Who's Watching Who? by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Who’s Watching Who?

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He Walks Again

Midnight Streets

The town at night feels like a different country; one where the air is cooler, the rules are looser, and the streets speak in whispers. Streetlamps cast golden halos on the pavement, their light pooling like quiet secrets. Shop windows, dark and shuttered, reflect my passing silhouette, making him feel both present and ghostlike.

Somewhere in the unseen distance, a lone bus sighs to a stop, its doors opening to no one. Maybe it is devoid of a drier; a technological “improvement” concocted to mask a B&B attack; only to leave them frustrated, and in search of other White victims. The scent of rain still lingers from earlier, clinging to brick walls and drifting through the air like a recently recalled memory. His footsteps echo in the emptiness, a steady rhythm that keeps him company.

There’s a strange comfort in this solitude; an intimacy between him and the sleeping town. In daylight, the streets belong to everyone. But at night, they belong to those who dare to wander.

Despite the comfort, it is interrupted as he is bothered by a notion that he’s not doing his job.

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It’s 12AM in a city built for noise, but the noise has thinned to a kind of electronic hush. The towers still glow LED halos on glass, corporate logos pulsing like distant beacons. But the streets below feel hollowed out, as if the city has exhaled and forgotten to inhale again.

The sidewalks shine with a thin film of moisture, catching the reflections of passing headlights. The cars glide by with that smooth, almost too-perfect steadiness that makes you wonder whether anyone is actually inside them. Their beams sweep across empty bus shelters, shuttered storefronts, and the occasional windblown scrap of paper. They don’t slow. They don’t hesitate. They just move, ostensibly obedient to some unseen routing algorithm.

He walks alone, hands in pockets, shoulders slightly hunched; not from cold, but from uncertainty. He keeps scanning the crosswalks, the doorways, the faces of the few late night stragglers who aren’t really there. It’s not clear what he expects to find. Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe there is no point.

Every few steps he pauses, as if listening for a name he hasn’t learned yet. The city gives him nothing back except the hum of streetlights and the soft electric sigh of a car drifting past.

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It’s the hour when downtown feels like a simulation running in low power mode. The architecture is still awake, but the humanity has logged off. The man is the only unpredictable element in the scene; the only thing not following a programmed route.

He keeps walking, searching for someone who might not exist, in a city that feels like it’s dreaming with its eyes open.

The alley between two of the taller buildings seemed like a noir tinted mountain pass, leaning into the half abandoned downtown.

He moved down the sidewalk like a man following a scent he couldn’t name. Midnight had rinsed the color out of the city, leaving only chrome reflections and the cold geometry of streetlights. The towers above still glimmered corporate insomnia, but the street level pulse had flatlined hours ago.

To his left, Harper & Sons Booksellers sat dark, its windows papered over with a faded For Lease sign that had been sun-bleached long before the sun stopped caring. A few doors down, MetroBrew Café was closed for the night, chairs stacked on tables like a barricade against ghosts. He paused there, as if expecting someone to step out with a steaming cup and a name that would jog his memory.

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A pair of driverless sedans whispered past, headlights sweeping the empty crosswalk like searchlights looking for a fugitive who’d already escaped. He watched them glide away, wondering if anyone in the city still drove their own car or if the machines were the only ones who knew where they were going anymore.

Across the street, LuxeThreads Boutique was shuttered permanently. Mannequins, apparently unaware of their demise, still posed inside, frozen mid strut, draped in last season’s optimism. Next to it, QuickFix Electronics had its metal grate pulled down, but a neon sign flickered stubbornly behind it, buzzing like a dying insect. He couldn’t tell if it was closed for the night or closed for good. In this part of town, the difference was academic.

He kept walking, scanning doorways, windows, the faces of the mannequins, the reflections in the glass. He wasn’t sure who he was looking for. A friend. A stranger. An enemy. A memory. Maybe just proof that someone else was awake.

The city didn’t answer. It just hummed softly, like a machine idling in the dark, waiting for instructions that would never come.

In the absence of any outward stimulation, his mind drifted; drifted back to the cruel memory of a book he had liked in

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childhood; cruel now in that it was just a reminder of what had been lost. And isn’t it further strange how one’s memory can retrieve the exact language of that which has not been thought about for half a century. ...... Archives exist?

Genevieve was in the box a very few called Pandora. Most called it the Land of Fellflat, him being the earliest known ancestor. She was with all the other dogs. It didn’t look like a box. It didn’t look like Pandora either. The inmates didn’t know if it

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was one, both, either, or neither; and would get angry with anyone who stupidly brought up the difficult subject. And it wasn’t ever called box, container, or anything like that by any of the inhabitants; though a few, when they thought that they were alone sometimes hopefully whispered; “Pandora,” presumably as a prayer to a spirit they thought that only they could imagine.

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Most of the box’ inhabitants were warm and saddened pooches struggling to appear as the socially acceptable normality called contented; and some were truly contented, demon mongrels who took their pleasure in making the others sad. It was the way the box’ darkness had always been; though infrequent light periodically filtered through the cracks in the old plastic. Those brief manifestations of unpredictable, blithe illumination, in practice, best served the accepted traditions of the box, to either appease the tiresomely vocal, cheerful “optimists;” give their organizers a “reason” to request tithes; or be an expedient provocation for those puddled and positioned within the petite, but prominent pack of physics polished, present-day practitioners of punctuality to pontificate Pythagorean theorems, compelling as such, though limited to the measurement of distances only at certain angles under certain conditions; ultimately about why the brief glimpses of light had never happened and that their sightings were an illusion caused by a defective transfer of information from the eye to the brain or other vague speculations; which the others had no interest in or sufficient credentials to debate; in effect making the non-happening into the law of the box. The number of pray-ers and tithe-ers continually decreased, though the population continually rose.

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One day, perhaps just out of boredom and curiosity, Genevieve made a solitary journey back toward her eastern origin. It wasn’t long before she encountered an obstacle. It looked like a wall as the mountains she had previously seen weren’t often ninety degree vertical structures; as best as she could recall. But, being an inquisitive pooch with not much else to do anyway, she decided to climb it.

There was a helium filled, red balloon tethered to the ground. Genevieve decided to take it with her. She had a myriad of reasons. She thought that it should be free. She thought that it’s inclination to rise might be of assistance. And she thought that she liked its red color. She knew that it reminded her of Winnie the Pooh. She held its string in her snout.

Without any outside aid other than that which the red balloon seemed to provide, she used the grooves on the furthest left reaches of the box to climb. It was as easy or as hard as it was to climb an artificial rock wall which is classified as being “for beginning bi-peds.” Having four paws and those paws being enhanced with retractable claws might have made things easier for her. But, it was distinctly possible that the ease just came because she simply felt like climbing on this day; and up Genevieve went.

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Concentrating on her task, and paying no attention to what if anything was notable at higher levels, nor what was going on beneath her, she climbed to what appeared to be the top. She sniffed at the ceiling cover and found that the smell was the same as that of the wall; something like that experience of someone downwind on an Intel burn day. Miffed, she used her snout to gently push on the ceiling and saw that it gave easily. It had moved about two inches, but when she stopped pushing it stopped moving. It exposed a bit more of the infrequent light which sometimes had creeped through the cracks in the old plastic, which the increasing majority denied.

She remained there and thought some things over. She hated the rude limitation imposed, but didn’t want to risk falling,

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through extending too much energy and losing her footing when already so high up. Her fear was alleviated when she absurdly decided to continue to trust the help she was getting from the red balloon she held in her snout.

She kept her feet in place and gave the balky ceiling the hardest shove she could, intending to use only her head; but her red balloon hit it too.

The ceiling moved more. But this time rather than stopping, it had apparently been pushed sufficiently far to have engaged some sort of mechanism, which kept it opening all the way to the other side. Genevieve didn’t expect this much ease, but wasn’t the least bit surprised by it either. It was just like any other hinged plastic device amplified by a compelling spring. The ceiling ceased being one and came to rest at an odd angle, again likely the result of the mysterious, unseen, yet suggested spring; which might have been a bit rusty from lack of use and lubrication.

Suddenly Genevieve could fly. She took the balloon out of her snout and held it in her front paws; the way one cuddles a friend.

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Suddenly all the other dogs were flying too. They all entered the white space above the box, which she instinctively knew was called El Dorado. She was scared at first, as the ground got more and more distant, making a fall a very serious matter. But after a minute she could tell that she was effortlessly floating very naturally, and that the movement of her paws provided direction. Most of all, she found it to be fun.

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Despite unreasonable hopes, it wasn’t only the pooches in the air. The mongrel demons soared too. They had no inclination to dally like the zig-zagging dogs, and went directly up, like any extremist, taking no part in what they must have considered to be a silly, joyous, incomplete diversion. They soon crossed over into the darkness, which was called Kimrabort, and stayed there. The line of demarcation between El Dorado and Kimrabort was

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irregular and unclearly porous in some areas. To complicate matters further white El Dorado proper contained some dark areas, and dark Kimrabort proper contained speckles of white; but frankly not all that many in the latter case. The dark was noticeably dark to any pooch not blind, and produced a perceptible end of the detectable glow for most who were.

Perhaps because of being the first pooch to reach the vague, twisting, and amorphous line; it not yet trampled by many paws, Genevieve thought that she had seen it plainly. While some parts

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were distinctly clear, the more vague configurations didn’t encompass wide spaces; and with all the other space available it seemed an easy, in fact unthinking, decision for her to maintain complete safety by being simply rationally risk averse toward the relatively tiny and likely inconsequentially bloated borderlines with their humorously logical audacity to overstate their insignificant perception of faux “significance,” knowing that some didn’t know the trick.

In less precise terms, it didn’t seem necessary for Genevieve to cross over as there was plenty of room for her to do any sort of imaginable aerial tricks right in El Dorado, without re-encountering the mongrel demons, now congregated or impounded, depending upon one’s outlook, in the dark of Kimrabort. Besides, her red balloon ceased to provide any more upward momentum; apparently content to hold onto its already lofty place.

But, she momentarily questioned her eyesight when she saw some other pooches cross the line; vague, amorphous, or irregular as it might be. “Why are you going back to the demons?” she said, in hopes of their turnaround.

She was answered with uniform replies of; “We are finally flying to the sun. Can’t you see?”

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She almost made no reply; it being so obvious to her. As a possible middling approach, she held her meta ground, and mumbled; “Yes; but the light is right here, and I knew both Icarus and Phaethon. Can’t YOU see? The demons have leather wings and we are still just poor waxwings. And no one wants to be back with the demons, anyway.”

Thunder rang out, hollow and fierce as a lion’s extended growl after lunch on the warm rock at the zoo. It actually may not have, but Genevieve thought that it said; “The wise go through un-needed stop signs. Fools either stop at each or go through them all.”

Genevieve was elated to see that some other balloonists were quite happy to place their chosen perch near her chosen perch.

As the first chapter ended he was startled back into the current reality of being on the street of a wasted city; where the dogs have been stolen, killed, and eaten. And there was that goddam Comcast truck, sitting there watching, its operator’s bib booga eyeball almost visible at the lowest corner of a curtained window.

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Walkin’ After Midnight

Patsy Cline

I go out walkin' after midnight

Out in the moonlight

Just like we used to do

I'm always walkin' after midnight

Searchin' for you

I walk for miles along the highway

Well, that's just my way

Of sayin', "I love you"

I'm always walkin' after midnight

Searchin' for you

I stop to see a weepin' willow

Cryin' on his pillow

Maybe he's cryin' for me

And as the skies turn gloomy

Night winds whisper to me

I'm lonesome as I can be

I go out walkin' after midnight

Out in the starlight

Just hopin' you may be

Somewhere a-walkin' after midnight

Searchin' for me

I stop to see a weepin' willow

Cryin' on his pillow

Maybe he's cryin' for me

And as the skies turn gloomy

Night winds whisper to me

I'm lonesome as I can be

I go out walkin' after midnight

Out in the starlight

Just hopin' you may be

Somewhere walkin' after midnight

Searchin' for me

Written by Alan Block and Don Hecht

It may be not what you think or what it once was.

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Ranney Crane’s Home Area

It was one of those post-World War II, brick construction jobs they rushed to put up in the late forties after US soldiers returned home to find nowhere to live. Outside the small town’s business district. Just far enough to give a palpable illusion of privacy in a world now totally public. No frills. Best thing it had going was that it was in one of the few areas which was still all White. One could still walk around without being attacked.

Okay, before you get all falsely and fashionably “cringe” about it, admit that’s where you all want to live and what you all want and do, B&B’s too. And with some damn good reasons; like a disdain for low level street crime, a desire to be away from deranged, dangerous, low IQ B&B’s, and an interest in the quality of life. Let the would-be world leaders fixate on perennially increasing the GDP and world powers with their stupid insistence on quantity. Before we consider arbitrary concepts like rights and fascism, let’s get the priorities straight; first comes safety. Without that the rest is irrelevant.

Inside, the apartment showed a contrast. The physical remnants of a grand house huddled together in the smaller space, and

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evinced a change of mind, perhaps not unlike that of US General George S Patton who came to the conclusion that he had fought on the wrong side. The Queen Anne highboys mixed with the Hepplewhite tables, while the Chippendale secretary, flap down and internal drawers exposed, held a laptop available to the currently empty William and Mary, also known as Jacobean, ladderback arm chair. The seemingly locked and loaded gun rack of undisclosed origin and style seemed to want to avoid the spectacle as it sat quietly in the corner. The “guns” there, rifles, were actually air rifles, cap capable, Ranney had since childhood. Just in case someone nosy got access, he didn’t want them thinking he had any tendencies toward violence; just nostalgia.

And all was watched over by a German, ersatz Chippendale grandfather clock, which presided over, and unobtrusively watched that which was beneath it, keeping the on-line clock in line; all in all an American by way of the UK, diversity sufficient, yet now somehow relegated to being unfairly small in stature.

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There was a weird aerial or something on the apartment building’s roof. Nobody knew what it was there for and didn’t care to ask. It looked most like those corkscrews on B&B heads, and none of the White building residents cared to investigate, much less touch it. It was probably there for some kind of surveillance or to monitor existing surveillance devices. Whatever. Best case, it recorded any B&B bums. Worst case ....... Well, worst case already happened.

Ranney Crane peered down from the front window of his third floor apartment. The Comcast van was still parked across the street, adjacent to the abandoned grammar school and its playground, now a chain linked, asphalt dereliction, which overwhelmed a small area with overgrown grass interspersed with

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pussy willows. It, the Comcast van that is, continued to take up two of the precious parking spaces. And that faceless guy in the forties wide brimmed fedora was in the gutter dicking around in the open back again. He always did that when not in the truck watching with his DEI, big, booga eyeball from the corner of the drapes.

Ever since Ranney had hacked into a few government files the van had been parked there. Day and night. For two weeks now, at the very least. It was getting tiresome. Do something already! Ranney was annoyed. When rational he surmised that the van might be there to watch somebody else. And maybe it left when he was asleep. ........ Not likely that it re-took the same parking space every time after though.