five

Kyle’s eyes opened and he was on his back patio. The blue lights were wrapped around the railing and they seemed to twinkle delicately in the gently falling snow. But there was a rhythm to the twinkling, a pattern of a sort, but he stopped paying attention to that as he took another long drag on the smoke, enjoying the burning sounds, and dropped his head back and looked up at the stars.

As the constellations hypnotized him he took in the silence. He hated the thoroughfare he lived by, one of the longest in the world, save for this specific few brief hours. During this time of the night the traffic was gone. There were no sounds coming from the bar beside the street, there were no buses no cars, the drunks had cleared out and the street was silent. It was as if the road had finally found a moment to rest.

Someone cleared their throat down below, startling Kyle from his wandering mind. He looked down to the building beside his, the twin of his apartments, and found that a man in a suit was sitting in a plastic chair below. The smoke burned his eyes for a moment, it had been thrown into his face when his head shifted, but when they refocused the man had aged.

No. There was more to it. The suit was different. But the man was smoking just the same as Kyle, so he thought the guy must be ok, and returned to the stars. After a moment the chair shifted, and the man stood. Kyle dropped his head again, drawn by the motion and the unusual hours of the new resident, only to discover the man had been replaced by a woman.

She was staring at him with the tips of her gloved fingers gently touching her jaw line, and her opposite hand supporting her elbow. The cigarette was not too far from her ear, but now stuffed into an opera length holder that wavered slightly.

“Have you lived here long?” Kyle asked, feeling the staring may somehow be offensive to her.

But she didn’t reply, and only stared. He was perplexed by her gaze and the fact that she could stand here in the falling snow. It was so cold that he needed a sweater beneath his long wool overcoat but she simply stood there staring in her thin evening dress, and elbow length gloves.

Then she blurred. The entire form of the woman shifted becoming similar to a shadow, only to return to solid. The woman was gone and replaced by the agent.

Kyle dropped his head back again to look up at the sky. The snow fell against his face but there were no clouds, only stars. Nothing here was right.

When he looked down again a screeching siren filled the air and the agent was gone.

The TV was running above the empty chair in front of him, and one of the real life cop shows was running on the screen. The volume was blaring sending the sound of the police siren all through his living room.

 

The tire iron hit the pavement with a loud clang while Kyle looked at his hands. The officer was laying on the street head hidden in the dark and Kyle was trying to not think about what he had just done. He wanted to move. He wanted to run but he could only stare.

“This is wrong. This is all wrong.” He muttered as his hands shook uncontrollably.

This was different than the agent. He had no choice with the agent. But this was different. He didn’t mean to kill this man, just wanted to incapacitate him. But he could still feel the drying blood on the outside of his fingers.

Somehow his hand found its way to the inside of his coat and dug out a cigarette, moved its way to his mouth and gently placed the filter there. The lighter also magically did its job with no command either, just leapt into his hand and worked its way to the tip. He realized that he could taste a small amount of blood. His careless fingers coated the filter with the downed officer’s blood.

Kyle spit the cigarette as he threw up.

Reviews

[Mockingbird]

seemed very trippy...then all of a sudden snapped right back to the present, which by this time confused me. i guess it's because it had been a couple days. there is much acuity in the details. builds suspense. now this sudden turn of events. still readin...

[.]

Wow! This was completely unexpected and unpredictable. I'm wondering if Kyle just hallucinated about the old man who seemed like the agent and then a woman.

The second paragraph is an amazingly poetic one. "It was as if the road had finally found a moment to rest." is an infinitely poetic line.

Excellent work, Kiefer. You're a very gifted poet and writer.