c. 2003 · Short story — a man drops something.

Alex walked to the elevator, holding something in his hand. Whatever it was he was carrying was illuminating the area around him, as if it were emitting some kind of eerie light. His eyes were blank as he lifted his free hand and pressed the down button. He stood there for several interminable seconds while the elevator made its way to the sixth floor of the building—the floor Alex now waited with seemingly not a care in the world.

He wore a baseball cap backward. The cap voiced support for the Houston Astros, and as he pulled it off so as to scratch his head he exposed a small patch on his scalp that was completely bald. Whether hair had never grown there, it had fallen out, or that it had been shaven could not be distinguished. The man’s eyes remained mysteriously unfocused as the elevator shaft opened itself. In his frenzied stride to get to the office, a hurried businessman in a twill jacket bumped into Alex, causing him to drop the object he was holding.

A small golden bauble slipped from his fingers, and Alex’s eyes suddenly became animated. With a look of total horror, he tried to catch the item, but was not fast enough to stop the glasslike object from impacting the floor and shattering into a zillion tiny shards of orange-red slivers.

Alex suddenly stiffened. He shrieked silently, his face turned up to the ceiling. His mouth was open in a look of utter dismay, and slowly the very flesh on his face began to bubble and steam. His fingers started twitching spasmodically; he clawed at his eyes, which had begun to sizzle and pop, as if they were being fried in grease, and ended up with slimy glop all over his hands: something that resembled a blend of melted plastic and hot wax. Still inaudible, the hole in his face that was his mouth slowly grew as the skin around his lips liquefied and hung loosely in wet glistening strands that, if not hitting the floor in damp little splashes, then teetered inches from the ground like a hanged convict, still moving after the last of his death throes.

In a flash of crimson radiance, the myriad slivers of orange-red Lucite that laid caught between the thick shag of gray nylon and silver acrylic carpet burst into flame, and the flame retardant carpeting failed miserably to justify its nomenclature, as it also ignited, and a wave of flame streaked through the hall, like an angry tide…

The last thing the little boy at the water fountain would see was Alex crawling on all fours, using the molten stumps of flesh that were once his hands to beat at the flames and try to move the broken pieces into a pile…

Composed 2003 · part of the Short Stories collection · authorship documented on the Provenance page.