Thought.is

“Someone stealing horses around here?” I said.

“Someone or something,” the clerk said.

It was a half past noon when the stranger walked into Big Dave’s Whiskey Bar.

The following story is true. It isn’t “based on actual events”, like how a found footage film will string you along, making you think what you’re watching is actually true. No. Not this. This really happened to me and several of my friends on a chilly fall night in 1995.

He slowed his pace down to a power walk and heard a high pitched voice over Dave Grohl screaming about not wanting to be someone’s monkey wrench. The old lady was motioning a distressed hand towards him to come back.

The drumming cadence of Charlie’s Big Wheel resonated off rough concrete as he pedaled down the sidewalk towards Big City Arcade.…

“Look. I’ll be frank. We’re just wasting each other’s time here. The studio is going to pass.”

I laid there for a while and rubbed my throbbing temples, trying to develop an image of my last location. The last place I was before I ended up here. In this room.

“I saw one earlier while I was driving to the filling station. I told a military officer, who was there to recruit local teenagers, that they had another one on their hands. He didn’t listen.”

What Katie did see was the front of a motorcycle rumbling in the side view mirror. Above the chrome handle bars she saw a helmet. The face plate was tinted. Small white teeth were decaled across it, making it appear as if it were actually a mouth, smiling. It was the type of smile where you weren’t sure if it was meant to be taken as an insult or as flirtatious. Either way, Katie didn’t like it.

Willy pulled his cotton flannel close to his body as a cold wind spun red and yellow leaves around his tiny lot. He unfolded the note. A single word was written across it: Trick.