3916 words (15 minute read)

Take These Broken Wings. Please.

I won’t keep you in suspense. I survived the encounter with my job intact, and I just got finished telling Sam all about it over dinner.

Okay, not over dinner, over the phone while I ate. She might have been eating as well, but it was 8:30 PM so, maybe she’d already eaten. But it was as close to a dinner date as we’re ever gonna get.

I think Peter was hoping this would be the straw that broke the netherbeast’s back in terms of my continued employment with the factory, and that’s why he had Bibi come with him. However, the more the meeting went on, the more it became obvious that he wasn’t in charge, here. Not for this, anyway.

The man in the white suit was in charge. I still don’t know his name, but he introduced me to Agent Neil Provenza. That’s Mr. Mister’s real name. But I’ve already forgotten it, so he’s Mr. Mister. The man in the white suit does not work for or with Mr. Mister. I’m still not certain who he does work for, but I think he’s involved with the factory, on a level that I’ve never dreamed existed. Or, as you might call it, the Board of Directors. Somehow the factory even having such a Board never occurred to me.

“This man,” said White Suit, indicating Mr. Mister. “Has been sniffing around the building for several days now, and you are the first person he spoke to.” I glared at Mr. Mister. Why in the name of Hell would he choose me to get dragged into this drama? Whatever drama that might be? “He won’t tell me what the two of you are up to, but I get the impression that you’re working on something together. Would you care to tell me what that is?”

The phrase “I rolled my eyes” is one that I find cliched and do not like to use. So I won’t use it. But I did do it. Hell, I think I rolled my whole face. If there is one thing I hate, it’s when people presume upon me. This is why I surround myself with guys like Soup and Chucky, who do nothing but presume upon my patience, friendliness, hospitality, sanity and concern for their well-being or even continued existence. Mr. Mister had crossed a line with me, presuming that I was willing to help him, going as far as to implicate me as his accomplice in...whatever he was doing. Fuck. That. Guy.

“I might as well tell you,” I said. I heaved a dramatic sigh and looked at Mr. Mister with what I hoped was a longing look. “This man is the father of my children. I have been begging him to come see them. My babies miss their papa.” I placed my hand lovingly on his. “Won’t you please come home, Scott? I’ve been so desperately lonely...”

“Mr. Berry believes himself a professional comedian,” broke in Peter. He shifted his skeletal frame and wiped his papery brow as Mr. Mister rapidly pulled his hand from mine. “If you seek a serious answer, I suggest adding an illicit threat. It seems the only way to persuade him to cooperate.”

“Oh, I hardly think we’re at that level just yet,” said White Shit. Oops, typo. Actually, you know what? I’m gonna leave it as written. He kinda deserves it. “For one thing, I doubt either man here is aware of the fact that there is little they could say that I don’t already know. I’m aware that our official-seeming friend here is Agent Neil Provenza, though what agency he works for is probably best not mentioned at the moment. I know that he and Mr. Berry here have never met, and I know that Agent Provenza is here looking for a man that he believes might be within this factory. What I want to know is how much of that he told you, Mr. Berry.”

At that, I began to break out in a bit of a cold sweat. Honestly I was starting to wish this was indeed the formal firing I’d been expecting. White Suit’s words contained the very illicit threat he said wasn’t necessary. He seemed to suspect that Mr. Mister had shared some information with me that I shouldn’t be privy to, and if I shouldn’t have been privy to it, but was, what was the next step?

I consoled myself that Mr. Mister and I had only had a brief conversation, and that I had told him nothing, and he certainly hadn’t told me anything. He had only shown me someone’s photo, asked if I had seen him, told me he was at the center of a highly delicate government case involving corruption on the highest level and oh sweet hot buttered fart tacos.

There was only one way out of this. Alright, there was only one potential route to leaving this building with all my parts still together and functioning as they were now. I had to lie.

Just a little bit. “I don’t know this guy at all,” I said. ”In fact I only heard his name just now. He spoke to me just long enough yesterday to confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that his CPU isn’t exactly to spec. He tried to show me a photo, I didn’t recognize the person in it, and when he was unable to verify his identity, he left. I had fervently hoped that would be the last I ever saw it him, but it appears fate has dealt me a cruel hand.”

White Suit stared hard at me, and for the first time, I stared back. I didn’t like what I was looking at. I liked it less than Peter Dyck, and I loathe Peter Dyck. This guy looked almost reptilian, and his gaze upon me was like that of a predator sizing up his next meal. He was clearly searching my face for signs of guilt, and I felt guilty as hell to an absurd level. Then, of all people, Peter leapt to my defense.

“You mean this has nothing to do with his performance, or perhaps running a side business out of the IT department?” he sputtered. I realized that he, like I, had assumed that I was being called into this room because of something I had done, and that this would be his opportunity to finally let me go. Dyck wasn’t the guy who’d called this meeting, and he’d been told nothing about it. This was White Suit’s game, and he had probably only asked the head of my department to be there as a formality.

Looking at White Suit, dozens more questions filled my head. Who was he? What position did he hold in this factory? Why was he so tall? Even sitting he towered over everyone else. What was his name? Did Peter know him?

“All of those issues are your department, Mr. Dyck,” said White Suit. Peter looked humorously irked at being addressed by his name. “I have little to no interest in such matters.” He stood. Good God, he was tall. I swear he was over eight feet. Or maybe my own growing fear of him was adding to his height.

“For the moment,” he said, his eyes continuing to bore into me. “I am satisfied that you can return to your duties. As for you, Agent Provenza,” he turned his abominable gaze onto Mr. Mister. “I hope to see less of you around here, or I’m afraid there will end up being less of you to see.”

Wow, that was bad. I mean, I’ve heard better threats from my super, and this guy was some grand high muckity-muck in an evil factory. That was the best he could come up with?

I stood, ready to go back to work, and suddenly White Suit didn’t seem so tall. Oh, he still towered over me, and everyone else in the room, but now his height was probably closer to about six foot six, or at least something more in line with what I considered human.

“Well, I guess I had better get back to work,” I said. “Nice meeting you all.”

“There is still the matter of your tardiness,” said Peter through gritted teeth. “In fact, I think you and I are overdue for a one-on-one.”

“I get that,” I said. “Right now we’re kinda swamped. I’ve got three USB hard drives that have grown legs and refuse to allow themselves to be plugged in, plus a couple of towers that fused themselves to each other. And that’s just me.”

“All the more reason why you should have been there on time!”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I take my late arrival very seriously, and this is why I have to return as soon as I can and make up for all the lost time.” I stared at him, at Bibi, and the rest of those gathered, and let my comment sink in. There wasn’t much they could say about it.

Without another word I strode from the room and made my way back to the dark hallway and the IT room. I paused for a moment and stared into the black, wondering if whatever was down there would be friendlier than Peter Dyck, and momentarily considered giving myself over to its dark embrace, but before I could, I was interrupted.

“Dude, thanks for playing along back there.”

Scoop out my brain with a melon-baller. It was Mr. Mister.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said.

The look on Mr. Mister’s face, which I could barely see in the dim light from the office door, turned deadly serious. “You’re right,” he said. His voice was hushed, like I’d hit on something profound just by reminding him that he wasn’t supposed to be in the building. “I’m not. But I can’t leave. No matter how much I might want to.”

“Sure you can,” I said. “I’ll even walk you back to the exit if you need me to.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “And I think you know it. Listen, what they said about me back in there is true. The people I work for...” He paused and swallowed. “I’m in trouble two different ways. I wasn’t supposed to take this assignment, but now I have it, and it’s...well, it’s not going well. And that’s a problem because there’s so much riding on this. I can’t screw this up. For my sake, for yours, for everybody’s. I need friends on this. I need help.”

I shook my head. “Buddy, did you ever choose the wrong guy for that. I don’t even really know what’s going on in my own life. I don’t have time or the inclination to help you solve all your problems. As far as I’m concerned, you brought all this on yourself.”

“But that’s just it!” he blurted. “I didn’t! I’m as much a victim of circumstances here as you are! I knew about this town before I was sent here, and I said I didn’t want to go, but here I am. And now I can’t get out!”

I ran a hand through my hair and hoped the thing at the other end of the hallway was about to wrap me up in its fetid grip and pull me into its infernal realm for all eternity. “You and me both, dude. Listen, I really do need to get back to work. And you...well, I can tell you what you need to do. At the end of the exit ramp, go left. Bye.”

I ducked into the IT office and slammed the door. Patch looked up from his call, annoyed, and Karl briefly shot me a finger, and I felt immediately better. Life was back to normal. Or at least as normal as life at the factory ever is.

And that’s where I ended my story to Sam over the phone. 

“Wow,” she said. You need to understand, in the factory town my story is about the equivalent of, say, you telling your spouse about a big wreck you saw on the way home from work. Sam was impressed, but not blown away.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m still not sure what it’s all about, but I think I’m better off not knowing. I’d really prefer never seeing Agent...Agent Mr. Mister again.”

She laughed. “Did you just call him ‘Mister Mister’? Like the rock group?”

“Heh, yeah,” I chuckled. “The first time I met him, he didn’t want to tell me his name, so he insisted on being called ‘Mister’. It just kinda stuck in my mind. More than his actual name did.”

“Well, as much as he might be a jerk,” she said. “He sounds like he’s not the bad guy in this scenario.”

“I don’t want there to be bad guys and good guys,” I said. “I don’t want the situation to escalate to that point.” Even if I was a little afraid that it already had.

“Well, even if it has, it sounds like the microscope is off you,” she said. “If I were you I’d just keep my head down until it all blows over.”

I laughed softly. “You’re right,” I said. She wasn’t right. The microscope wasn’t off me. I could feel it. And I don’t just mean the feeling that I was being watched, which, I should mention, was starting to return. No matter how I replayed the scene in my mind, nothing about that meeting today with White Suit, Mr. Mister, Peter Dyck and Bibi felt like it was the end of anything. It felt like it was just starting.

Spoiler alert: I hate being right.

“How’s the band going?” she asked. I let the heartbreakingly beautiful sound of her voice linger in the air for a moment before talking about something I didn’t want to talk about.

“It’s shit,” I said. “It always has been. On our best day we sound like a Black Veil Brides wannabe. I’m sorry, but if your dream was to marry a rock star, that’s not gonna be me.” My heart kinda froze in my chest for a moment. I hoped she would take that as a joke, but in my own ears it sounded like I was presuming something about our relationship that neither of us had ever hinted at before. I’d known her since we were kids, but I was firmly in the “I love you like a brother” camp with her, and it was more than I deserved. Had I blown it?

“Oh, darn my rotten luck,” she said, a smile in her voice. I exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I guess I’ll just have to marry some shop-owner and spend the rest of my life wearing an apron in his kitchen.”

“Ha ha,” I tried to sound jovial and not let her hear the combination of relief and guilt I was feeling. God, why couldn’t I say something to her? Anything? I was hopeless.

“Well, it’s getting late,” she said, ripping my heart in twain. “We should probably both go to bed. You don’t want to wake up late again, do you?”

“Who told you about that?” I asked.

“Derek,” she said. “He went through a few of his frustrations during lunch.”

Lunch?

It made too much sense. Derek was young, attractive, driven and seemed as much as anyone in town did to have a future. Much more so than a nerd nearing 40 who’d never risen higher in his chosen career than entry-level Information Technology. Why wouldn’t she have lunch with a guy like Derek? Why on earth was she even still talking to me? My two closest friends were a couple of low-lifes I didn’t even like. I was barely even good at my shitty-ass job. My boss and I didn’t really get along. The man with the power to fire me desperately wanted to do so. Suddenly I felt like a total tool just for being on the other end of the phone with her.

“You, um,” I began. Talk about eloquence. Poets got nothing on me, man. “You and Derek had...I mean, he talked about me?”

“Yeah, he was the only other person in the lunch room today,” she said. “My lunch was a bit late. I don’t think he meant to talk about you by name. He just mentioned that on top of some other things Peter’s being a jerk about, he had to cover for you coming in late.”

Welcome back, Cloud Nine. Somehow I maintain this utterly hopeless belief that sooner or later Sam is going to realize that there are no other guys in town suitable for her so she might as well start dating the guy she’d friendzoned back in high school. The rational side of me knew it was never going to happen, but the rational side of me constitutes about six percent of my conscious thought. So, I maintained the fantasy, and these calls, two or sometimes three a week, where we just told each other about our days and cracked jokes did their best to keep that fantasy alive.

“Yeah,” I said. “Good old Derek, covering for me like that.”

“He’s a good guy,” she said, stabbing me in the aorta.

“Sure he is,” I agreed, because I’m a limpdicked jerk.

“Good night,” she said.

“I love nothing in this world more than I love you, and no matter whether or not you will ever be mine, I will remain yours until the day I die,” I would have said if I had any balls to speak of. Instead, I said “Good night, Samwise,” calling her by my little pet name that only I ever used. I let the fact that I had a private pet name for her be a stand-in for being anyone who actually meant anything to her.

I hung up the phone and reflected on my relationship with Sam, as I did every time I talked to her. This time, since I’m already over-sharing, I might as well let you all in on it, as well. Here are the facts:

Sam and I became friends in Junior High. At the time I was not emotionally mature enough to realize what kinds of feelings I was having when she and I would ride bikes together or play video games at mine or her house. I didn’t know what I was feeling when I started dating another girl in high school, Janet, and it kinda felt like I was cheating on Sam. I didn’t really understand why I was so jealous of Mark Deutsch, the guy she started dating soon after. After all, I had a girlfriend, and one who seemed very serious about me. Janet was at the point of doodling her first name with my last name attached to it, and I admit, I was okay with that, to the point where I lost my virginity to her, which I promptly told Sam about. I don’t know if I told her because I wanted her to be jealous or because I felt guilty. Maybe a bit of both. Her response confirmed to me that I was not hers and never would be. She congratulated me and told me a week later that she and Mark had consummated their relationship as well, and she was starting to wonder if he was The One.

It wasn’t long after that that both Sam and I ended our respective relationships, and I honestly don’t know where Janet is today. She used to work at the factory. I wonder if she was one of the disappearances.

Mark owns and operates the local convenience store, and a couple of years ago, he married Jim Harsley, the former star quarterback when we were in high school, so I’m pretty sure he’s not all broken up about not being with Sam anymore. 

Sam had a couple of boyfriends after Mark. I had one girlfriend after Janet. I don’t remember her name, or her face, but I did have a pregnancy scare with her that I sometimes still have nightmares about. No, I’m not exaggerating. In the dreams the baby is incredibly pissed off that it never existed.

When the last girl and I broke up, some ten years ago, I have remained perpetually single with the exception of an on-again, off-again purely physical relationship with Sally Knuckles, who feels like my right hand and, if I close my eyes, looks like Sam. Sam has never had anyone serious since Mark, and I admit, I have no idea why. This is probably why the idea of her having lunch with a guy like Derek Waddell was decidedly threatening to me. I mean, Sam was the greatest thing in my life, and she wasn’t even in my life, or at least, not by any stretch the way I wanted her to be.

Ah, well. Time to quit feeling sorry for myself and go to bed. I stood and stretched by the window to my living room and froze.

There was someone on the front lawn of my building. From my floor, I get an almost balcony-like view of the lawn, and this person was just standing there, looking at me through the window. Now, the next thing I did was so stupid that I could practically hear the horror-movie audience watching me and yelling “Don’t do that, you idiot! God, how stupid can you be?” But when you live in a horror movie, you don’t realize you’re in a horror movie, so you do the stupid things, even if you know they’re stupid. I walked over to the window and leaned against the glass, trying to get a better look at who it was. 

The figure dashed off back into the shadows of the trees on the other side of the road. I watched for a few seconds, and breathed a sigh of relief. Just some local prowler, and we definitely get enough of those. I wondered for a moment if it was one of the neighborhood kids, and decided I didn’t care. I turned from the window and made my way to my bedroom, deciding I was not going to think about night prowlers and think about Sam instead. I might even think about her again a few minutes after that.

Suddenly my doorbell rang.

I confess, I was stupid again. I didn’t connect it to the night prowler. I thought through numerous people who might be calling on me at this hour, thinking it could be anyone from Soup or Chucky, to White Suit, to Mr. Mister or even Peter Dyck. It might even be Sam, assuming we slid into a parallel universe where she would decide she had to see me after our phone call.

But it wasn’t any of those people. It was Ferd.

“Uh,” I began. “Hey, Ferd. What are you doing he...”

That’s as far as I got before Ferd slammed an ether-smothered handkerchief over my nose.