High Strangeness

Chapter Two

He needed to move. When Tim moved into the apartment the neighborhood was undergoing gentrification. The little businesses and the spray-painted murals were burned away and replaced with clean glass and white stone.

No one came. The stores closed. New businesses moved in and the spray-painted murals returned. New people came, they were younger and looked different from Tim. They dressed different and walked without purpose. They called to each other in the street and Tim kept his head down, defiant. Why couldn't they walk like him? Why couldn't they talk quietly on their phones and just go where they needed to go?

Probably living on welfare. Probably never contribute a cent.

He worked late. Tim worked late nearly six days a week now. He had a new boss, a younger boss. The new boss said everyone needed to do his or her share. Money was tight. No raises. A lot of senior people disappeared from his commute and a lot of new, young faces took their place.

So, Tim worked late. They needed to see his value. He was sure they did. He worked late nearly every night now, after all. The stairway to his third-floor apartment rattled. He sometimes grabbed the railings and stood still for several seconds, as if his grip would stop the metal staircase and concrete steps from collapsing into a heap. At the top, he could see no man's land.

No man's land was a meant to be a slice of nature, a little stretch of grass and a quaint bubbling creek between his apartment complex and the one next door. In reality, it was a stagnant stream choked with trash and dead tree limbs.

Tonight, Tim glimpsed movement in no man's land. In a patch of ground by the stream, bare and muddy, stood a circle of people. They wore heavy coats and their faces were wrong. They were wearing masks. The circle widened as the people stepped back. Tim couldn't make out the genders or race. There was just a circle of masked people. Two of them stepped forward, one in a plastic clown mask and the other wearing a rubber skull mask.

He could see their shoulders rise and fall and the faint wisps of breath in the cold air. A blade gleamed and one dove for the other. They fell to the ground, wrapped round each other. The scene was almost intimate.

Go inside, Tim thought. Go inside, what are you doing?

The one with the clown mask gasped and groaned, almost like a hiccup. He pulled himself in a fetal position. The one in the skull mask stood. Another from the circle, this one wearing a plastic Lone Ranger mask, walked to the figure on the ground and removed the mask. Through the swollen eye and bleeding nose Tim could tell it was a young man. Maybe this was one of the loud ones on the street, yelling in his phone and walking without purpose?

They descended on him. Tim gripped both hands on the railing. Were they stripping his clothes? Yes. But they were tearing at him. He saw more flashes, more blades reflecting the outside lights.

They killed the figure on the ground. Aside from grunts and exhausted breathing, they made no noise.

Go. Inside.

Lone Ranger mask nudged a man in a wolf mask. Wolf Man looked at Tim.

He sees me.

Wolf Man tilted his head slightly. Wolf Man pointed at Tim.

Tim backed to the door and struggled with his shaking hands to put the key in the lock. When he opened the door, he dashed inside. As he closed it, he saw there were no masked men in no man's land.

Tim washed his hands, turning the water hotter and hotter. He made sure the blinds were closed. He stood by the door for three minutes before he peeped through the hole. No one there. He stared at his phone.