TWO

C.U.R.E. is the largest corporate entity in the United States. C.U.R.E. stands for The Coalition of United Response Engineers. They’re not a coalition so much as a massive, privately owned paramilitary organization, and surely no one, not even anyone who works for C.U.R.E., really knows what a “response engineer” is supposed to be. They are ready for war, outfit with armored vehicles, chemical weapons, rocket launchers; if it was made for a combat theatre, C.U.R.E. has it, and in surplus. Their slogan for years was “Building Security,” which is pretty shaky ground for claiming to be any sort of engineer. Last year they changed their slogan to “Building Liberty.” Because language doesn’t matter.

My client today is planning to go into the military. When I ask him why, he says he wants to feel like he’s “part of something.” He’s off the charts on artistic ability tests, he’s introverted, and his personality measures all point toward something creative and unconventional. I try to push him toward visual art, but his parents (understandably) object. There is no art culture anymore. Very few colleges even offer fine art as a major, although there are still some dedicated art schools out there. When I suggest art, I’m encouraged to see his eyes light up, just a flicker. I dig a little deeper and find that he paints, likes photography, and can draw very well; he has an interest in graphics and filmmaking.

His father was a lawyer with a ceramics hobby. Was.

His mother was a speech-language pathologist and a former actor. Was. Former.

I ask my client to write down some ideas for potential careers. What do you want to be after your service? I pass him a sheet of paper. His parents fidget, his mother wrings her thin hands, her dry skin makes a brushing sound. The young man has a smile on his face as he eagerly writes for about thirty seconds. He passes the paper back over to me. Everything he wrote down has to do with C.U.R.E., except the last line which reads simply: “hedge funds.”

His parents smile at me, expectantly.

****

There are homeless men on each corner of the Grand and State intersection. They sing their pleas.

“Have a blessed day. Have a safe night.”

“Help me out today, today. Help me out if you can.”

“C’anyone help me getta sandwich today, c’anyone help?”

“Spare something, anything. Spare something, anything.”

There’s a craft to it, like they must get together and role-play, share best practices. Each chants or sing-songs for help in such a way that the cadence sticks with you, you find yourself repeating it during the commute.

“Have a blessed day. Have a safe night.”

“Have a blessed day. Have a safe night.”

His sound stays in your head, you picture him, his vocal quality, you can see his face. This is no accident. It’s a tactic. A slow-burn on your sympathy.

“Spare something, anything. Spare something, anything.”

As I walk past these four men, I notice that they’re all unarmed.

“Help me out today, today. Help me out if you can.”

A shrill tone registers in the back of my mind.

“MOVE OUT OF THE STREET”

I stare at nothing in particular.

“MOVE OUT OF THE STREET”

I feel a hand on my back, and I’m pushed, very roughly, to the sidewalk. Without realizing it, I had stopped in the middle of the intersection. A Chicago police officer swooped in from behind and pushed me out of the street. Really kind of him, actually, as it’s not really his job to keep me from getting hit by a car. And I probably wouldn’t have, as it’s mostly driverless cars downtown and those don’t (often) hit people, but still.

I thank the police officer, an older black man, for helping me. He puts a grandfatherly finger on my sternum and gives a quick hard poke with his fingertip. It’s the first time anyone’s touched me in weeks.

All around me, the buzz of drones. Messenger drones, most likely, considering the sound. But while I hear them in all directions I can't see any of them and that always makes me uneasy. Hopefully they're messenger drones.

I enter to the subway station at Grand and State, pass the security checkpoint and head down into the mezzanine level. The entire floor is an advertisement for a health insurance provider. The picture is that of a laughing elderly couple and the tagline is “Set Yourself Free.” I walk across the ad and find, down in one corner, a box of fine print. The first phrase is “Restrictions may apply.”

I walk down the stairs to the platform, and there’s an ad plastered all over the opposite side of the tunnel. It’s for a soft drink. The tagline is “Be You.” Behind me I see other ads, the same insurance provider that was being advertised upstairs. “Set Yourself Free.” I stare at the ground. There are ads there for a debt relief agency. “Free Yourself.” I look at the ceiling. A phone provider. “Be Free.” A train pulls in going the other direction. All across it a car ad. “That’s Freedom For You.”

I close my eyes, and hear, on the southbound platform, a busker. He plays the guitar beautifully.

...don’t think twice it’s alright...

...you just kind of wasted my precious time...

I feel a tickle on my hand. I know without even opening my eyes that it’s a roach, and really I’d rather not look at it, so I just flick my wrist to get rid of it.

“Hey!”

I open my eyes to a flutter of fabric. A woman standing near me flails her arms. I look at her sheepishly, curious.

“You just flicked that roach in my hair, fuckhead!”

I apologize, but she doesn’t care. She continues to hurl insults at me until I walk away from her. Best to walk away. With women, it’s always hard to tell where their weapons might be.

I walk to the end of the platform.

Be You.

Be Free.

A train hurtles into the station. It’s mostly empty.

I step onto the train and it’s strangely cold aboard. I feel an instant numbness in my fingertips and my toes feel bathed in ice. I’m underdressed. C’est la vie.

I sit and pull out a book. High fantasy novel, sword-and-sorcery, the kind they don’t write anymore. At Clark and Division, a man sits across from me, wearing a lot of clothing that’s dirty and far too big. Or maybe it’s that he’s too small. He sniffs loudly, several times in succession. He coughs. He coughs again, louder. He wants me to look at him so he keeps making abrupt noises. In this sense, the book is strategic. I am actually reading it, but it gives me a fixed point to focus on, in order to avoid looking up. I intentionally dress threadbare during my commute, jacket with holes, fraying cuffs, scuffed boots. Employed and unarmed is a really dangerous combination and I don’t want to give anything away. I try to blend in, so in actuality I’m dressed a lot like he is. Over-sized clothes, worse for wear. I don’t know what this guy would want with me (not that he necessarily needs to want anything), but he keeps at it, keeps writhing, making loud, throaty noises. He jerks his foot up off the floor, almost like he aims to kick the book out of my hands. In that moment I’m weak, I flinch, and he sees it.

“Hey.”

I say nothing.

“Hey, I read that book. Pssht. I. Read. That. Book.”

I catch myself shifting uncomfortably. Nonchalant, not too quickly, not too slowly, I put my right hand under my jacket, enough to raise some doubt as to whether or not I’m carrying. He calls my bluff.

“You ain’t got nothin’ under there. I seen you before.”

This catches me off guard. It’s rare anyone recognizes you. I look up at him. I recognize him, too, but I’m not sure from where. I look right into his eyes. One of his eyes is not like the other. It almost look’s like a snake’s eye. Or maybe a fish’s. His normal eye twinkles and a grin spills across his face. The train stops at North and Clybourn and he acts casual. No one exits the train; one old woman gets on the train. She has a huge browning bandage on her cheek.

“Listen. You live off the Brown Line, right? Albany Park? Ish? Nice area. Nice area. I got some friends up there. You should drop in on us sometime.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled business card.

JV

Unarmed Citizens

IXS

“I’m gonna tell you something. It’s all you need to know. Kedzie. Kedzie Brown.” I look at the card. Kedzie Brown? He senses my confusion. “That’s all you need to know. Til next week. Next week it won’t do shit for you.”

The doors open at Fullerton, and he’s gone. I look down at the old woman with the bandaged cheek. She has her hands cupped near her face, and she appears to be whispering into them. I watch her, all the way up to Belmont Station. Whispering into her hands. Once or twice she holds her hands closer to her ear and laughs. At Belmont, the doors open and I get off to wait for the Brown Line train. As I exit the train, out of the corner of my eye I see the old woman lower her hands to the floor of the car. A large roach crawls from her hands and out the door, crawling down the side of train and disappearing underneath. The woman laughs and looks around.

According to the schedule, the Brown Line is supposed to operate every 6-8 minutes at rush hour, but the train takes 35 minutes to arrive. In the meantime, six other Red Lines come through, but the platform remains fairly uncrowded because not many people take the train anymore, not since last year’s bombing on the Blue Line. A bombing that still was never proved to be a bombing. An elevated train sitting at the Damen Blue Line Station inexplicably exploded, killing over 400 people on the train and the street. There were investigations, obviously (supposedly? allegedly?) and it was determined to be a bombing, but there was no evidence to support that conclusion other than it being a convenient explanation for a sudden explosion. Like any other event resembling terrorism, it would have had only a brief impact on commuter behavior, except for the fact that it also led to an outbreak of paranoid skirmishes on trains and buses, multiple firefights daily sparked by “suspicious behavior.” More people began taking driverless cars to work, or working from home.

I’m freezing by the time the Brown Line pulls up. It stops and the operator gets off the train. She leaves the doors open, which won’t help me get any warmer. I get on and sit with my book. I open it up but I’m not really reading. Instead, I try to remember why I live here, in such a place as Chicago. I’m originally from Columbus, Ohio, which only barely exists as a city anymore itself. All of my relatives have left Columbus and are now living in small towns around central Ohio; my parents moved to a place called Plain City. Whenever I talk to them, they talk about how worried they are about me, living in the city, “that city,” how scary it is here, how unpredictable. But really, it’s just as dangerous where they are, maybe even more so. Violent clashes in small towns don’t make national news but they’re happening all the time. The city is dangerous but there’s a larger percentage of unarmed persons, so I have a sense of belonging here, at least, that I wouldn’t have in rural Ohio. More of my people here. My mother would not tolerate me leaving the house unarmed in Plain City.

More random crime happens in the cities but more calculated crime happens outside of them. Not sure which is worse.

If I listen carefully, I can hear a woman screaming. But not from the street. It seems to be coming from the sky. The scream causes me to look up from my book, and I realize that it’s gotten dark. I’m still at Belmont. I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here. There’s no one on the train with me. I step off the train and walk up the platform to the front car. It’s empty. The operator never came back, or her replacement never showed. Halfway down the platform there is a middle-aged white man with glasses screaming obscenities in a gravelly voice. As he screams he swings his limbs, and there’s something disturbing about the way he moves. I can’t be certain, but I believe I hear the sound of jackhammering. Pounding.

I walk down into the station, hoping to find a customer service rep, but there’s no one in the kiosk. I don’t suppose there ever is.

I look out to the street and there’s a constant stream of pedestrians going both directions. Most of them are on the sidewalks but many are in the streets. A few driverless cars crawl through, creepily. I step out into the mass. I’m want to stick to main roads, so I’ll take Belmont to Lincoln, and I’ll take that up north, then Wilson over into Albany Park. All told it’ll be about four miles, which my legs and feet can take no problem, but long walks take a toll on my nerves. These neighborhoods are all constantly changing. You never know which streets, which blocks, which buildings are shady. Usually, keeping to main roads is the better bet, more people but also better behavior, less of an x-factor. No one wants a firefight. Also, the police monitor most of the major intersections. Get away from the crowd and you’re more likely to run into C.U.R.E. sentries who are working a block or searching for someone. Or worse, you may run into a couple sentries who are bored.

As I walk along Belmont, everyone is eerily polite and quiet. I keep my head down. No eye contact, fewer ads, it’s more peaceful this way, although looking at the ground means seeing more roaches dashing around stepping feet, riding on hems. For every live one there are two dead ones, crushed into the concrete, and the only difference is that the live ones are FAST, almost unbelievably speedy, like they’re on six tiny ice skates. I reach the six-point intersection of Belmont, Lincoln, and Ashland. I turn north onto Lincoln, but as I’m crossing Ashland something happens right in the middle of the intersection. A young woman walks right into the middle of the six-point, pulls out a gun, and silently starts pointing it at all sides. The pedestrians all slow to a halt and watch her. She doesn’t say anything, but in the silence you can hear an odd sort of whimper. She points her gun north, northwest...south, southeast...east, west...all around. I recognize her: the teller from the bank.

A shrill sound.

“PUT YOUR FIREARM IN ITS HOLSTER”

She whimpers, her arm starts to slacken.

“PUT YOUR FIREARM IN ITS HOLSTER”

A shot rings out, I believe from the west. The woman stumbles and clutches at her neck. She points her gun at the sky and fires twice. She falls. The pedestrians erupt in applause. It’s completely unclear whether she was shot by Chicago Police or by a fellow commuter, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. She lies in the street, and everyone resumes moving, a tad quicker than before. Except me, I pause and try to remember her name. I really want to remember her name. I try to remember a nametag, a placard, a business card, anything.

I walk up Lincoln through North Center. At the corner of Montrose and Lincoln a pack of young men offer me protection. $20 per mile, they’ll walk with me. (Some people have metal detectors in their eyes, they can just look right at you and know instantly whether or not you’re armed.) I’m rattled by the teller’s death, so I take them up on it. A teenage boy, probably 16 or 17, hops forward and slaps me five, he walks with me north on Lincoln, hand on his weapon.

“Where to, homes?

“Albany Park.

“My moms is over there, like Kimball and Ainslie, yeah?

“Sure, that’s over there.

“Buncha Arabs, you know? Fuckin Persians and shit.

“What’s your name?

“Des.

“Des, thanks for walking with me.

“Your money, homes.

“Yeah.”

Des and I turn west on Wilson and walk toward my neighborhood. Most of the houses have darkened windows, but a few have people standing in them, watching us pass. Des is extremely friendly in his way, talks a lot about his family, growing up in this area and watching it change. Talks about stories his mother told him, the neighborhood used to be full of young families. The churches functioned as churches. People used to canoe down the river, he says, “Which is crazy, like, I’m not about to get in that shit. Can’t even swim.” I tell him that I can’t either, and we bond a little over that.

When we reach the bridge, I’m thankful he’s with me; we pass some characters who very likely would have created a problem for me, but with Des they give passage with no issues. We reach Kedzie, and hear bells just off to the north, red lights flash, and the candy-cane gates close. Now that I’m almost home, the Brown Line is running again. The northbound train I was sitting on an hour and a half ago creeps across Kedzie into the station. I’d be upset, but then, who knows if I would have survived the ride. You just never know, any choice you make that doesn’t get you killed was a pretty decent one...or at the very least one you shouldn’t regret. Tonight, I got some exercise and got to hang out with Des. There’s your silver lining.

“You got cash, right?

“Some. You don’t take credit?”

Des holds up a mobile device, suggesting that he does take credit. “Been dickin’ around with me though. Won’t connect.

“Yeah.

“They say they gonna fix it but.”

He clicks his teeth.

“Who’s they?”

Des can’t help but smile a little. He’s still young.

“You got cash, right?

“Like I said, I have some.

“How much you got?

“I got 20.

“Bullshit.

“That’s what I got.

“Fare’s 40. 20 a mile.

“14 blocks isn’t two miles.

“You fuckin’ with me?

“Cash: I only got 20. Take credit you’ll get it all.”

Des shuts up, just shakes his head, his jaw tightens. On the final block, we walk past the old high school. Des points at the now-abandoned school building with his gun. He fires once. Under the echo of the blast, I hear a tinkling of glass.

“Can you not fire your weapon, please?”

If you listen closely enough, you can hear the sound of thousands of legs. Skitter-scuttling. Scattering. Disperse.

Des puts his gun away without a word. All of a sudden, as if magically, his credit app stops dickin’ with him and connects, and so I hand him a credit card. He taps it to his mobile device twice in quick succession and the payment is approved. “Thanks, Des.” He nods and walks away, checking his shoulders as he goes.

I travel the last half a block on my own as Des heads back the way we came. In the distance I hear light pops. Could be guns. Could be fireworks. Could be someone watching a movie. Playing a video game. I hold my key-card and stand outside my door just another moment. I hear a whirring sound, mechanical in the sky. It’s a strange sound, seems to have layers to it, a shrieking and whooshing. I look up and see a passenger jet flying overhead toward O’Hare. It’s really quite low. Then, another follows, far too closely. I let out a heavy sigh and enter my building. I’m saddened to see that an ad has been put up in the space where the mailboxes used to be. A fast-food chain: “Because You’re You!” A cockroach crawls across an image of a cheeseburger.

Inside my apartment, Larry waits patiently. As soon as I walk in and turn on the light he’s right there. Dependable Larry. He’s a good cat.

I think the teller’s name was Anne.

****

I spend most of my night watching viral videos. I sign on to a well-trafficked forum where videos are shared and discussed, criticized, picked apart. Tonight, I’m spending a lot of time on so-called “ghost videos.” They have titles like:

SPRITIT *COT* ON TAPE (REAL!!!!)

and

gosht in my parent house scurry nsfw

and

SEROUSILY REAL POULTTRAGIST!!!!!! o_O

Most of them are obvious fakes. Editing tricks, lighting tricks, clever angles, some are just clearly actors in makeup. The footage is usually shaky and grainy, so you can’t ever get a clear look at whatever it is that the video is supposedly showing you. There are scared voices and swearing. Everything is very typical. There is one I come across, though, that has been largely overlooked. The hits are very low compared to every other video, probably because the actual watching of the video itself is very boring. In it, a group of teenagers break into this old sanitarium in Poland, and the reason they’re there in the first place is because they heard it was haunted and were dared to spend the night. There are specific rooms in the sanitarium they are meant to seek out, catch the experience on video as proof of their exploration and general balls. So, the video begins with them finding a way into the place and setting up shop in one of the offices. At first they walk around a little in the daylight, just running around, messing with shit, laughing, being kids. Then the sun starts to set, and their movements through the building slow. They take their time, inspect shadows. When night falls, they wander around the sanitarium with flashlights, which is already pretty spooky on its own, but the moment that gets me happens about 1/3 of the way through the video. It’s nightfall, and they reach the patients’ quarters. They walk into several rooms in succession, and each is completely empty save some debris. In one room there’s an old desk. In another, there’s a broken chair laying on its side. They inspect the chair, film it from all angles. Two legs are broken, and another looks splintered and ruined. While filming the chair, one of the boys in the hallway calls them all to attention, and they hurry out to look at what he’s looking at. Some sort of brown liquid on the floor. They talk about whatever it is, and something of an argument breaks out. Probably about what the brown liquid is or isn’t (the argument is in Polish and there are no subtitles.) One of the boys gets some of the brown liquid (more like goo, actually, it’s viscous) on his fingers and tries to get one of the others to smell it (or maybe eat it), chuckling all the time. And that’s when it happens. The moment that gets me. The kid holding the camera moves one room further down the hallway to continue the exploration, and in the next room there is quite clearly, quite obviously, quite no fucking around a bed in that room, and not just a bed, but an occupied bed. In that bed in that room in that sanitarium, there is what appears to be a person under bedding completely spotted and slick with filth. An arm hangs over the side of the bed, and he looks like he may be dead. The arm is so skinny, it seems like he must be a dummy or a doll. But then it moves. Not on camera, but it moves; one second the camera catches the hand fully open, it moves away and back a moment later, and the fingers are splayed differently, the thumb is tucked into the palm. But the teenagers don’t react. They don’t freak out. They don’t lower their voices. They don’t investigate. In fact, they don’t even seem to see it. The thumb, the person, maybe not even the bed. The camera only catches him for a few seconds when they first enter the room, and again for another glimpse as they film around the interior. And then they walk out. The video continues. They go further into the bowels of the sanitarium, film some rooms, some showers, some instruments, some evocative corners that are genuinely creepy, they scare themselves a few times, they hear some noises in the darkness, but all the while you’re watching it and thinking about that figure in the bed. And the broken chair that for some wordless reason fills me with dread when I look at it. Toward the end of the video, they walk back the way they came, toward the office, and on their way back they come through the same hall of patients’ quarters where they saw (or captured) the person in the bed. And then the coup de grâce: a clever filmmaker would likely give you just a peek at the bed on the way back through, maybe show that it isn’t there, or that it’s there but it’s empty now, just to bring the set piece full circle. But they do no such thing. They walk right past the door of the room without hesitation, as though there was nothing noteworthy in there. Nothing whatsoever. They get back to the office without incident and the video continues for another ninety seconds or so before just ending with no particular ceremony or closure of any kind.

Why would someone fake something like this? That’s the question I always have to ask myself. What’s the point? Just to show they could? Just to try to trick you? Trick everyone? All of the forums are preoccupied with more overt videos where the ghost in question could be easily observed, where contact is made. Objects fly across the room. An apparition, orbs of light. Shorter encounters, cut to the chase. Fake. Fake. Fake, everyone says. FAKE! The comment boards light up, the debate usually ends before it starts and devolves into name-calling, death threats. It’s a fake. It’s a fake.

But the comment boards for the sanitarium video are remarkably empty. Just 52 comments at the moment, and most of them are centered on how the video “isn’t scary” or “is looooong” or “is dum.” No mention of how the boys don’t react, no mention of how anti-climactic it is, no mention of how the video doesn’t seem to be trying to manipulate us in any way. There’s no tipping of the hand, no wink at the camera. I make a comment of my own. I could make my case, spend a few hundred or thousand words on why it might be genuine, but others would just flame it. Instead, I keep it simple:

“Pretty convincing.”

Before going to bed, I watch one more video. It’s the one my co-workers were watching, of the boys in Guatemala pushing the tire down the hill. People on the forums get very faux-scientific in their explanations of why it’s fake. The particulars of how vulcanized rubber bounces. The speed of the tire isn’t consistent. The line it follows is too straight given the unevenness of the slope. The signature of the splash isn’t quite right for the size of the tire. People go to great lengths to not believe in something.

****

I wake up in the middle of the night to a cramp in my leg. Thankfully, it’s not the same leg that cramped that morning. I rub my leg, remove my mask, drink some water, take two aspirin. My neighbors are yelling. Or someone is yelling outside. Or both. Larry is in bed with me, which is rare, he’s usually up and around overnight, looking out a window or running through the apartment. He’s sound asleep though, right here next to me. I put my hand on him and he stirs but doesn’t wake up. The moonlight paints a bar on my wall, changing the color of the paint to something it isn’t quite; normally it’s a dull beige, now it’s a crisp silver. In that shaft of light, I see one small dark shape.

A cockroach.

Its antennae wave grotesquely, but it remains still. They always say that if you see one cockroach in your home, it means there are hundreds, maybe thousands more. If there were 1,000 cockroaches for every 1 we see, then the earth might as well be made out of them. They’re everywhere. They stopped hiding, they don’t shrink from the light anymore. They’re stronger than they ever were, resistant to poisons, multiply at a faster rate. Their predators are dwindling, or have moved on to other sources of sustenance. We’re told that one day birds, centipedes, beetles, lizards, and toads all inexplicably stopped eating cockroaches. Wouldn’t go near them. Biologists, entomologists were all baffled. Animals that once fed on roaches were now turning up their noses, turning their backs, even cowering. And I understand. I do. I wouldn’t want to eat them. I don’t want to see them, or hear them, and I certainly don’t want them in my home, in my bedroom, I don’t want to feel them near me or catch them on my stuff. But they’re everywhere, they live everywhere and get in everywhere. And they’re such small things. So small and yet they now completely rule the ecosystem. Not only here in the city, or the U.S., but everywhere. Countless. Worldwide. And yet each one is an individual. I wonder if they can tell each other apart. They now live for years and years. Long enough to have generations. Family trees. Kingdoms.

The roach falls off the wall, out of the moonlight. I turn on my lamp and get out of bed. I have a hammer sitting on my bedside table, which I bring along. I find the roach near the wall. It lays on its back, unable to right itself. Its legs kick like crazy, trying to find something to grab onto, something with which to remedy its situation...anything would do. A balled-up receipt. A sock. My hand. But there’s nothing. It’s fallen onto a section of open floor between my bed and the wall, and it’s stranded. Eventually, it will give up trying to right itself and will instead curl up and play dead, waiting for someone to come along with a wad of tissues or a dustpan, patient, patient. They are calculating, smart, resilient, resourceful. They don’t need weapons, they have numbers. They don’t need to hunt, the whole world is their pantry. They don’t need protection, or drama, or money, or joy. They are perfect. They are, in their way, serene. Superior.

I try to take a step, but the cramp in my calf has made the muscle too weak, and I crumple down to the floor, landing on my hands and knees, inches from the roach. I look at it. This ugly, ugly thing. With its brown wings, its red face, it six spindly legs. I hear this little sound, like a wheezing chirp. It’s crying out. To me maybe, or to others of its brood. I hold the hammer above the roach. Sensing it there, the roach extends its six legs, trying to make contact with the hammerhead, stretching, stretching toward the ceiling. This could be its deliverance.

I raise the hammer slowly, and bring it down fast.

****