This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of cc&d magazine.
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Johnny lay on the ground with his head resting on a rock and stares at an old swing set. He woke suddenly with a jerk as the morning sun baked him. His head is pounding. Laying on a rock doesn’t help.
“Where am I?” he wonders.
He slowly sits up and looks around.
He is sitting in an old school yard that’s overgrown with brush and grass. Birds are twittering in the nearby woods and the wind is rustling the tops of the trees.
The last thing he remembers before waking and seeing the swing set is sitting at the bar in an Old Town saloon. He can’t remember the name. He thinks he had just had an argument with some bikers about a game of pool. He was sitting at the bar having another beer to calm himself when he remembers seeing the bartenders eyes widen and look beyond Johnny at something or someone. Johnny tried to turn around and......well, that’s the last thing he remembers.
Of course, being in that bar could have happened five years ago. He’s been having weird thoughts lately, thinking things have just happened then realizing that those things actually happened years ago.
He feels the back of his head and winces as the headache pain increases. He feels a scab and decides a pool cue had bounced off his head, either thrown or swung. It could have been a beer bottle.
As his head clears, memories begin to return. He’d been in the bar and getting drunk because his life is absolutely going down the drain. He knows getting drunk isn’t the answer but it’s a lot better than suicide, which has crossed his mind recently.
Auditors are looking at the books at the company where he worked in downtown New York. John Madison, Johnny, is the chief accountant, or was, as of yesterday. He had been fired suddenly with no explanation from the owner. Johnny assumed that the owner hadn’t liked the report from the auditors.
Along with work problems, he’d been served with divorce papers a week ago. Being separated from Amy was bad and he always hoped they would reconcile. Being served with papers put an end to that hope.
Once again, these thoughts drifted in and out. Had this just happened or was it years ago?
“What do I do now?” Johnny speaks out loud to the swing set.
Suddenly, a thought flashes into his mind. He remembers how he always thought it possible that a survivor of the World Trade Center disaster could simply disappear. The numbers of people unaccounted for were staggering. A person could just drift away. Go somewhere new. That person could create a new identity and no one would ever know.
Why would anyone do such a thing? Johnny asks himself again. If that person had seemingly unsolvable problems at home or at work, like Johnny, disappearing would be a viable option to suicide or going to jail.
Why would he think of that all of a sudden? Maybe he should do that exact same thing.
Johnny slowly stands up. He checks his wallet and sees the $300 is still there. He must have come to this old school yard on his own. If someone brought him here and dumped him, he probably wouldn’t have any money.
I can buy a bus ticket to somewhere down south. I can start over. I’m a good accountant. I can work for a temp agency and get a bookkeeper job until I’m established and then find a real accountant job. Surely I can buy a fake I.D., maybe a new social security card.
Johnny starts walking back to town. He will go to the bus station and be out of here today.
“Las Vegas sounds interesting,” he mumbles to himself.
Johnny walks out of the woods and notices a red and white ambulance parked in the old school’s parking lot. There are people dressed in white looking at him.
“Where have you been, Johnny?” one of them calls. “We’ve been looking for you. Were you trying to get away again?”
One attendant speaks to the other, “We found him wandering the streets of New York right after the disaster. He’s crazy and insists he’s a survivor of the collapse. He was dressed in a tattered suit. He had no I. D. or anything to convince anyone he’d survived the buildings coming down. He’s nothing but a homeless person that’s always lived on the street.”
“Get in the van Johnny. We’re taking you home.”
