Circles
“Wake up, Dad. There’s a man outside who wants to talk to you.”
In the excitement of the tour and the move, he had forgotten that something was coming. When he saw the expression on his daughter’s face, it was easy to remember.
He sat up on the floor of the huge bedroom.
“Where’re your mother and brother?”
“In the back yard, playing with the dog. The movers called and said they wouldn’t be here until tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he said and got up.
“He started yelling your name. He started yelling, and they didn’t hear him.”
He rubbed the top of her head.
“Go in your new bedroom and wait.”
“But it’s him, Dad, like from the dream.”
“I know. Just do as I say.”
He moved on heavy legs down the long hall. Through the sliding glass back door he saw his wife and son throwing a tennis ball for the dog. His wife had a look on her face he hadn’t seen before things began to change, the look of a person who thought life was a good dream they could wake up from at any point.
He stepped into the living room and looked through a window. The man stood in the middle of the front yard. He stared back with eyes like a person on speed, or maybe just enlightened. He motioned for Jeremy to join him.
He didn’t feel like he could make his feet move, but he did. He went to the front porch.
The man shouted with a southern accent.
“Don’t try to convince yourself you didn’t know.”
Jeremy nodded, hoping the man could sense all he meant in the simple motion.
The man motioned with his hands as if to signify all that was around. “They can do almost anything they want, but they can’t choose. You don’t know how to choose, but you will.”
The man whipped an index finger in a circle several times, and each time he did a circle of light formed in the grass. Each circle was outside the one before it, and they were all the same color, red, but different in intensity, growing stronger the closer they got to the man.
He extended an arm.
“Come. Take my hand and you will know how to choose.”
He hoped his daughter wasn’t watching. He moved off the porch, toward the man, hit the perimeter of the outermost circle and stopped.
“You can feel the grip, but that’s not important. What’s important is what you can barely sense, that thing so slight you wonder if it’s real.”
Jeremy nodded.
“It’s slight because it’s spread out.”
Jeremy nodded again and was released. He moved toward the still extended hand and stopped at the next circle.
“Ah, you feel it more now.”
Jeremy nodded.
“The perimeter is shorter, the feeling more condensed.”
Jeremy was released and moved through more circles but wasn’t stopped again until the last one, right in front of the man.
Jeremy broke down like a frightened child. “No! No! Don’t hurt her!”
The man pulled him from the circle and they stood face to face.
“You know how to choose now.”
Jeremy nodded. He gathered himself. “Can I go beyond what I see? Can I go further out?”
The man smiled. “They don’t choose.”
The man created enough space to put his hand out again. Jeremy took that hand, but never felt it.
He was back on the bedroom floor. There were footsteps in the hall. The door flew open and his wife looked down at him with shock. She was holding her cell phone.
“Mom called. It’s all over the news. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are dead.”
His daughter came up beside his wife. He dropped his head, unable to look her in the eyes.
