Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

96

The Escape

When 'Bri-an, In-u-vit' showed up on my cell phone display, I thought it was a wrong number. Probably an American in the Northwest Territories. Then, a sinister interpretation got my attention.

This wasn't geographic illiteracy. This was intentional. After what I'd overhead in the Common, 'Bri-an, In-u-vit' was without a doubt a simply-coded message for 'Brain in a vat.' That meant they were on to me. What's worse, they wanted me to know it.

When the subway train arrived, I stepped back to let people on and off, and as the doors were closing, I tossed my cell in — my brand new cell with the stealth sound amplifier. Gone too, was the record-ed conversation in the park. My ringtone went off again, and a colorfully tattooed teenager held my phone up to his unpierced ear

— actually his only ear. The train was pulling out, but his eyes met mine, and I immediately took off to get street level, snatching an old man's Red Sox cap as I catapulted up the down escalator.

They had to have pictures of me by now with all the CCTV cameras downtown, so I ducked into a barber shop with an American flag on the barber pole and got a serviceman's special.

Down the street at a thrift store, I picked up some jeans, a reversible jacket, some grease paint, and a pair of aviator sunglasses. Not unexpectedly, my rushed job applying the grease paint in the tiny thrift store washroom was splotchy up close and I forgot my hands, but as long as I kept my hands in my pockets, it was passable.

For a moment, I felt sorry for the kid who thought he'd hit the jack-pot with my phone, but it passed. I had bigger worries.