?2018?
Even the bright, too-early morning sun couldn’t get any significant warmth through the air. The car, holding in the chill from sitting unoccupied through the night, was even colder than the city outside. It proved a challenge keeping the machine steady as Isaac’s entire body trembled. As he drove, his fingers stiffening and getting stuck to the steering wheel, he could see his stuttering breath in front of him, fogging up his vision for a second or two at a time.
Long enough to slam into the F-150 in front of me, spin out of control, and get crushed under the ensuing forty-two car pileup, Panic babbled in the recesses of Isaac’s brain.
Through the forearm-width space he had scraped clean on the frosty windshield, Isaac could see a thick slab of fresh snow coating the city, glittering so obnoxiously in the sunlight that he may as well have taken his chances with the frost.
The streets hadn’t been fully swept yet and for some unfathomable reason, presumably long-term residents of Alaska took the opportunity to forget how to drive. Isaac passed three grisly crashes on his route, all of which provoked a spike in his blood pressure.
Anchorage was in the midst of the coldest winter on record. Temperatures routinely fell deep into the negatives, made harsher by forty-two-mile-per-hour wind slapping unfortunate locals in the face, dusting them in fresh powder if they failed to find shelter in one of the numerous concrete, steel, and glass buildings which lined the street. Those that had decided to brave the chill, along with their television-static doppelgängers, slogged through snow so thick that no one could touch the sidewalk. From where Isaac sat, everything from the highest towers to the slick roads resembled little more than a giant, messy blob of solidified depression.
“Look at the snow in the sunlight!” people often said to Isaac since he first learned the art of complaining around kindergarten. “It’s so pretty and soft and relaxing!”
His teachers, his parents, his friends’ parents, Uncle Vic, there was always someone ready to recite the same speech to him every winter. It was as if a requirement for adulthood was memorising a speech glorifying the beauty and majesty of winter in Alaska. Summers here he rather enjoyed, but not the damn winters.
Isaac never learned the speech. His nose hairs were frozen, his cheeks stung, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. His feet were soaked to the bone from stomping into a sheet of snow that hid a deep puddle of foul brown slush, making the task of guiding his miserable old car through the frozen concrete maze tougher still.
I wanna go home, Isaac whined in his head.
The parking lot of the library was nearly empty. A tan Porsche sat crooked in a handicapped parking lot a few spots away from a bright green Impala, the only two vehicles Isaac immediately recognised. Three other random vehicles, likely belonging to his fellow employees, were scattered around the lot.
Isaac pulled as close to the front door as he could manage, finding an empty spot between the library and the gently rolling hills of the field surrounding it—in his mind driving like Ace Ventura, but in reality, operating his vehicle more like his half-blind uncle. The four-story brownish-red brick building loomed high over him, overtaking his car with its broad silhouette. The added shadows of the waving flags of Alaska and the United States gave Isaac a mental image of some gargantuan fantasy beast spreading its maw to swallow Isaac whole. He made it into his spot safely without being eaten, ensuring the wheels were equal distances from the yellow lines as he did every morning, then grabbed his backpack and asked Scooby Doo for the time: 9:30 AM.
Isaac blinked and shook his head, triple and quadruple-checking the numbers. Sure enough, he arrived at work thirty minutes before he had left his apartment. He convinced himself it wasn’t important and half-jogged toward the labyrinthine library to escape the cold. The warm smells of old books and slightly burnt coffee wafted toward him as he opened the door.
“Well, if it isn’t the late Isaac Falcone!” cheered one of the few other employees in the library, who popped out from behind the glass doors like a self-powered jack in the box. Donny Grigoryan, ‘Genghis Don’ to none but himself and Isaac (with a heavy dose of sarcasm in the latter’s case), and one of the few reasons Isaac had remained at this job for the past two years, poked his head through the door, grinning like a fool.
Donny was as close to a best friend as Isaac ever had. He was a manic ball of electricity, with a face-splitting grin permanently attached to him. The pair had been inseparable since late elementary school, though it began primarily as a result of both Donny’s persistence and the obligation Isaac felt to control the damage his friend was capable of causing.
Today Donny had chosen to slip on a bottle-green blazer over a tee shirt displaying the faded, chipped face of the Joker a la Heath Ledger. His relatively stubby legs were mercifully covered by more conventional black slacks; neither the garment itself nor the covering of his appendages was always guaranteed when he ventured outdoors. That he hadn’t yet been fired was due to the seemingly endless patience of head librarian Olivia Sheridan, and Isaac putting a stop to his more chaotic antics before someone else could see.
A blurry grey shadow stood to Donny’s left, waving the opposite hand from him but otherwise copying his motions precisely. Isaac rubbed his eyes and the mimic promptly vanished.
Damn sparkly snow playing tricks on my eyes, I guess, Isaac thought. Better get them checked again. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt. Indeed, he had not seen an eye doctor since his mother had originally taken him in years before.
Donny led Isaac on a long, convoluted route to the checkout desk where he should already have been. At every turn, he would stop short and peer in all directions, sniffing for something in the air. Isaac played along, amused by Donny’s cartoonish behaviour and familiar enough to avoid a collision every time they paused.
When they arrived, certain they weren’t followed by anyone, Donny slid across the nearest counter toward Isaac’s seat, sending loose papers and books flying as he did. The victim of Donny’s attention tensed every muscle from scalp to toe as he watched it happen. Just before the living force of entropy could sit on it, Isaac re-positioned a small, folding twin picture frame behind his computer.
This is how accomplices to murder feel, Isaac thought to himself. In fact, this train of thought more or less defined his years of friendship with Donny.
“I have this recurring dream that one day you’ll enter a room without destroying it,” Isaac said in a sternly matriarchal tone. Donny snickered it off, absently replacing a few nearby documents without much care.
“You’ve been saying that since we were eleven, frienderino,” he replied, turning his eyes from the desk to Isaac as he did. “Nothing, be it man, beast, or pharmaceutical, can tame the great Genghis Don.” Donny flexed his arms in an attempt at a Herculean display, though his biceps being maybe half an inch thicker than Isaac’s didn’t present a particularly impressive show.
“It still provides me with something to hope for in this life,” Isaac replied dryly.
Returning his friend’s proud gesture with a tight-lipped smile and a pair of light pats to his head, Isaac pushed through the waist-high swinging door to the checkout desk and head office, dropping his bag underneath the counter before grabbing a name tag and a set of keys from their respective pegs on the rear wall.
“Did Beige notice I was late?” Isaac asked. The assistant librarian Ben Schafer, unwilling recipient of the nickname Beige, loved to lord his position over employee’s heads while his boss wasn’t looking. He had a particular distaste for the energetic Donny and his accomplice, Isaac, who always seemed to skate by unscathed after his attempts at professional discipline.
“I think he’s busy chopping up younglings, bro, you’re safe. I’m gonna take a nap in the supply closet. Wake me if he comes that way, will you?” Donny wiggled the fingers of his right hand in Isaac’s general direction and trotted off to his destination. His friend rolled his eyes and took his seat behind the checkout counter, scooting the old grey swivel chair across the carpet so his arms could rest on the surface.
Isaac booted up the ancient Macintosh cube waiting for him on the counter. While it energised, he glanced at the relocated pair of photographs, returning them to their original spot to his left.
One frame bore an image of miniature Isaac and Chloe, held up by their parents Melisa and Martin Falcone, respectively. The elder Falcones had insisted on matching white button-down shirts with narrow black ties for Martin and Isaac, with simple black dresses for Melisa and Chloe. All four were smiling broadly against the professionally provided, blank backdrop. In their matching outfits it appeared as if each parent had a miniature, gender-swapped clone.
The other showed the siblings several years older, on a faded and frayed old blue sofa. On Isaac’s left was a taller, sandy-haired relation—their cousin Tobias—while their white-bearded Uncle Vic sat to Chloe’s right wearing suspenders over a white short-sleeved button-down, tucked into tan slacks. Chloe pulled a halfway-cheerful expression for the photo, a feat that Isaac could not mimic.
The Macintosh reached the login screen with the bitten-apple logo. Isaac typed in his employee information, navigating the keyboard with expert speed, and began day seven-hundred fifty-five in the library.
As it was the day after Christmas, the library saw little business upon reopening after two days deserted. Many Anchorage residents were likely enjoying their gifts, shovelling driveways, or avoiding the cold altogether, and visiting a stuffy old library was certainly not anyone’s top choice for a destination. Anyone, that is, except for Isaac, who mostly passed his working hours playing Minesweeper while keeping his eyes peeled for Beige. Whenever he thought danger was approaching, he would leap from his seat and do his best to appear busy by pretending to sort books or print documents.
Halfway through the workday, Tobias visited the library. He was a mop-headed, beak-nosed giraffe of a man who resembled a young teacher on his first day in a wrinkly button down, suspenders, slacks, circular wire-framed glasses, and a slightly crooked bow tie. His stick-like arms threatened to snap under the stack of books they held: an atlas, volumes E and L of the World Book, and a bulky pair of tomes on meteorology and ornithology.
“Looks like you’ve got the rest of your week booked solid, Tobias,” Isaac said. “Pun intended, of course.” His cousin blinked from behind the stack and then grinned as he placed it on the desk.
“Just a few things for work,” Tobias replied.
“You got a job already? Nice bracelet, by the way,” Isaac asked, adding the compliment as a thin, emerald-green, metal chain was revealed around Tobias’s left wrist from behind the books. The latter glanced down at his wrist and quickly pulled his sleeve over it while Isaac dutifully stamped the inside covers where appropriate as they spoke.
“Oh, um, thank you. I got involved with a couple of, um, freelance research groups back in Seattle, and it sort of followed me home,” Tobias answered hesitantly, avoiding eye contact by pretending to double-check the stack in case he had forgotten something.
Tobias had moved to Seattle in the summer of 2011 for school, shortly after Isaac and Chloe were taken in by his father Victor. A few years later, Uncle Vic, now well into his seventies, relocated to Seattle himself to retire among other relatives in the area just as Isaac and Chloe were moving into their own place. A week before Christmas 2018, Chloe answered a call from Tobias announcing that he had secured an apartment in the Spenard area and would be returning to Alaska on Christmas Eve. No other explanation for Tobias’s sudden return to the north was offered.
Tobias shuffled back a few inches after picking up his books. There was a tense smile on his face as he hoped his attempts at evasiveness went unnoticed. Isaac raised an eyebrow at his cousin. Then he recalled something else he felt he ought to ask.
“Hey, have you heard from Chloe?” Isaac asked before Tobias could leave.
The latter looked up as if to read his own thought bubble for a moment before shaking his head.
“She was acting weird this morning,” Isaac continued before Tobias could reply. “I found her crying like something horrible had happened, but when I asked why, she said she had no clue. I thought maybe something had happened with you or Uncle Vic.”
Tobias frowned in concern, and Isaac felt like there was something he didn’t know.
“I’ll give her a call,” Tobias said finally. He took a post-it note from Isaac’s stack and wrote something on it. “Dad’s doing well, all things considered. Same goes for me,” Tobias continued. “I have to get going, though. This is my new address. Take care of yourself, Isaac.” He turned and left in a hurry.
Isaac scratched his temple as he watched Tobias rush back out to the cold.
Okay, that was definitely odd… What the floody buck is going on with all the nouns around me today? he thought as he returned to work.
Isaac slouched in his swivel chair. He tilted it back just enough to avoid falling on his back and placed himself at such an angle that he could see five of the ten clocks in the library, including the digital readout on the Macintosh screen, and the awkwardly twisted forelegs of Scooby Doo. To the left and right (#2 and #4, according to Isaac’s mental list) were digital timepieces resting proudly above Fiction and Nonfiction. The pair of clocks and those like them were automatically set by a computer, much to Isaac’s appreciation.
Almost directly across the room from Isaac was an analog device that had never been seen running less than fifteen minutes ahead of its computer-programmed counterparts: #9. Most employees had learned to accept the misfit clock and ignore it, but Isaac devoted ten minutes of every workday to adjusting it. Today was no exception.
Isaac grabbed a three-feet-high step ladder from a storage area on the far side of the building, using up the first ninety-two seconds of the task. A sheet of plain printer paper was taped to the top step, bearing a message in Donny’s unmistakable scribble: “I never knew my real ladder!”
Isaac made a noise that was a fair compromise between exasperation and amusement, an expression he had mastered during his time with “Genghis Don”. He removed the paper and returned to the object of his obsession. One-hundred and eighty-eight seconds.
#9 stared at Isaac, taunting him with its cold detachment and outright refusal to function properly. He placed the I Can’t Believe It’s Not My Real Ladder securely against the wall, shutting one eye to zoom in and ensure the ladder and #9 were perfectly aligned. They were. He climbed each step carefully: right foot, then left, and repeated twice more. Once at the top, he delicately removed the wire cage holding his worst enemy back.
Two-hundred and sixty-two seconds and counting.
Isaac made sure he was fully focused and began to remove #9 from its home. With a glance at the glass face, he spotted his reflection. Everything was more or less as it should be: clean shaven, no obvious scars, and his lower eyelids slightly purple and sagging. His eyes, he vaguely noted, were a bloody shade of scarlet.
As he never managed to bring his car’s stereo to life, the Talking Heads were still stuck in Isaac’s head. As he worked, ‘Once in a Lifetime’ drifted through his acutely nervous system. He hummed along softly as he removed the screws holding the clock.
Six twists to the left, Isaac thought over his soundtrack, though he couldn’t quite understand why that made him think of the colour blue. Four more screws to go, three-hundred and twenty-seven seconds.
With each screw, Isaac absently noted more blue things within his sight. The sky, though it was dominated by hulking, ugly blobs of grey. A few cars in the lot below the window, all in different shades. A handful of books in his line of sight had blue covers.
Isaac gently pulled #9 down, preparing to operate. The hands still turned at the wrong angles, telling Isaac where exactly he could stick his operation. He stared down his adversary, just as he had done nine-hundred and six times before, looking through the red circles in his reflected image. He placed all eight screws in his pocket, one by one, still unsure why his thoughts jumped from them to a perfectly innocent primary colour.
Holy shit, my eyes are actually blue, aren’t they? Isaac thought to himself, finding the loose thread between his scattered thoughts. While he caught up with himself, he took one more look at his reflection, which was intent on disagreeing with him.
The shock of our hero gazing into a reflection that clearly wasn’t his sent him tumbling from the ladder, with #9 flying several feet away and his cranium crash-landing into the carpet below.
In some places there exist soft, friendly carpets that may cushion the fall of someone in this predicament. In public libraries, however, such carpets were reserved for the fantasy section. The one which our hero collided with was so worn, had so many threads caked with the mud from years of public foot traffic, that it may as well have been stone. The impact had him out before he could register his screwdriver leaving an inch-long cut across his left cheek.