***
Buddy snapped the apron into shape and draped it around Numbers. He was getting just portly enough to have trouble fitting between the swivel chair and the counter with the mirror and the tools of his trade, and was winded already from his exertions. “Wash and wax with that haircut, boss?”
“May as well spring for the beauty treatment. If I die waiting for something to happen in this chair, just keep prettying me up for my pine box.”
“No problem.”
Jimmy kneeled to get to Numbers’ patent leathers with the shoeshine box. Numbers threw him two bits.
The quartet in the corner came out of retirement. “Let’s clean up our act, boys. Numbers has the best ear in the business,” the quartet maestro whispered. The group struggled to rein in their performance anxiety.
The ensemble fired up. Numbers tensed as someone hit an off note. Some apologies flew his way from the conductor. When they got it right on the second take, Numbers melted into the chair.
He had dozed off when Jimmy, having long finished with his shoes and departed, barged back in the barbershop.
“Numbers!”
Numbers startled at the sound of his name, realized he could holster his gun; it was just the kid, not a heads-up to shoot, roll, and cover.
“Help me blow up these balloons, will ya?” Embarrassed, dissembling, Jimmy added, “It’s my kid brother’s birthday. You know how kids are?”
Jimmy wasn’t fooling anybody; Numbers knew the balloons were for him. He was just shy of fifteen, but he was prone to these relapses to his younger years, possibly filling holes that needed filling on account of never having a real childhood. “How many?” Numbers held them out for him to count.
“Twelve!”
“Ten seconds a piece, I’d say. How many seconds is that, Jimmy?”
“Ah. . .”
Numbers shook his head. “Won’t reach detective that way.”
The balloon escaped his lips and flitted about the room to Jimmy’s delight. Jimmy didn’t catch that Numbers did it deliberately; he just ran laughing after the balloon.
Numbers deftly twisted the long thin balloons into shapely sculptures of trapped air.
About the fifth balloon or so, it happened.
Numbers’ stickman balloon came to life with a clown’s face, and sparred with Jimmy. It was a pretty good boxer, too.
Jimmy snuck a quick glance at Numbers. “What the. . . ?”
The clown kept taking on form and substance. His punches accordingly got harder, sending Jimmy flying, and making shambles of Buddy’s orderly countertops. To say nothing of the hair he’d swept into nice neat piles on the floor.
As the character etching in the clown’s face deepened, the menace the eyes and facial expressions were able to convey ratcheted up a notch as well. There wasn’t just Numbers’ hot air filling his insides anymore; it was more like staring into an abyss in the black pools of his eyes. Worse, the abyss peered back at him with a timeless evil that had been waiting however many eternities for a chance to be given shape, and a context with which to focus and direct that evil. And the fact that the clown, now entirely solid, was able to hover off the ground to maintain eye-level with Jimmy seemed doubly eerie. Maybe more so than his repeated ability to anticipate Jimmy’s next move.
YOU ARE READING
ESCAPE FROM THE FUTURE
Science FictionLess than forty years into the future, most of mankind has elected to upload themselves to digital nirvana, where they can live as many lives as they care to in parallel, in as many different fantasy worlds as they desire. A small percentage of hum...
