds, and returning the truck to the rental agency so she doesn’t get charged for another day.
    “Let’s take five,” Randy says. “Caleb, you’re in charge of making sure your mom takes a break.”
    Caleb nods. He still doesn’t look Randy in the eye, but he’s grinning.
    “I’m fine,” she insists. “Unless you want to sleep on the floor tonight, Caleb, we’ve got to get this done. And we still have to return the truck or they’ll charge us for another day.”
    “I’ll take care of that,” Randy says. “You just make…”
    He trails off, staring over her shoulder. Caleb is doing the same. Confused, Terri turns around slowly. At first, she doesn’t comprehend what she’s seeing. Across the apartment complex’s parking lot, there is a small strip of gnarled trees and crooked saplings. Beyond those trees are a vacant lot, and a row of garages with peeling paint and sagging roofs. A shockingly obese man plods across the vacant lot toward them. As she watches, he pushes past the trees. It is then that Terri realizes he is naked. She screams in surprise.
    “What the hell?” Randy wobbles on his feet, still holding the boxes.
    “It’s a tick-tock man,” Caleb says.
    Terri doesn’t understand what her son means. She’s too stunned by the fat man’s appearance. He’s like those people you sometimes read about in news stories, so morbidly obese that when they suffer a medical crisis, it takes rescue workers and a construction crew just to remove them from their house. The difference is that this person is apparently still mobile, and not via a scooter or motorized device. No, he’s walking on his own two legs. Those legs are the size of tree trunks, and remind her of swollen, glistening sausage links. Terri suddenly feels queasy.
    The fat man strides with purpose—a purpose unknown to her, but clearly evident as he emerges from the trees and steps onto the parking lot, barely squeezing his slick, naked bulk between two parked cars. His massive buttocks smack against one of the vehicles, a red Ford Focus, and the car alarm begins to wail. Lights flash and the horn blares, but the fat man doesn’t seem to mind the disturbance.
    Caleb does, though. He clasps his hands over his ears and gapes at the naked behemoth. Caleb has always been sensitive to loud, sudden sounds. When he was younger, Terri worried that this might be a sign of autism or Asperger syndrome, but he has been tested for both and pronounced negative. He just doesn’t like loud noises. They rarely go to the movies because the volume on the movie trailers cause him discomfort. Caleb prefers to wait for the DVD release, except for the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, which he’ll usually brave in the theatre—because if he doesn’t, he’ll be left out of the conversation with his friends at school.
    “He’s a tick-tock man, and…he’s naked!” Caleb’s voice is thick with a horrible sense of wonder.
    The car alarm seems to grow louder. The naked man continues to plod toward them. Now, at last, Terri understands the strange nickname her son has provided for him. The man’s head nods back and forth, side to side, as he walks, and the motion is very much like the pendulum of the grandfather clock in her mother’s living room. Now that she’s noticed it, Terri has a hard time seeing anything else. The man stares at them with emotionless eyes, head swaying. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
    “You guys go inside,” Randy says, setting the boxes down. Terri has to struggle to hear him over the alarm. “I don’t like the look of this.”
    Understatement of the year, Terri thinks. There is nothing likeable