The Locked Man
Nixon Burroughs shuffled down the street, a slight limp in his left leg pulling his pace back a step from the rest of the crowd. Eighteen months ago a car accident left his right leg broken in several places and now, in the late stages of his recovery, he still shuffled at a sloth’s pace. But that is not all. From time to time his mind would glaze over and wander back to the curious dread he felt when he lost control of his black Volkswagen GTi and relive the awful sound of screeching tires and grinding metal, the soft, stomach churning lift over the embankment and hanging like a magician’s handkerchief at the height of its mid-flight trajectory, the wait, and the emptiness that followed the long descent down to the point of impact. A hush. And the crunch of his skull on the windshield.
That is where his memories ended: a quarter of an inch before the windshield. It was at this point that time and motion melted down to a slow candle wax drip. The windshield elongating before his eyes, he saw it as a large sheet of blue ice hovering there before him, a wide, bright surface with mysterious things swimming just beyond it. And then it engulfed his whole world and he crashed through it. And submerged.
According to Sergeant MacClusky they found him four days later in a ditch about 25 miles from the crash site, somewhere just outside of Pittsfield, face down, bruised and scarred, with his green Army Surplus jacket on inside out and only one shoe on his left foot. They found the other one about eighteen meters from the crushed car. He saw the photos. Dark grainy pictures of the crushed hood and the shattered windshield with its web of white and blue lines and the shredded tires hanging like melted wax from the wheel wells. There were dents and scrapes over the whole thing. It reminded him of a piece of discarded tinfoil.
But no one could figure it out. how had he survived for four days without human contact and no food and water? According to reports, he had pulled himself out of the driver’s side window tearing great hunks of flesh out of his back and then crawled up through the bramble and stinger nettles to the main road where, with shards of glass still lodged in his face and blood oozing out of the large gashes behind his ears, and wrists, and legs, and the ones crisscrossing his chest, he wandered aimlessly without food or water in the general vicinity of Pittsfield, population fourteen thousand. And no one noticed him. For four whole days and no one saw a thing.
Nixon Burroughs couldn’t explain it either. So he had to trust what they told him. He dug around but nothing came up. While recovering in the hospital he’d read and re-read the news clippings from The Pittsfield Press, The Telegram, The Tribute straining to remember something, to read a comment or see a familiar detail in the background of some photo that would stir something in his mind. But nothing came of it. He followed up on the police investigation (for whatever that was worth) but was met with terse facts and polite brush-offs that he should “take it easy” and “get well soon.”
He shook his head to keep the memories back and crept up to the corner of Fifth and Davis and waited there with the others for the light to change. A faint gust of cold wind curled around him and he drew his used parka closer around his thin frame, trying to forget. When his memories overtook his waking life he would black out and there were times when he was submerged for a full ten, twenty, even thirty minutes–his longest so far was almost an hour–and once he swam back to consciousness, he would find himself a full block away from where the submerging started, other times he was in the same spot, barely registering the traffic and the stiff grumbles of people elbowing passed him on their way down the street.
Every time this happened, he awoke to blistering headaches. The screws holding his right leg together felt as if they were tightening deeper and deeper in his bones and ligaments and he would be immobilized with the pain. Lately, his ribs started to hurt as well and the pain seemed to be creeping back towards his spine, a part of his body that was almost permanently damaged in the accident.
So he had to keep moving, keep body limber and his mind distracted. Waiting there on the corner of Fifth and Davis he tuned into the noise across the street, taking in the faint voices and hammers drifting out from behind the barricaded construction site and turned to watch a large flatbed truck back up onto a ramp, beep beep beeping, and drop off a large load of rebar.
The light changed and the crowd surged forward leaving Nixon Burroughs alone at the curb. He joined the flow a half step behind and headed across the street towards the construction site which was surrounded by a protective ten foot high barricade. Finally on the other side of the street he ran his hands along the iron fence sometimes grazing the posters that were slapped up on the barricade, not really reading them just sort of absorbing them as he passed by. He winced as a horn blasted from inside the construction site. Men with yellow hardhats leapt from their trucks and headed off through the wide entrance, silver lunch pails swinging by their side. He was curious. Construction sites always made him feel that way and he wanted a peek inside. Just see what they were doing, take a guess at what was going up. He picked up his pace and headed towards the entrance, the wind snapping the posters’s dog-eared corners as he passed.
Just before the entrance, he stopped. Something was different. Out of place. He took one slow step backwards and shot a glance at a cluster of posters that hung at crooked angles. There amid the jumble was a single poster with a black and white photo on it. It was centered and perfectly squared as if it were hung in an art gallery.
He leaned in to get a better look and saw his own face staring back at him.
[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud." Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]
Greetings,
Very cool story, great visuals.
Thanks for the ride
sobnyc
July 17, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Hey sobnyc–
Thanks for the feedback. Its stuff like that which keeps me going.
onepenny
One Penny Profiles
July 17, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Excellent read! Thank you for sharing…
llhaesa
llhaesa
July 18, 2008 at 1:51 am
llhaesa–
Thanks for the feedback. Like I said, hearing that keeps me ticking. I glad you enjoyed it. Part II is on the way…
One Penny Profiles
July 18, 2008 at 3:18 am
greetings one penny,
I am responding with a short story for you to enjoy, well hopefully you’ll enjoy.
22 Minutes
“I can’t hang on any longer”.
“You have to Jacobs, if you let go we all die”. “I can’t, I feel like I’m going to lose my grip”
The man in the blue jeans, Jacob was trying to hold onto the steel bar above his head. It was hot right now and the little breeze that was blowing on them was sporadic at best. The blue jean man was strong and he knew he had some strength left but it wouldn’t be long till his hands would fail and they would all die. What a bitch to have the lives of others in your hands, literally.
Jacob, Jacob, one of the others was yelling to him trying to get his attention. Jacob! He snapped out of it and yelled back,” what, what the hell do you want now? Jacob we’ve been talking, we want to try and have one of us climb up to you and hold the bar while you rest. “You’re shitting me right? Jacob said, you want to have someone climb over the rest of you up to me and then I hang on to that person?
“Yes, Jacob, that’s what we think, we think that would be best for all of us”. “Fine, Jacob said, send someone up here then. The others had already agreed that the younger guy, the one called Philip would be the best choice. Philip was near the bottom of the group and he started to climb on the backs of the others. One step on this shoulder, then up onto another shoulder, here he comes Jacob, be ready okay? Jacob wasn’t exactly excited about this decision but what choice did he have?
Philip was getting closer to the top of the group and he knew that when he got to the top he would have to become the one to hold onto the steel bar for the others. Jacob was feeling tired and he was now in agreement with the others, maybe it was best to have someone else hold the bar for awhile. Philip was two people away now and he could see Jacobs’s legs just above him. He had not spoken to Jacob, the man in the blue jeans since they all first arrived here a few days ago. Philip was normally very quiet around strangers and when they were all came to in that room he kept to himself. The man in the blue jeans was obviously a leader of some sort; he was the first one to speak to the “Keepers”. That’s what the others had nicknamed the ones who brought them all here. Keepers was the logical choice since they we being kept here. Philip grabbed Jacobs’s ankle thru the blue jeans and he felt him stiffen up, I guess Jacob wasn’t the superman everyone below thought he was. Jacob looked over his shoulder and saw that Philip right below his belt now. Jacob started to take one hand off the steel bar so he could help Philip up when he realized that he was loosing his grip with the remaining hand, he immediately grabbed the steel bar with both hands, whew! That was close. Philip saw this happening and reached up past Jacobs’s arms and grabbed the bar with his left hand, then his right hand.
He told Jacob, “you can to let go now, I have the bar, it’s okay, I have it”. Jacob slowly took one hand off the bar and put it onto Philips arm and the he took his last hand off the bar and started to slide down past Philips belt, then to his shoes, onto the person below Philip, then down again and again until he was the one at the bottom of the group. Jacob looked up at the group and wondered how he had held them all up there for so long. It wasn’t that long really, it seemed like hours but looking at his watch it couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes or so in total.
The voice came out of the old rusted speakers at the top of the tunnel. It was one of the Keepers saying that we couldn’t change bar holders like that; we had to keep things the way they set it up. Jacob started yelling back at the speakers, “screw you, we cannot hold on like this, we have to switch”. Jacob looked down and saw that being on the bottom of the group meant he would be the first to fall into the black darkness below. One of the others was curious at first and dropped a shoe into the blackness, they all listened and the shoe never hit bottom.
Jacob held onto the person above him and noticed that it was a woman and she was humming to herself. He tried to follow the tune but she kept changing songs so he eventually gave up. She did look down at him at one point and she smiled. Now he remembered her, she was the really sexy one with the short hair, she still looked pretty good, maybe when they got out of here he might ask her out on a date, we’ll see. Someone yelled out,” Philip are you holding on okay? Yes, yes I am okay, Philip yelled back. Jacob thought about letting go and floating into the abyss. Why not, why not let go, screw this, the Keepers are never going to let us go. He took a hand off the leg of the sexy blond, she felt it and looked down at him and smiled. Maybe I will hang on just a little bit, yeah a bit longer for her.
The fact that 6 total strangers are being forced to hang on to each other like a human ladder and the person at the top is holding on to a steel bar with only his two hands so they all don’t fall into the darkness below is insane. How have they been able to hang on this long? Jacob looked at his watch; the 22 minutes were almost up now.
-Peace
sobnyc
sobnyc
July 20, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Hey sobnyc!
Thanks for sending a story along. I liked it and kept thinking Jacob’s ladder. Any connection between this story and the human ladder we have here? I’m also interested to find out who the “Keepers” are.
What is your site? I’ll come along and check them out. Or you could send them to me.
Take care and have a good one.
G
One Penny Profiles
July 21, 2008 at 7:55 am
greetings,
http://www.sobnyc.wordpress.com
I have heard the “jacobs ladder” reference before. The name Jacob came out of the blue on me. I will google it and try to find out the similarity. The story just kind of happened to me and I just started wrtiting.
Keep in touch
-Peace
sobnyc
July 21, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Did you find any similarities?
One Penny Profiles
July 22, 2008 at 2:11 pm
greetings,
Once I googled Jacobs Ladder I rememebred that I saw that movie with Tim Robbins.
The similarities between that and what I wrote is simple from my end just happens to be the character name I choose. All I do is write a list of short story titles, then I pick one and start writing. I never have a clue as to where the story goes, most of the time the title has no bearing on the story. I know thats they way its supposed to work, title =story and all, but I guess i’m not a conformist.
Did you get to my site and see the other stuff,, look at Wishful Thinking, that’s a classic example of title not equaling story.
haha
-Peace
sobnyc
July 22, 2008 at 3:08 pm