As the boys were indulging in their curiosity of the female anatomy, aroused since the onset of their respective pubescent years, I bowed away from their midst to go see about an upstanding citizen on the verge of making the biggest and last mistake of his life.
The man, a bespectacled elderly man with a round bearded face, wrinkled by years of continuous hard work and unrest, was walking his dog, a beagle, around a middle class neighborhood. He was humming all these songs that reminded him of his childhood and everything (from unpleasant events to happy moments) that led to the great satisfaction of walking his dog on this beautiful day.
“What a beautiful day, huh?” An elderly woman called out to him.
She sported a silver chignon atop her head, and waved at him from across the little street. She lived in the neighborhood. They had passed each other on multiple occasions over the years, and had even hung out with their respective spouses at some neighborhood block parties.
“How do you do?” The woman continued. “You look great, by the way.”
“Thank you… I feel great actually. Decided to take a little walk, and take in a little bit of sun. It’s not this sunny every day.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s always a pleasure to see you.”
“Likewise –– Well, I’d better move on.”
“Where are you headed?”
“To that bookshop on Rose Street. I figured I’d stop by and see if they have anything good to read.” The elderly man seemed to hesitate, and then he added, “I could get you a title if you like.”
“Oh, no thank you –– My eyes are no longer 20/20. It’s becoming a knockdown to read. Besides, it’s mostly all rubbish in books these days, you know. So much rubbish…”
The elderly man laughed heartily and they waved goodbye. The aged lady started off. He gazed after her with an easy smile, and then continued on himself. Yes, life was good. Not always, indeed. But times like this were to be treasured, sampled in the back of the mind, and remembered in bad times.
Ahead on the footpath, something near the fire hydrant attracted his eyes. It was on the ground, round and shiny. The elderly man came up to it, and his eyes popped in wonder.
A golden ball, about two inches in diameter – slightly bigger than a table tennis ball – was sitting there in plain sight, like a ripe seasonal fruit waiting to be harvested.
By the look of it, the ball was made out of pure massive gold… This precious object was catching the sunlight like a magnificent crown jewel, splintering it into infinite beams of splendor. It was just outstanding to behold. Snout down, the beagle was sniffing at the find. The elderly man quickly glanced around to see if maybe someone had dropped it, but saw no one in his vicinity.
“This is definitely my day,” smiled the elderly man, as he adjusted the bifocals that were slanted on the bridge of his nose.
He reached down to pick up the golden ball, and jerked back abruptly in pain the instant his fingers closed around it. His heart exploded in his chest a second later and he died.
The poor man… I would have shut my eyes, if I could, to save myself from the haunt of this queer death. His body jolted upright, like a knee-jerk reaction. Then it violently whipsawed to the left, onto the roadway, the skull cracking upon landing with a thick wet thud. Finally, the whole carcass started to twitch like crazy in a macabre kind of way, reminiscent of epileptic seizures, until all motions subsided and stopped. At that point, a light steam was billowing from the deceased; marks of deep burns were darkening the skin here and there. The whole thing was just surreal, as though a powerful electric current had swooped through one hundred and eighty pounds of raw meat and charred it from the inside out.
The beagle was bellowing alarmingly to get attention, breaking off only to lick the carbonized face of its master. And by the time someone turned up, the golden ball had slowly but surely faded out of existence, until all at once there was nothing where it had laid mere seconds ago.
What had happened?
It was likely the question that the townspeople would ask, all flabbergasted, all confused.
For some it would be shocking, heartbreaking even, to look at the dead. To try and comprehend this weird phenomenon where someone just collapses and dies. Electrocuted, as if struck by an invisible thunderbolt at about eleven o’clock in the morning, and at that, on a clear and sunny day.
People would probably hear about it on the radio, maybe see it on the evening news, or read about it in tomorrow’s paper. And some would remember similar cases of healthy people dying inexplicably in the weirdest of circumstances. They would recall the sixteen-year-old who dropped dead two months ago at the exit of a movie theatre. Or the heavy-set woman in a supermarket, who according to eyewitness accounts, was stooping down one minute as if to grab something, and the next minute, was shifting jerkily on the floor for about five seconds before expiring. Or the toddler who breathed his last breath the same way during recess on a school playground under his teacher’s watch, who in the beginning thought the boy was just playing spread-eagled in the sand, until he stopped moving altogether.
The awfully unique details of all those cases – and many more cases like them – would come back in people’s memories: the smoky dead bodies… The deep skin burns… The sweltering limbs…
When interviewed by columnists or special reporters about their reaction to the incomprehensible tragedy, parents, teachers, religious groups, atheists, smokers, and the like… all those good hardworking Joes would say things like:
“Maybe it’s an infection or something. I mean, I recently heard something about chemical trails, tons of it filling the sky right now. If that’s what’s causing it, we’re all fucked.”
“Honestly, I don’t know –– I think maybe those people were sick to begin with. Maybe they had some kind of self-heating condition or something. Otherwise, how would you explain it? I think the answer’s somewhere in their medical report…”
“No comment!”
“People die every day, because of this, because of that... sometimes for no reason. So why is it a big deal now?”
“… Yeah, but people don’t die like that. I’d like to know what happened because the authorities don’t tell us nothing. I mean, what are we supposed to think?”
“I think something above us is at work here, and I’m not just saying this because I believe in God. Because this – this is not an act of God. This is the Devil’s work, yes it is.”
“What do you think, huh? That I’ve only got this to do, answering your fucking questions? I’ve gotta go to work here; I’m running late!”
“... No, no, no! You tell me – aren’t you the press? Aren’t you people supposed to report the truth to the public? Then tell us what’s really going on...”
“I said no comment!”
“Whatever it is, it’s only beginning. How do I know? Are you people blind? Don’t you see the signs…It’s already begun!”
Yes, the strange death of the elderly man today would make some waves citywide. But maybe it wouldn’t trigger all kinds of passion, because there’s always some other news with either a higher death toll, or greater entertainment value, that comes along and bumps stories like this from the front page. It’s happened before.
At any rate, a couple of interesting theories, wild conjectures, and even crazy assumptions, would be put forth to logically establish the cause of death.
The crème-of-the-crop minds, the city’s finest scientists, knowledgeable about the string of odd cases, would once again exhibit their blatant ignorance at this mystery. Their rationale would never factor in the one and only thing responsible for the deaths.
The golden ball…
The golden ball materialized near a corner bookstore on Rose Street, a few seconds after it disappeared from the death scene. The same bookstore the elderly man had been making his way to. And the ball waited there, quietly and patiently, for someone to notice its presence. The street was bustling with the morning activitie
s of the day, and people went about their usual business.
The way things went, no one was ever going to pull off the veil of mystery surrounding those deaths, except for me. And even with the inside information I had, I was still far from fully comprehending the golden ball, its otherworldly nature, and its death-dealing function. In many ways I was totally ignorant about the mysterious ways of the golden ball. Just as the rest of the city was.
However, I was three steps ahead.
First, I knew that after making a victim, the ball would instantly vanish, only to reappear somewhere around the place that victim was meant to be before his – or her – untimely demise. Secondly, I knew that sometimes, the ball would make exceptions and not toast to death the ill-fated person who would find it. In such cases, the finder would always somehow manage to lose it within a few hours. I quit trying to figure out how the ball did that. Plus, I discovered that its decision to spare or strike someone dead was totally random. There was no discernible pattern. Nothing to hint at a reason for its act of grace. Live or die, it was all luck, pure chance, 50/50. To pick up the golden ball was as risky as playing Russian roulette, if not riskier, because of the odds factor. But no living soul could’ve known that.
Lastly, I knew that six months ago, during one of those fateful nights – a night of pouring rain – there was a faint shimmer in the sky. Then it gradually grew into a rift of light that looked like a violent scar on the murky face of the sky. The thunder pounded the sky open, and out of it came something bright; something that captured many streaks of lightning, all the while free falling to the ground.
And so the golden ball made its entrance into the world, and has remained there ever since – until now.
Chapter III
LAST STOP AT THE BARBERSHOP
FOR MR. BAGLEY