Forgotten Corn Dog
Her vanishment was stupefying. But in that same instant when it dawned on me that I, too, was gone, an implosion of incoherence diminished my appetite for a corn dog.
I was heading toward the street vendor just outside the highrise. A routine, summer lunch line was visible by his cart. (Customers come from blocks around). A woman walking towards me on the plaza glanced towards a cacophony of screeching tires and crashing metal as a tumbling white van erased her from view.
My first thought was that no vehicles should be here. But that evanesced into oblivion as I became bewildered by that final frozen terror on her face, even though she was gone. Although I didn’t know her, she was dressed as another nine-to-fiver. We may have worked in the same building.
Time departed.
I studied her like a framed photograph in a museum. The shift in her expression had been so sudden and poignant that however she had looked a split-second earlier was as lost to me as what might have been in this same spot 500 years before this city arose from prior eternity. I was entranced by the dichotomy of her haunting eyes contrasting so sharply with the prosaic grace of a woman frozen in mid-stride.
Although representing a microsecond on a timeline of a day, week, month, year or forever; to me, her image represented all time and no time. It was everything I could perceive. Or, all that I could conceive.
And then reality began to re-visit. Its approach was timid. Perhaps respectful? Or, perhaps wistful that its power over just another slice of humanity was now on the wane.
First, there were sounds. Far away and diffused. Soon, a quiet commotion teased the edges of perception. Blurriness encroached the perimeter. The gray museum walls behind the photograph blended into unfocused shapes of buildings and trees and motions of people surrounding an upside-down van where no vehicle should be.
I was torn between an attempt to scream versus the choking recognition that I couldn’t. Instead, I unleashed some mute trauma into the unfolding void of nothingness.
All of me was stripped of all worldly meaning.
Even though I knew I wouldn’t be going back to the office, I mentally balked at the impending cognizance of personal change, in the same way, I might try to momentarily forget I was being terminated from a job while simultaneously being told of it.
Rather than allow the import of the moment to embrace me, I retreated to the street vendor for a semblance of normalcy. But he was not serving and no one was eating. All were mesmerized by the location where no vehicle should be.
Anguish overcame me. This was no place I could abide. I raced away: I need to remember how to eat a corn dog.
by George Alger
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