FATALISM

By Carolyn Johnson

      Paul stood silently in the empty, lowering elevator. He had no memory of where he was or why he was here.

      He ran through his mind all possibilities of his location, but only found two that were rational: Paul might’ve just left his hotel room. Had he brought a stranger with him to bed that night? Either that, or Paul might’ve just left his cubicle in Chicago.

      Paul looked at his wrist, embraced by a Rolex. It was 2:30 pm. Something was wrong here. Why the hell was he out so early? Did his short-term memory have a power-outage? Did somebody, maybe his boss, tell him there was a half-day? Was it Christmas already?

      For heaven’s sake, where the hell was he?

      Questions haunted Paul, wordless, frantic, sad, and unutterable and questions constricted his mind into a stupor. Paul desperately wanted to ask something—but what? The question hung over him like an ominous, looming thunderhead that he couldn’t quite make out.

      Paul took a step outside of his body, outside his life, and glanced at the cold, gray metallic doors in front of him. His eyes then shifted onto the floor buttons off to the side, lights flashing as the elevator descended each floor.

      The elevator floor numbers on the buttons looked odd. They didn’t look like the ones he recognized in his office building; they looked thicker, bolder. Okay, so Paul wasn’t in his Chicago office building. He probably wasn’t even in Chicago.

      Paul shoved a hand into his jacket pocket and felt his .48 Magnum, icy cold against his palm. He didn’t know how his gun got there, either. A spurt of fury was caught in his throat, caused by confusion. Paul didn’t know where he was or how he got here or what he had thought last, yet he spontaneously decided to fire his gun at the first person he saw when the elevator doors split open.

 

      There was another man in the lobby. This man is both significant and not significant to this story. He stood outside the rows of elevator doors, patiently waiting for one of them to magically open up for him. This man was different from Paul, who was in the lowering elevator now. Paul had forgotten everything except his name, whereas the man in the lobby had forgotten nothing... except for his name.

      The nameless man was alone, yet confident. He acknowledged his purpose in the world. In spite of whatever weird or questioning might come up, the man was certain of the world, certain of everything he saw. He would tell his stories exactly as they happened. He had no choice, it was his set purpose. The man in the lobby never looked at people; instead, people looked at him and saw themselves.

      The nameless man’s world was cold, solid, empty, and lacked spirit. He may have been too certain. The man wished he were a distorted lens, so that when people stared into him, they would not see themselves; they would stare into something that was instead not who they were, a complete mutation.

      This is what the nameless man wanted, but it was something he never expected to get. Until a man holding .48 Magnum stepped out of the opening elevator.

 

      Paul, with the .48 Magnum, felt sweat soaking his backside. Now that Paul grasped the gun firmly in his right hand, his place here seemed to have much more meaning. Paul was confident. Paul acknowledged his purpose in the world.

      The floor numbers flashed red until it reached its final destination: the lobby. There was only one other man in the lobby. The man without a name.

      Paul felt the elevator thump to a stop. He held up the gun. The elevator doors were slowly separating.

      Paul saw nothing. Paul saw nothing but his face in the tall mirror on the opposing wall. Paul saw nothing but himself. It was the mirror that waited—hanging on the wall—across from the elevators. In that mirror, Paul saw the nameless one, the confident one, the one with the purpose, the one who may have been too certain. Paul, the one who wished to be a distorted lens.

      Paul, holding the .48 Magnum, wanted to be a distorted lens. The Paul with the gun and the nameless man he saw in the mirror were different, but they were too much the same.

      He pulled the trigger. The mirror exploded in a thousand raining shards of ice to the carpeted floor. The mirror turned into a puddle of distorted lenses. Certainly, no one would stare into the array of glass shards on the floor and see themselves completely. They would only see fragments of who they really were.