Only Human

My inspiration for this was seeing a bus hurtling itself down the street. Ironically it was during the daytime, not the nighttime.

There is an apartment. Inside is a wide-screen digital television across from a fancy leather couch that has the capability of fitting more than five asses at a time but is taken up by only one, a 28-year-old David, who, wearing a black cotton sweater and a pair of buckle-trimmed leather loafers, spins a pool of blood red wine cupped within his polished fingers. There’s nothing like mud or mustard here, for everything is solid, defined, and rigid, leaving no room for questions or doubt.  

This David sets his loafer-clad feet atop his coffee table. He isn’t comfortable, but the elegance is enough. His eyes follow the nobodies on the television screen until a commercial comes up. David impatiently sets his glass down and reaches for the remote, just as the tip of his highly polished shoe spins the glass of wine the wrong way and he is left with a slowly spreading pathogenic-like stain on the carpet.

In that instance a curse word breaks the air. Perfection, gone. The lie has been caught, the room is ridiculous, and absurdly, the only thing alive is the television screen. But David ignores all this; all he cares about is the nonsolid breath that has been expelled across the room, the undefined liquid wine corrupting his solid carpet.

“Every time,” David mutters angrily to himself.

(Did you spill something, dear?)

“No, no everything’s fine.”

He goes into the fluorescent kitchen searching for a stain remover.

(You want something to eat?)

“Nah, I’m not hungry.” Tippy-toes and fingers locate the Tide hiding in the back of the cabinet. David returns to the carpet, cleaner in hand. Then he takes a long look at the Tide in his polished fingers and decides he must leave.

Once out of the apartment, David is cold. He’s incomplete without his burgundy-colored thick scarf that was lovingly hand-knitted and given to him a few Christmases back by who is now an only friend named Michelle. But David strolls on anyways—the city is alive in the nighttime quiet, stirring between sparks of electric tranquility and the small glow of forgotten cigarettes lying like desperate bugs across the bottom of graffiti concrete.

            Now that he’s out and exposed for the whole city to see (albeit no one is there in this late hour), David finds that he can’t pretend anymore. He walks. As he walks, internal sweat grows like mustard. Like mud. David hears himself breathing louder, walking heavier, making human noise so that maybe someone in one of the millions of apartments lining this nocturnal, lonesome street would come out and away from their obnoxious wine glasses and atrocious leather couches and pointless television screens, would come out to see a rich man.

            Then finally, real noise. David hears a car coming from behind. He turns in relief just as a bus roars on past him, its wheels hurtling itself forward as its butt spouts chemical gas. The bus is empty, its LED suns illuminating hollow shells of seats like a plastic purple ice cube tray. David finds himself walking faster after this bus, until the city earth rolls and rolls itself into a blur under his buckle-trimmed leather loafers. Someone human is inside.

A stop sign. Good.

David hurries now to catch up to the bus; he steps into wet black puddles lined with fluorescent stripes, leaving his loafers dripping with hollow liquids. Someone human is inside. His shadow falls forward and backward like an eerie tap dancer David who will dance to get everything. As he runs, passing from contaminated blacktop to illuminating yellow streetlight, the burgundy scarf flies off his neck, the scarf he had forgotten to wear. Because he has to catch up—someone human is inside.

The bus is about to turn the corner, but David has only one thought: to catch up to it, to catch up to the thing driving inside who doesn’t know what harm he is doing to the world by pushing his foot down harder on that pedal. Someone human is inside. As David’s breath grows shallow, as every bit of dust in the gushing nocturnal air seems to shatter his calves like rocks, as his lungs scream, he still does not have the will to stop.

But the bus turns the corner, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that, for the driver does not expect anyone to get on at this late hour. After all, he’s only human.

David finally ends his chase, only to find his thighs burning and his calves weak. No one has stirred or walked out to see the rich man during the entire journey, no one seems to care for Homeric tales, because they all prefer their couches and dainty wine and television screens, and David returns like a thin stick figure to his apartment, staring with hatred at his door at the top of the stairs. Before entering, he catches his reflection in one of the black puddles that line the cracked sidewalk—an oh-so-tired face.

He smiles at himself.

Inside the apartment, everything is the same. The carpet stain is now dry like contaminated blood; it has become solid and permanent—it will never be cleaned away now. The television is still on and alive. The television. David walks toward it slowly, his eyes focused suspiciously on the screen.

(Is that you, darling?)

“Yes,” David says.

Author's Note

What do you think?