Brevity

He was out walking. The destination or point of embarkment is not relevant. He raised his hand, and realized there was nothing in it. But he was expecting something to be there. And it was empty. His first suspect was his addled mind, his half-absent thoughts set to roaming - along with his physical self - under an unrelenting afternoon sun. Where the kiss of a breeze was precious. Where he walked slowly across spatterings of shade on the sidewalk, only a little slower. But the hand. There was nothing in it.

"I can tell you what was there."

This from a man sidling up alongside him. Only it is a strange voice: as though he were a talking animal, only here it is coming from the mouth of a human being. Is he wearing mascara? He is afraid to guess. He has no time for this; he has real, real physiological problems to contend with: he feels the exhaustion from the heat. He doesn't like the sweat stains he is leaving along the inside of his collar; not now, not ever. He doesn't like where he is right now - every face he passes appears like a walking wraith of fetal-alcohol syndrome: a walking, breathing, argument for abortion.

"That was the question you were asking yourself, right? I can read your face. The look on your face is...obvious. It's obvious to me; it is obvious to all of us."

He wants the man to leave. He walks faster. He does not know what he is missing from this empty palm: he only knows that when he looked at his hand, it wasn't there. And everyone seems to be in on it; everyone knows what he is missing but him. He keeps his lips tightly pursed. He is too proud to ask. Too proud to ask any of these people what has gone missing, especially people he does not know and who have no right to know. Even if they do know. None of this makes sense.

The man grabs him by the shoulders. He is so caught in his own verbal reticence, he acquiesces with several blinks. The key might be given for free. He is not walking; he is standing now. "I don't need to know you..." The man's face rolls left and right, head over his shoulders - back and forth like a blind man in concentration: "to tell you the thing you are missing right now". The man posits a savant's reverie:

"You were the one who let it go."

The man walked away. He watched the man go his way, and counted the seconds as the man got smaller and smaller. One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand. He watched the man stop at the corner, and suspensefully awaited what would happen next. The man did not round the corner, disappearing out of sight and granting him his freedom. The man did not walk straight ahead, back-turned and torturing him with a confirmed abandonment. Neither did he cross the street, where he might walk along - keeping one eye upon him - as the two of them second-guessed at what the other was thinking.

The man saw another. Another, coming from another direction.

The man sidled up along her, and as she walked in this direction, he could tell the man was saying things to her. Things to frighten her and shove her from her bearings.

In this direction: Oh shit.