Kon Tikki

3 - Calling out

3 - Calling out

It was a damn shame that the very visible and orange bristle pad of the floor brush was too wide to pass through the opening. Rob had managed to wedge one of the worn mops through, the dank water trapped in the strands resisting his efforts with a squishy noise, sending droplets on his hair.

The young man’s arms were shaking badly, his muscles tetanized by the effort of waving the mop’s handle over his head. He couldn’t see if someone had seen his signals, because of the visual obstruction, and there were no ladder inside the closet to grant him a higher point of view.

Rob wished he could have pushed back the door a tiny half-inch more, enough to ease his forearms out of the closet. His moves would be less constrained then.

But he couldn’t stop to pause because, soon, there would be no one left in the mall; even the security guy would lock the place and retire to his office on the third floor.

So Rob gritted his teeth and carried on, cursing under his shortened breath. For a time, pure anger filled him with a Hulk-like energy, and he saw himself as a powerful warrior, unbreakable, the image of the tall barbarian drawn on his arm.

Then, his sugar levels dropped as did the anger, and Rob’s moves became sluggish. He was breathing hard, his lungs filled with the musty closet air, his arms trembling like a Parkinson sufferer’s. His sweaty palms glided on the handle. He let it drop down, the squishy strands stuck against the box edge.

Maybe it was useless. He considered dropping down and making himself comfortable for the night. He could not even call the store manager to apprise him of the situation.

Not that the manager would have cared that much about his kind. Rob had made sure to wear long sleeves after the comment, so no one could see the wicked drawing on his left arm. He took solace in thinking of the design, the big wave with foam and droplets, and the boat, with the two men hugging each other, obviously to ward of the storm slanting their craft. He had loved the original print. Looking down at it took him far away from the realities. It had been worth the pain from the needles and ink, the long wait between seances.

Since he had dropped out of law school, Rob shared a flat with his sister, who worked at the diner place on Ocean View. She would get worried of he didn’t come in at ten.

Thinking of his sister, of the anguish his absence would cause her, made him pause. He grabbed the handle and resumed his exercise (in futility, it seemed), hanging his hope on the plaza’s still-open lights. His eyes burnt, as some droplets from the mop head landed on him.

What if there were no one left? He couldn’t know for sure, his sister would tell him.

He was breathing so hard that he almost didn’t heard the new sound. A muted bang coming from the from the store-wide vitrine.

Then a series of bang, bang, bang! echoed, the sound of a palm tapping against the thick pane of glass. Someone was banging against the glass with enough strength to transmit the muffled sounds inside the dim-lit store.

Hope, relief flooded Rob’s heart. He pursued his valiant efforts with the mop, waving the tufted head higher. Then something else washed over, a familiar spell of dizziness. His blood sugar levels were acting up. His morning insulin shot must have been spent in the exertions. He had no more spoons left, as his mother would say. And his insulin pen was out of reach, stuffed in his backroom locker.

Like a weary child, he had let go of the mop’s handle, not even wondering why the mop didn’t fall, and curled on himself.

As his visions clouded, his last conscious thought was that someone was actually caring.