The Sign

“I only need one, god-damn… sign,” Mark growled.

He could feel a... tightness in his throat and tried to make himself relax, aware that he was acting like a fool.  

But, as seemed to be the case so often these days, Mark was unable to make himself want to do so, to change, to... relax, take it easy, and, as long as he did not really want to, nothing mattered, the act wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t fool anyone.

And.

If he did not want to, then.

The humor would not present itself, like it had used to. Before. And like it should, because. The thing was. There was always humor, even in the most ridiculous situations. Because. Mark was a human, and because… life was just, stupid, basically. And that was funny.

He had used to laugh, hadn’t he?

Sometimes?

Before?  

But, whatever, that was not.

Right now.

That was not, in the sign store. 

At the moment, nothing that had ever happened to him seemed particularly amusing, at least, not genuinely. Maybe, he had been faking it his whole life. Maybe they all were, everyone, just pretending, even this snippy little-

“I’m sorry, Sir,” repeated the snotty, gum chewing little... officious little... little… person, with the t-shirt on! Girl! It was turned inside out, the fabric so thin Mark could make out the tone of her skin right through it, even though it was the middle of January outside, even though it was the... was freezing, the... Middle of January!

“We just don’t have the sign you’re looking for,” she said, her voice lilting up at the end of every sentence. 

“Maybe... we don’t make it? Maybe... no one does?”

Officious little, snot nosed little… whatever…

“That’s fine,” Mark rasped, and, for a miracle, he managed to stop the rant from bursting out of him, from washing about the inside of the shop like rancid milk.

‘What the actual hell do you mean, you don’t have the sign?’ he wanted to thunder. “This is a god-damn sign store! It’s not like I’m in here looking for a, for a, I don’t know, a wheelbarrow, or, or a stupid… bottle of, bottle of… whatever! This is a god-damn sign store. You have one job; you make the signs. You make the signs; I buy the signs! But, I guess that’s too god-damn complicated! Hey, here’s an idea, how about I, make some signs? How about I start with a great, big, ‘Out of Business,’ sign. Don’t worry, I won’t charge you anything for it because I know you don’t have any money. You know why? Because you’re too god-damned incompetent. And even if I did-”

Mark’s throat was on fire. His ears crinkled around the tight echoes.  

The girl was just... staring at him, her lips slightly apart.  

It felt as if he was breathing with only a tiny sliver of his lungs, as if he had been smoking. Mark had tried to smoke, once, during a slim period of his youth. It had not been pleasant.

His scalp prickled with cold sweat. His face felt like a mask. Some other woman was standing there, on his side of the counter. Her face was a mask, too. They were waiting for him to leave, so they could destroy him in effigy. The lady wanted to whisper emphatically to the cashier that she was, ‘So sorry,’ and that, ‘You shouldn’t have to deal with such assholes.” Then they would laugh. The cashier would roll her eyes.

But Mark had no options anymore. He could not say- he was not, but could not even pretend- that he was sorry. The girl behind the counter would smile at him with her tight, professional cheeks, but there would be no soul in her eyes. The other woman looked so stiff she might shatter.

Outside, it was cold.  

And.

The street was alive with signs. They were everywhere, like power wires in an old Crumb comic. They were.

Alive.

They were.

Behind the scenes.

There were a mob of them, in stamped tin, and plastic, and neon infused, glass tube.  

One at a time, they were vulnerable. One at a time, Mark could suss’-them-out. He could defeat a, ‘No Parking,’ sign. A single, ‘No Parking,’ sign had no power over him at all, even if he were in a car. Mark would drive where he wanted, park where he wanted. He would walk and stand and loiter and exceed, would defy them all… one at a time.  

But, that foul army, that anonymous, bullying swarm; that was something else entirely.

Besides, it was altogether different now anyway, because.

Now.

He, wanted a sign.

He had never gone looking for a sign before.

If the sign shop did not have what he needed...  

It had seemed so simple when Mark had set out, and still seemed as if it should be, even though the idiotic store had not carried the right thing. If you wanted a gun, you went to an armory, alcohol, to a liquor store; god, a church, or... whatever.  

There was that other sign store... but it was all the way over on the far side of the city...

Could he steal a sign?  

He would need to get a screwdriver, at least.  

Well.

He could steal a screwdriver.  

If he could steal a gun, or alcohol- a slim bottle of... something, it didn’t matter what- then Mark could definitely steal a sign. He could unscrew one, pry it off, beat it loose with a hammer... if only, he could find the one that he needed.

Some signs buzzed.

But.

The sign that he needed would not be one of those.

He began to walk, his breath like smoke, like steam from a hot engine.

But, as he fought his way against the crowd.

Mark felt like a mannequin, a tombstone wrapped in a blanket.  The gray heads were all moving the other way, the wrong way. They were in his face, fighting him, pushing him back. Sometimes, they grew so thick that he had to put his shoulders against a lamp post and just let them, let them compress him, enduring their weight until, somewhere in the city, a distant, green light, or, no walking man, or, flashing arrow, chopped them up, dashing the crowd apart like Morris code, and he could struggle on, taking them, blow by blow.  

Sometimes, signs helped like that.

But.

Those sorts of signs were not the ones you could get down, not even with the biggest screwdriver.  

Besides.

They were not what he needed.

People kept coming at him, out of the night, a barrage of hidden faces, turned down, their shoulders bunched and knotted.

Mark blundered up against a wooden barricade, glistening white and orange, and he clung there, panting, until a tiny gap came and he could push past. He felt like an animal, something rough and horny, long in the tooth, something that would soon be glue, or, or, whatever the hell they made old, dead animals into now.  

But.

Then.

Quite unexpectedly.

In the middle of the street, isolated by the squalid, sandwich board barricades, by miles of twisting and tatty, yellow tape, there lay a train.

The corner onto Main Street had been brutal, forcing him to step right out into the deadly path, filling his shoe with slush and his eyes with light. And then that last block, between the corner and the barricades, had seemed like one, long heave. The scarlet lights had glared at him, only occasionally winking dim, horns and steam, and he had been pushed from the sidewalk, over and over, onto the one way street, the barely moving cars snarling like corralled beasts.

But now.

The barricades twinkled amber in the sharp air, and beyond them, in an empty space gouged from the melee like a wound, lay a train.  

Mark was alongside it now, halfway up the block. It was a subway; subterraneous no more. Somehow, it had derailed itself, or been derailed, and, moving at such speed, as they did, and with such frightful power- a single minded, brutality of purpose- it had smashed up through the roof of the tunnel and out, into the naked street.  

And.

Until.

Now.

There it lay, beached and dead on the black pavement, like a bull whale which had thrashed its way up from its distant element, just to see the stars. It did not even steam.  

Not anymore.  

The emergency of the situation, the horror, were long over, but the echo still seemed to ring in the frigid air. It must have been... insane, a shrieking nightmare, the last smashing thrust of that near juggernaut machine as it burst out, scattering bricks and cars and broken bodies, like the playthings of a child.  

But.  

No one, not a single soul hurrying by now, even turned to look. The train had escaped, reared its head from that tight, all enveloping tunnel for one great, gasping breath of night air, and expired, its huge, segmented body still interred beneath the weight of the city. Only the first three cars had made it out. Lights of the above ground world, lights it had never been meant to see, flashed and revolved upon the muted, twisted metal, glowed within the smashed panels of its cars. The shards in the windows looked like cloudy teeth.

Mark grabbed hold of the barricade, like a clot, and stood staring, his body buffeted back and forth. Dislocated as it was, the train seemed like the largest thing he had ever seen... and there was something almost obscene about it, it was so... wrong, like a giant, metal phallus lying in the street, frozen mid-thrust.  

The night commuters scuttled on, jostling him with their brutal shoulders. 

It was like something by Rodin, colossal and unseemly, challenging him to look, to face what it had done.

Unthinking, Mark released his hold- his fingers were freezing- and instantly the stream tumbled him back into itself, fumbling him along. It was a callously brutal experience, but with the runaway train still livid in his brain, like a frozen giant, Mark let the mob have its way with him, not fighting anymore.

Until.

What felt like a lifetime later.

In the dark and bitter cold.

He tumbled to a stop before the other sign store, not at all sure how he had gotten there.

Muted bass notes pervaded the air; a concert was underway, somewhere deep in the same center which housed the glowing shop front. Contracted security guards, done up like police officers in their fake uniforms and orange vests, roved the sidewalks, doing random things. Queues were formed, and then just as quickly disbanded, people shuffled from here to there, told what they could do, and what not. Little, silver signs on the guards' chests seemed to wink, on and off, in the blue and orange neon light.

“Sir, where are you going?” demanded one of them, a short... tightly bosomed, female.

Mark had been trying- it was perfectly, god-damn obvious- to ascend the single step and enter the store. It had an outside door all its own.

“In there,” he said, his jaw like a withered root.

“You can’t go through that door, sir,” said the woman.

“Why not?” he said, knowing he sounded belligerent, like a fool, knowing he looked like a stumpy, ignorant ass.

“That door’s closed,” she said. “You have to go in through the main door.”

“I don’t want to see the… show,” Mark enunciated carefully. “I just want a sign.”

“I understand that, sir,” said the lady, pointing. “But you have to go, that way. Everybody, has to go that way.”

Mark’s mind was a muddle. He could think of nothing quick to say and twisted violently around towards the queue. It stretched out beyond sight in a dark, unmoving jostle.

“You can’t wear that, either,” said the lady. She was behind him now.

Mark swung back like a drunk, so filled with frustration he could barely articulate. But it wasn’t even that, anymore. He did not know what he was feeling.

Was it the humor, at last?

At bloody last?

Life.

Was, after all. 

Stupid.

“Can’t- wear- what?” he said, his chest thick.

“That,” said the lady, pointing to his wallet chain.

“This?” 

“That.”

“Are you god-damn kidding me?”

“No sir. That’s a weapon.”

“This?”

“That.”

“Is a weapon?”

“Yes.”

“A... weapon?”

“Yes.”

“This?”

“Yes.”

Mark frowned.

“How?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“You could strangle somebody with it.”

Mark did not...

“I… could…?”

“Strangle somebody with it, yes sir.”

“But, I could strangle somebody with my shoelaces,” he countered. “I could strangle somebody, with my bare hands.”

“Hey, I don’t make the rules,” sighed the guard.

Mark snatched up the chain in his naked fist. He wanted to tear it from him, though he loved it, to fling it out into the street.

Like an ass.

“Here, take the damn thing!” he wanted to shout.

He knew he was being a fool.

But, it was too firmly attached. He would have to stand there. 

Like an ass 

And unclip it.  

Mark felt his body shaking.

He was not sure why.

It was all, too ridiculous.

“Take it off and put it around your neck,” said the woman, in a low voice.

Mark gaped at her.

He knew he had heard correctly.

‘You’re not strong enough to kill me,’ he said.

Only...  

His mouth hadn’t moved.

Or had it.

And.

She was looking at him with a quirky smile.

Did she have the brass?  

Would she choke him out? Asphyxiate him? Right there in the middle of the street?

Well.

One way to find out.

Mark snorted. 

He was aware of himself, unfastening the clip. 

His wallet felt… undisciplined, as if it might leap out of his pocket, now the restraint had been lifted.  

He unsnapped the fob.  

The chain was heavier than he remembered.

“Put the chain, around your neck,” the security guard whispered huskily.

Mark smiled.

He nodded.

He.

Put the chain around his neck, fasting the fob to the clip, and... let go.

Slipping inside his coat, it.

Touched his skin, it. 

Felt, bizarre, on his naked shoulders.

Mike waited for her hands, for the pressure to come, the rush of blood.

“There you go, hun,” said the security guard, whispering still. “Now, it ain’t a weapon.”  She shrugged. “Now, it’s just... jewelry.”

Slowly, Mark touched the outside of his coat. He could feel the foreign body beneath it. He tilted his head. Behind him, the gas infused tubes hissed, and went dark.

“Sign shop’s closed now, anyway” he said, shrugging back at her.

“Yeah,” agreed the guard, surveying the dim window, the cooling neon signs. “Looks that way. And the band is garbage. Why don’t you just, go on home; it’s cold out. Me, I gotta’ stand here, but you… you can do, whatever you want.”

Mark nodded.

“Well, maybe I’ll just have to... make my own sign?” he said, waggling his head, his face crooking into a little smile.

“Looks like your gonna’ have to,” agreed the guard, pursing her lips to the side. 

Mark turned.  

The lights of the city seemed white, now that the sign shop was closed.

He started off.

Somehow, the people were all still pushing against him.  

It was cold and his wallet felt, shifty.  

Everything felt, loose, and, unjointed, as if he’d been hit in the spine with a hammer.

The smile made his face hurt, but Mark didn’t care. He let it stay.