Background 756

Hey, you know me. That guy you're always sitting across from on the subway, or bus or whatever you take. Or maybe you sit in your car or Uber alone to ponder your own life problems because you are just too good to see how much harder the rest of us have it. It doesn't matter how you get to where you go. Point is, I'm that guy. The one who is always in the background of everyone else's life. I see everything, and I draw it. I see everyone's happy little moments with their kids. I see guys yelling at their wives on the phone. Last week I saw someone call their husband only to have another woman answer. That was neat. I see people so concerned about what they are doing that day that they pay no mind to anyone else. Their day is all about them.

Me? My day is all about other people. My day is made when someone drops their pastrami sandwich. When someone's bringing home their new dog. Whatever it is, it is always a show to watch. The best part is you never know what show is playing. The cast walks in, a family of four. Who will they be this time? The happy family on a trip to the big city? An uncontrolled gang of unruly children with helpless parents? Verbally abusive parents that leave you shocked that someone would treat their kids that way? As some movie said once, you never do know what you're gonna get. So you might be wondering, what is the point of this? All this rambling, all this internal monologue? Is there a point to life or should we all just buy a bunch of potato chips and sit watching that popular series everyone's talking about (tm) until we all curl up and die? I'm not here to answer that question but I am here to ask one:

WHAT THE %*&#?

Seriously, I'm just minding my own business on the A train. Sitting, watching, sketching interesting people like I usually do when this guy walks past and nonchalantly drops this little package wrapped in brown paper on my lap. He didn't say a word, make eye contact, or anything. He just dropped it and got off at the next stop. What is in this little package? What could it possibly be? Drugs? A murder weapon? The Holy Grail? Perhaps just trash they were too lazy to throw away? I sat there for a good five minutes thinking about what to do. Should I open it? What if its a bomb? Should I call the cops? Should I just get up and leave it on the seat? It was around this point that I realized I had missed my stop. What's the worst that can happen if I open it? It blows up, I die. On the upside, I might get a cool news story printed about me if they can even identify my body. But on the other hand, it could be something cool.

So, I put my hand on the packaging. Not vibrating, not hot. Good. I carefully grab it. Feels pretty light. I bring it up to my ear. No ticking, even better. I sniff it. It doesn't smell like explosives. These are all great signs. I bring it down again. I slowly start to peel back the brown paper when there is a loud BANG! My heart stops for a second. I look around. Everything's still here. I see a little girl crying holding a string to a now popped balloon. Yeesh! Why do things have to sound like that? On behalf of me and veterans everywhere suffering from PTSD, can we just agree as a universe to not have things that sound like explosions? Thanks. Anyway, I peel back the paper and guess what? Its just a book. A little black leather book. Ok... definitely not the worst thing it could have been. Off to a good start.

So I open it up. On the first page are just two words written in black ink. "Find Me". What am I in, some sort of Horror Movie? I turn another page. Its a list of names. Page after page brings more and more names. Who are these people? I don't know any of these names. I get to the middle of the book and what I think are some pieces of paper fall out. I look down and in my lap is a stack of hundred dollar bills. Expensive bookmark. One of the bills fell on the floor of the subway car. Its dirty, but its also a hundred bucks. I grab it. I look around. The train car is almost empty now. No one is paying attention to me. Behind the book I count the money. Twenty grand. Wow. Ok, that's a lot of rent accounted for. Wait a second... twenty grand... a list of names... Oh... Oh no... Its a hit list. Do I really look like a hitman? Maybe thats a compliment... This money is probably stolen then... Crap. I put the money back inside the book and wrap it up. I'm not ready for the start of whatever movie this is. I'll deal with this when I get home.

So I get home and toss the book on my desk. I heard somewhere that you shouldn't make important decisions on an empty stomach so I go to the fridge. Empty as well, besides an apple that has just been there who knows how long. I'm hungry but I'm not that desperate. I close the door on that. Guess starvation is the meal for tonight again. I should probably call the cops. I need to turn it in. I sit down. I look around my place. A stained ceiling from all the leaks. Walls that need to be repainted. The empty fridge. What if I turned in the book and... forgot to mention the cash? Hell, the place could use it. Besides, how would they know? Yes officer, just a book with a list of names that got handed to me. All that was in the package. Thought it might be a hit list. Alright thanks, bye. I get money to fix up my place and they get... whatever the book is... Simple. Everyone wins.

I went over to my desk and grabbed the cash out of the book. I put it in my desk and locked it up. I went back to close the book and couldn't help but glance at the names again. I flipped through all the pages and nope. Not a single one. I thought that maybe I should look some of the names up, just to see who they were. I might never see this book again. How can it hurt to just find out who some of them are? I picked a random one. Alice Horowitz. I opened my browser on my laptop and hit search. I checked out her social media. I recognized that face, but we don't have any friends in common. Was she someone I saw on the train? I looked through my sketches. There she was. I sketched her last Tuesday, she was sitting across from me. Definitely a coincidence, I thought. I tried another name. The business guy from Thursday's bus ride. I kept looking people up and I had drawings... of all of them. I started looking for news articles with the names. All of them. Every single one I looked up. Reported missing. Not good. Not good at all.

You see why I asked the question now? What am I supposed to do? Go to the cops and say: I have a book, a list of names and drawings of people from near the dates they went missing but don't worry I had nothing to do with it? Gee, I wonder how that would go? I had to do something though. For a start how about checking every single name on the list. I had only been through about twenty or thirty. I spent the night going through them. Seven hundred and fifty five names. Seven hundred and fifty five people missing that I had drawings of. Then there was name seven hundred and fifty six. I searched everything, every social media site, every search engine. Zero results. Not even some spam website with a similar name, just... nothing. My next idea was to get every drawing I had done, rip them out of my note books and match them up with the names. It took me until about 4 AM but I did it. Every single drawing I had done matched up with one or more names. Except one. My first drawing. It was definitely my worst. I did it with charcoal before I switched over to art pencils. Seemed to be an average guy, kind of a square face. Short haircut, very distinct features. Fit looking. Who was this man? Well I had his name. Or what I thought was his name.

At this point I was overwhelmed. I fell asleep on the floor. When I woke up it was maybe 2pm. I woke up with a paper stuck to my face. THE PAPER, the original charcoal drawing, now smudged beyond recognition. Damn. I did my best to draw his face from memory on the back of the paper. I then got the book and all the pictures I had taped names to and headed to the police station. They told me to wait, so I did. I talked to some cops who just sat there and stared at me. I told them about the names and the drawings, and the book. The mysterious man who dropped it off. All of it. I told them about the smudged picture of the only name I couldn't find and showed them the picture. I said thanks and they said I needed to stay there. They both left me and I overheard them talking about how they thought this was the weirdest way ever to confess to a crime. But, I wasn't confessing to anything. I was trying to help them! They brought me to another room and cuffed me to the table. They said that someone would be in in a minute to answer some questions.

I sat their scared out of my mind. What was happening? Why was it happening? Was I going to jail? What was I supposed to do? Even the worst parts of my imagination didn't come up with what happened next. The door opened and a man in a suit walked in with his head down a bit. He sat down next to me. He looked up at me. Slowly, the wheels in my brain started to turn. This wasn't just any man. This was the guy. The one from the picture. He looked at me and he just smiled and said "You're done kid." Then he walked out.

The trial was speedy, I tried to explain but to the Jury 756 people disappearing right after I had drawn them couldn't have been a coincidence. The judge thought life sounded like an appropriate sentence. So, yeah. Thats why I'm in prison. All over some book I found. How about you?

The man sitting across from our hero stares blankly at him.

"You really do have an imagination." the man laughs it off. Our hero is left sitting alone at the lunch table, now clad in an orange jumpsuit.

The end... for now...