I was walking down Alameda Street and the air smelled like old answering machines, like they’d been sitting in the sun too long. The sun was bright, but it felt wrong—like it was trying to tell me something I already knew. The sky was the color of a half-finished memory.
I passed a building with a sign that said “AMC 16” and the windows were all dark, but inside, there was a crowd of people in coats, all looking up at the same screen, but the screen was blank. No movie. Just a screen. No sound. Just the low hum of people who had forgotten why they were there.
I kept walking, and the sidewalk got wet, but it wasn’t rain. It was something else—something like the feeling of a door that was always just slightly open, like it was waiting for someone to come back.
Then I saw a gym with a sign that said “Gym Buddy Needed” and underneath it, a note: “I’m looking for someone who can hold my hand while I lift weights.” I thought that was kind of sweet, even though I didn’t know how to hold hands in a gym.
The sky was darker now, the moon a sliver in the corner of my eye. I turned the corner and saw a man standing in front of a house, holding a box of ice, just staring at it. He didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at him. We were both just watching the ice melt in the heat.
There was a sound like a door closing, then a door opening, and a voice that I didn’t recognize but somehow knew. It said, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
I blinked, and I was back in the house, on the couch, the one with the stain that looked like a small lake. The air smelled like a room that had been left unopened for too long.
The fridge was open.
And in the fridge, there was a note that said:
“Your device was tampered with.”
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