Clock with No Hands

People think that he’s crazy just because he wants to be alone. But the hero thinks that they are the crazy ones. They follow the crowd, they do what everyone else is doing, they listen to shitty music, wear retarded outfits and criticize him for not dressing the same. That guy at the bus stop that morning wearing the skinny jeans and the V-neck shirt with a silvery chain around his neck, he pointed at the hero’s shoes and laughingly said, “we ain’t on that.” The hero looked down at his shoes and said, “Timbs? Y’all ain’t on that no more?” The guy at the bus stop had a stupid smirk on his face up until the moment the hero said, “I’ll rock some Timbs before I rock some fuckin’ … Louis Vuitton bowlin’ shoes or whatever the fuck y’all middle schoolers is wearin’ these days.” The guy at the bus stop was at a loss for words until the hero reached for his neck and snapped the chain right off him.

The guy said, “hey man! What the fuck you doin’?”

The hero said, “It’s my chain now, punk!” as he made his way down the street. He walked a block before he tossed the rhinestone encrusted hunk of aluminum in the garbage can. Fuck it, thought the hero; I’d rather walk anyway.

We ain’t on that, thought the hero  the next day as he walked through the not so crowded shopping mall; I don’t give a fuck what everybody’s on, fashion is gay anyway. He thought to himself; I’m not afraid of the crowd but I’ll sure as hell stay away from them, the more people you get together in a group, the less intelligent each individual becomes. That’s why I don’t follow what society tells me I should do; he thought as he walked toward the department store wearing his Avirex hoody, his Sean Jean jeans and his Jordan’s basketball shoes. He stuck a piece of Stride Gum in his mouth and stepped inside the Kohl’s outlet store. He needed a new lambskin jacket because he had ruined his old one the day before. There was freezing rain outside as he left his Religious studies class, which caused him to bust his ass on the concrete as he entered the parking garage, his fall broken by the backpack which contained his laptop. His laptop was okay, his ass was too, but he had his hands in the pockets of his coat before he slipped and human beings have a natural tendency to try to catch themselves as they fall. That added to the unusually thin leather of the already twice damaged, once repaired lambskin jacket made it inevitable that he would tear the left pocket wide open as he tried to save himself.

After he bought his new jacket he went to Walmart to buy one of those little seam cutters because for some reason unknown to everyone who isn’t in the haberdashery business, the manufacturers of the jacket decided to sew the pockets shut. So he opened up the pockets and put on his new jacket and drove back to campus. Earlier that week one of his classmates, an old Muslim dude with gray hairs in his beard, invited him to a chess club meeting at the Campus’ Black Cultural Center. He couldn’t make it that same day because he had to work that evening, but why not Thursday, he thought; he’s got nothing better to do that day anyway. 

He played three games that night, won two of them but got beat in five moves by a ten year old kid who’s mother had an east European accent. He forgot to move his back row, that and he got a little cocky after winning the first two matches. In all, he had a decent evening. He put on his jacket and proceeded to make the journey across campus to the parking garage across the street from the Electrical Engineering Building where he had left his car. He wondered to himself why he hadn’t parked at garage next to the Liberal Arts building. Maybe his subconscious assumed that he would enjoy the walk, which he did by the way. He preferred to walk whenever he could, not really to stay in shape but more because it was easier for him to be by himself and think. The libraries always had more people in them than he preferred and it was pretty much hit or miss with the various, “hiding places” where he sometimes snuck away to on campus. But whenever he was walking there never seemed to be as many people around as there was when he was staying in one place. And even the people he did see when he was walking usually ignored him due to the simple fact that he was walking, unless of course it was one of those obnoxious people who stand around and handing out fliers and political agendas to passersby. The type of person who was busy annoying pedestrians depended on the season, during the beginning of the spring semester it was those old White guys who handed out little green Bibles to everybody, they only had the New Testament in them of course wouldn’t want to mistakenly give out any Jewish parts to anybody. They were the same old guys who put Bibles in the empty dressers of every shitty motel room in America. The hero named one of his characters after them. For some reason the Animal Rights activists always converged between the Stewart Center and the Union building during the transition from fall to winter. There they would hand out little fliers with pictures of sad looking cows next to slabs of meat hanging from hooks. For some reason this made the hero hungry and he would trek down to Chauncey Hill to buy one of those artery thickening burgers from Five Guys restaurant and a 60 cent fountain drink from the Discount Den a few doors down. At the beginning of spring the Atheists showed up and gave out free used books in exchange for the Bibles the old white guys had given them earlier that year. “Trade one work of fiction for another” they’d say as they collected them.

And right before spring break there were always two or three people near the tree outside the Class of 1950 building handing out condoms to everybody. Each one of them was part of a group, they prescribed their minds to a mentality dictated by social standards. The Lord is my Shepherd, thought the hero; therefore I must be a sheep. I must prove I’m an individual by trading in one set of values I grew tired of for another set that were never really mine but I’d like to pretend that they are. Either that or I’m trying to convince people to buy Durex condoms instead of Trojans. That’s all that life really is, isn’t it? Trying to sway the masses into fucking each other with your own brand of condoms instead of somebody else’s.

Who am I kidding, the hero thought to himself as he walked past the bell tower; I’m just as selfish and conceited as everyone else. The hero thought about the kid in class who made the asinine comment in about China being isolated from the world. The hero rebutted by stating something along the lines of, the silk road began in China and that there were Muslims, Christians and Jews there before they were in the British Isles. He wasn’t even sure if that was true, but it seemed likely that commerce would do more to carry religion across the world than some old decrepit missionaries who may or may not be the great uncle of Christ. The hero thought to himself; whether or not I was right, the only reason I said it was to show everyone how smart I was in comparison to that asshole. I can’t pretend I don’t care as much about what other people think as anyone else. The bell tower sang its hourly song followed by the ten monotonous chimes. The author of some old British novel he read that summer would have said something about leaden circles dissolving and whatnot, at least she would have had she not walked straight to the bottom of the River Ouse. Funny how he can’t recall her name, but he knows which river she committed suicide in. With irrevocable hours behind him he walked between two of the engineering buildings until he came upon a portion of the wet sidewalk illuminated by the orange street lamp.

A woman walked around the corner of the building he was approaching and began walking in the opposite direction of the hero. She was wearing a brown fur coat with a scarf wrapped around her neck and a large brown hat on her head. She appeared to be quite agitated because she was holding in her right hand one of those little keychain cans of pepper spray. Her purse was tucked securely beneath her left arm while her right arm was extended with her finger poised on the nozzle as if she planned to spray anything that moved. The hero moved far to the opposite side of the sidewalk as the woman pointed her pepper spray angrily at a door on the building as if to ward off some invisible fiend that only she could see.

Oh God, thought the hero; please don’t mace me. That’s all I need right now. The woman saw the hero walking toward the direction she had just came. The hero looked away, but their eyes met just before he was about to pass her. She kinda looks like Oprah Winfrey, thought the hero. The woman’s expression turned to one of disdain as she reached into her purse and put the pepper spray can inside.

Good, thought the hero; she’s not gonna come after me with that shit. As the hero passed her, he saw in the corner of his eye the woman pointing at him with her right hand. He didn’t see it at first but by the time he did it was too late. In the shadows of her oversized fur coat he saw the barrel of what must have been a black snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver. Charter Arms, the hero thought; just like the one Dad keeps next to his bed. There was a pop, not a bang, but a pop as the hollow point was ejected from the barrel and sent into the abdomen of the hero.

The bullet made its way through the side of the hero’s ribcage toward his heart. It struck one of his ribs as it entered him, leaving tiny bullet fragments, pieces of bone and bits of marrow to float around in the wake of the burning metal. Contrary to popular belief, the hero’s life did not flash before his eyes. As he fell to his knees he did not think about the day he decided to change his major to creative writing knowing full well he probably wouldn’t make enough money to pay off his student loans after he graduated. He did not think about the day he got accepted to his first choice college and how great it would be to go to school out of state. He did not think about that Sunday morning during prayer service when he admitted to himself that he had never really believed in God after all and probably never would. He did not think about his Sophomore year in high school or the cute light skinned girl who would take his virginity from him in the darkness of the gymnasium parking lot. He did not think about the last roman candle fight he had with his best friend Jeremy, or that years later that boy would enlist in the Army never to be heard from again. There was not a thought in the hero’s mind did about the Tuesday morning in September when he was twelve years old, sitting next to Jeremy and watching the smoking towers on the television screen with the rest of his class or how he secretly wondered how long it would be before somebody made a movie about this day.  He did not think about the rainy Saturday morning  four months earlier, riding into town in the passenger seat of his Dad’s Ford pickup or the sinking feeling in his stomach when he realized that this weird conversation about love and relationships was really his father’s way of telling the hero  that he was divorcing his mother. He did not think about the day his first sister was born, how she looked into his eyes when he held her in his arms or the funny green spots on her belly and thighs that the nurse said would disappear in about a month or two. He could not recall the night the tornado came within a mile of his house, how he awoke in his mother’s arms or how he spent the night sleeping in the bathtub at his aunt’s house down the street for fear that the trailer home they lived in at the time wouldn’t make it through the night. There was no recollection of himself at six years old in that same trailer house, playing tug of war with his wire haired Jack Russell terrier named Parker or how he cried himself to sleep the night that dog was attacked by a coyote and his father wrapped him in a blanket and buried him in the back yard. He did not think of the years before he and his family moved to Texas; running barefoot and bare-chested through the sprinklers during some unknown summer, a red towel tied around his neck to look like a cape, the wire haired Jack Russell puppy nipping at his heels and flexing his tiny muscles while he announced proudly that he was there to save the world. The hero did not even think about his earliest memory reduced to little more than a still photograph in the back of his mind, staring up at the ceiling in a room with blue walls, a window to his right with the blinds closed and sunlight seeping through between the cracks, reaching up at the light fixture with arms too short and fingers too stubby to even touch the shapes on the musical mobile dangling overhead.

No, the thoughts of the hero at that moment were with the bullet lodged somewhere in his gut and the woman who looked suspiciously similar to the faces on the years old magazines which her mother kept in the bathroom at the house his family could no longer afford. He stared at the ground with the taste of copper in his mouth, watching his oozing life filling the lines and cracks of the cement around him, wondering what more he could have done.

The hero whispered, “I did everything I was supposed to,” as he covered the wound in his side, “I did everything right and you shot me for it anyway. Jesus Christ, shot by Oprah fuckin’ Winfrey how’s that for a twist ending?”

He pulled his phone out of his belt clip holster, eyes half closed as his bloody fingers smudged the touchscreen. If only she were considerate enough to shoot me in the brain, the hero thought to himself as the numbers on the screen fell out of focus; I could be like the guy in that story about the bank robbery and my last second could roll on into infinity. I could go out playing baseball at age ten. Fuck it, the hero thought as he dropped the phone, the pleading voice of the operator on the other end fading away into the distance; I hated baseball anyway.