You don’t notice him at first. He’s just there. You don’t care about him. How could you? He’s no protagonist. He’s just one of these guys who’s all over the place. If he stalked you, if he kept showing up everywhere you went-the line at Starbucks, your therapist’s office, the Demilitarized Zone observation post, the mirror maze at the heart of the abandoned theme park, the cockpit of the commercial airliner . . . you still wouldn’t take any notice of him. You might even say “Hey” or “What’s up” or give him a curt little head nod like you’d wave back at a Walmart greeter-that little bit of something indistinguishable from nothing. Maybe if he showed up in your actual home-but, you know what? I don’t think you would give a shit about him even then. You’d look at him. Blink a few times. You would maybe think he was a roommate you don’t see much of or a son you don’t get along with or a neighbor wandering through like some benign asshole-neighbors do that kind of thing. Maybe they want to borrow a cup of sugar or they’re just getting done balling your spouse or they’re returning your lawnmower-trifling-ass non-protagonist stuff. Just passing through. At most you would, like, fake notice him. You know? Like you fake notice a guy with a sandwich board sign on the sidewalk. Or like you would automatically say no to a guy asking for a dollar. Or how you would instinctively smash the kneecap of your fellow citizen as you’re frantically trying to evade a pack of malfunctioning robot hounds-just some random jerk. That’s really who we’re talking about here. Just some random jerk who’s always hanging around. Of no account. No accounts shall be written about this guy . . . nothing to write about . . . except one day-while you’re standing on line at the chain coffee shop, perhaps-you see this random jerk start to twitch and yell and all these little explosions start popping off all over his body spraying crimson corn syrup and chunks of hamburger and raw liver all over the place. Everybody notices the random jerk, now, that’s for sure. The guy finally pops off all of his squibs. He’s just standing there, breathing heavily, looking dazed. He says, “Whoa . . . wow . . . I guess I thought it was time . . . I’m sorry . . . I made a mess . . .” He offers to clean up, but people are glaring at him. You’ve caught some raw liver on your shirt. You’re feeling some hate. The random jerk withers beneath all the hostility, causing him to cringe, and, finally, to slouch off into the anonymous afternoon . . . so that was all a huge waste of your time, right? And you never ever see that antsy squib man again for the rest of your days. But that annoyance eats at you. ‘Cause you sure would like to catch that guy and beat some dry cleaning fees out of him, wouldn’t you? Sure you would. And then late one night you’re watching a movie that has a big apocalyptic shootout at the end and it has all these guys popping off squibs in slow motion and flinging themselves all over the frame and you find yourself thinking, “This is where that random jerk belongs. On the screen. Not in real life. What an asshole . . .” And you’ve got that frustration rising up within you, yet again, but what can you do about it at this late date? You’ve been cursed by the antsy squib man. What an unkind fate that has befallen you!
