Unknown Event

Something passes overhead, underneath, a shadow jumping from the darkness to take shape before my eyes. Once I was like you, I saw as others saw, but that was before the unknown event, before the thing that happened that so changed my thinking that I can no longer say what it was. I went in one end of the carnival tunnel called time at 1:00 am and came out the other at 1:15 am, three days later, unsure of what had happened.
Oh indeed my mind made many suggestions about how the sky changed color and the clouds gathered in a swirling mass over my head before the lights overtook me. Someone, some thing ran around the perimeter of the field, something small and quick, always just concealed from my direct sight, making the tall wild grasses ripple. I felt an even measure of awe and fear. The realization that nothing like that should be here is what made it terrible. Perhaps if I had forgotten the other world entirely, the world where you are walking down the side walk with a scarf wound tight around your throat clutching a steaming paper cup in your hand, if I had lost all memory of that world that we have shared, then perhaps I would not have thought,
“These things should not be here.”
And if I had not thought that, then I might not have been frightened. But reality, you must understand, was being torn slowly, painfully torn up like a dirty worn carpet. Is there anything worse than seeing your living room floor without the familiar carpet? Seeing the concrete or wood that lies underneath, hard and cold and comfortless? So imagine this terrible thing happening to the fabric of reality, the world where you are hurrying away from an argument with me, waiting for the traffic on the corner and frowning without noticing that you are frowning, the fabric of that existence being jerked out from under me, the me that I was at 12:59.
Realize that by 1:00am I was already becoming a new person. I was frightened, but curious. I needed to see that those shadows were nothing, or that they were something, so I ran after them, hearing the grasses whip around ahead of me, following that sound until we came to the bridge that crosses the river, to the place where the trees rise up and crowd around, tall and skinny and white.
I stood on the bridge and the wind whirled around me, making my clothing flap like flags around my skin. They were among the trees now, and I shivered with the impression that they were like something I had glimpsed before. What had I heard about such things as these? Terrible frightening things.
But then I thought, wait, I have yet to see them directly. I should not confuse these things with old stories. I wanted to run away, now more than ever, but I felt the importance of remaining calm. I was already being transformed by this occurrence, I knew already that the me of 12:59 was gone forever, and I understood that what I did now would define the me that was in the making.
What does steel do when it is being forged into a blade? It holds still, in fire, under the hammer, and in water, it holds still and lets the smith shape it.
I stood on the bridge and the light from overhead grew brighter and brighter and I thought,
“This is the fire! Be still or you will melt into nothingness!”
At least this is what I now tell myself that I told myself as the brightness engulfed me and held me for an agonizing second.
Then I was standing on the bridge alone. The sky was dark and the air was still. Shadows were behaving once again as shadows should in this world that I have shared with you. I looked at my watch and it said 1:15am. I felt as if I had been dreaming and couldn’t remember precisely what had happened. My mind had been altered, stretched during the course of the unknown event, and now that it had shrunk back to scale the unknown event could not be recalled as it had happened. I arranged this story when I returned to our little apartment and you screamed ,
“Where have you been? God damn you! Where have you been for the last three days?”
I told us both something we could understand, even if only vaguely, even if you called it an alien abduction. I cannot call it that.
Once I was like you, I saw as others saw, but that was before the event, before the thing that happened that so changed my thinking that I can no longer say unwaveringly what it was. I went in one end of the carnival tunnel called time at 1:00 am and came out the other at 1:15 am, three days later, and I could not say what had happened in the tunnel, only that something had transpired there, something that is only known to the me that I was between 1:00am and 1:15am for those three days that I was gone. To this other me, the one that now talks to you, that something is and will remain unknown.

Argument and Counter Argument

A middle aged woman walked through a great green park on a sunny afternoon. Two teenage boys walked by her side. One of the boys was her son. The other was her son’s best friend. The woman had a warm face, already etched with the wrinkles and spots that signaled a quickly approaching seniority. She wore dark glasses to protect her eyes from the harsh sunlight. Her hair was curly and brown and the unruly curls reached down to her neck. She wore a wrinkled loose button up shirt over a red T-shirt and she had a black bag around her shoulders which hung from her left side. She was thick around the middle and her light brown pants hung loose around her legs.
The boy that was her son was only a little thicker than her and he was also taller. He had messy black hair that partially covered his forehead. He had strong dark eyes and a slim pointed nose. He wore a red T-shirt with a logo on it and light gray cargo pants. He walked decisively, with a sense of pointed determination. Although they all walked together, he seemed to always be just a fraction of a step ahead.
The best friend was skinnier than his two companions, his entire body seemed to be made out of a softer substance. He had long blonde hair that was parted in the middle and tied together in the back. He wore a loose long sleeved brown shirt over a white T-shirt and black jeans. His left hand was always in his pants pocket, as if looking for a solid foundation in the darkness of his jeans.
They walked together by a small playground where many children were playing, screaming and laughing as they ran into each other and climbed up, and jumped over, the complex and colorful structures that stood over a small circle of rubber mulch. Several women, the mothers of the children, sat close by on green benches, looking at their children playing and turning to each other to find an ear or a temporary source of disposable entertainment. The middle aged woman looked towards them and remembered seating like that, in one of those very same benches, while her son ran through the little tunnels and slid down the metal ramps. She looked towards her son, trying to ascertain that this big strong boy was indeed the same little thing that had run up to her one day crying, suffering from a tiny cut on his knee. Her son at that moment was not looking towards the playground or towards her. His attention was on his best friend.
"The thing is… look, I understand that the levels are important, there’s no question about that…"
"Well, then what is the…?" the friend answered with a very subtle shrug of the shoulders.
"Wait, the thing is that the levels are important and all… but they are not the only thing that is important."
"I understand that but…"
"But wait… we agree that the levels are important but if you focus only on that then the game…"
"Well, I never said that I only focus on that. I don’t want to…"
"I’m not saying you did… it’s that…"
They walked together towards a dark tunnel. A bride and groom, in full wedding attire, were walking out of the darkness. The bride had an angry look on her face and there were small trails of mud on her wedding dress. A photographer followed behind them, carrying two large leather bags. The middle aged woman looked at them and remembered the days when she believed in marriage, when for a moment her lover was all that mattered and nothing could be more delicious or more desirable than to be in his presence, to be close to him and to touch his face, his body. It was all so brief and his son was all that was left of that short flirtation with romantic happiness. She wondered what this bride would think a year from now, a decade from now, maybe even a week from now. Would she still love her husband as she did on this sunny day? She shook her head and the trio entered the tunnel together. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the form of a homeless man leaning against a wall.
"What I’m really saying…" the friend continued as he only barely noticed the tunnel around him, "is that we have to keep in mind the effect that each session has on…"
"That’s exactly what I mean… if you do that…" the son said in a loud voice that echoed through the tunnel. A little boy screamed from the direction of the playground. At this distance, it was impossible to tell if it was a scream of delight or of horror. "If you do that, then the game becomes about levels…"
"I don’t want it to become about levels, you know… but…"
"But that’s the thing, it does… look at the second table of powers and tell me that if you focus on that then you don’t…"
"No, I wouldn’t base it on the second table… it would be too limiting…"
"But then what would be left?"
They emerged from the tunnel and the sunlight seemed brighter than ever. The woman leaned her head back to feel the warmth spreading over her face and body. Above them was a light brown ledge of rough cement and beyond the ledge there was a large black sculpture. She couldn’t make out the details, but it was shining black in the sunlight and some people were gathered around it. A man stepped close to the ledge with a camera in his hands and took a picture. She briefly wondered what he had taken a picture of.
"There is plenty left… look that’s only the second table… what if you look at the fifth table? There’s a lot there that can be a guide…"
"You can’t base the whole game on the fifth table!"
"I’m not saying you should… I just mean that…"
The woman looked at her son again. His face was blushed with a rush of anger. His friend looked up at him, with the eyes of gentle shyness he had always had. He would never take the fight too far but he would never quite give in. She wondered if that was the nature of real friendship. Maybe she had never had a real friend on which to try it. Maybe she couldn’t do what her son’s friend did. Maybe friendship itself depended on that subtle skill and she never had it and so her son would never have it and he was just lucky to have found someone who did. She looked at them as they walked down the cement path that lead towards another tunnel and she felt grateful for her son and for his friend and for their discussion that she simply couldn’t understand. She felt the warmth of the sun again like a bucket of hot water pouring over her dry face and she realized that today she was satisfied. For all that was lost and for all that she never found, today, on this sunny gentle afternoon, all her real needs were fulfilled.