The people waited for these reports once a week. They’d gossip nervously all week about it, till the next one.
Every Tuesday a report came in on the radio, at three o’clock in the morning, from a monotone man, who the people used to ignore or mock….that was before the reports started making sense….too much sense.
The old man sat in the run down hotel banging away on the report. Banging away what he promised gad. Banging away the stress that was wrapped around his mind like rubber bands and sharp thread tightly wound causing marks…screaming.
Hunched over the keys, dressed in a filthy suit, stained, and ragged….I could smell it through the thick smoke that had been there for decades, I could see it through that smog in the room, as I peeked around the closet door where I was hiding. I could see the nightmares he had every night.
I could see the years of failures in his life every night……. every night that I watched him from behind the closet door.
I could see the regret and the stained tea cup, caked with years of old tea, browning the inside of the cup.
I could see it from behind the closet door.
I could smell cedar and mold and old man, in the closet behind me, but I couldn’t see what he was writing and that’s why I was there, for all those months and now I couldn’t see what he was writing.
We were running out of time, I could feel it slipping away as he banged on the keys like a mad metronome.
So many depended on me, not to be discovered or dead. They all loved the old man, in terror. What would they do without his approval…but he was anonymous, nobody knew who he really was. I was the only one that knew who he really was, or where he was. And now nobody knows where I am.
And I was afraid of the frail old man, afraid of what he knew….and what he might do with it. You see while everyone else lived apathetically, with point of views based on vanity, the old man had toiled away at learning. He disregarded his own self-interest, even if it was embarrassing….even if it was enduring mockery and threatening accusations.
And I was trapped in that horrible stinking room, with wrenching cramps shooting through my legs and body, the hunger pains were almost unbearable….always peeing in a bottle. All I wanted was for him to finish….but he kept chain smoking, hunched over…. banging those keys.
Then a surprise shock of pain in my stomach as I heard him speak to me for the first time, from across the room…………
And it was at that moment I realized he had known I was there the whole time.
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