Invisible

I scuffled down the busy sidewalk with my hands in my pockets, my ears stinging from the cool December wind. I quickly looked both ways then moved my feet too fast to be called a walk, yet not fast enough to be considered a jog. I wondered what it should be called: a “jalk” or a “wog?” I suppose someone pretentious might call it a power walk, but that sounds too much like yuppie language to me.

Either way, I ignored a clear plastic cup that blew in the breeze across the brick sidewalk and onto the empty street. I’m normally not the kind of guy to let that happen. People can usually count on me to pick up something that someone dropped and return it to them, as long as I saw who dropped it. I went through the dorm’s glass door, leaving the front door open momentarily in case someone was behind me before moving on to the second set of doors made to keep the weather outside.

“Hey Nick,” I said as I walked by his desk, waving my hand as friendly as I do every other day when I walk by the desk.

“How you doing Michael?” said Nick, in a flat courteous tone.

I then said my standard answer, “Pretty okay.”

Sometimes I’m in a gregarious mood to talk with the desk staff for thirty minutes or so, but this wasn’t one of those days.

“Have a good day,” I said, using my student ID to get into the living areas of the dorm. Tired from the day, I took the elevator to the fourth floor, which takes a bit longer than taking the stairs, but my eyelids were fluttering together every couple of minutes or so. After the elevator doors opened, I heard the door behind me open, so I put my hand out to leave the elevator open long enough for them to come in. A slender woman with a dark grey hoodie with pink Greek letters Sigma Kappa sewed into it walked right by without a glance, her headphones playing a familiar pop tune that I couldn’t quite call. I removed my hand, and allowed the elevator to take me to my floor.

I unlocked the door to my room and opened it up to behold the cluttered nightmare that was my desk. Papers for all sorts of outdated things were on the desk (some even under), and my tupperware storage facility held all kinds of nooks and crannies, including many pencils I found on the floors of campus that were abandoned by their owners. I was a packrat whose items would prove difficult to find for others, but I knew where I could find a month old paper, and that’s all that mattered to me. That cup came back into my mind for a little bit, but I shrugged it off as I took of my oppressively heavy backpack and stretched my back a little bit. I had more important things to worry about, such as completing all my homework, studying for finals, and making sure I’d have good enough grades so that my financial aid would be supplemented by academic achievement grants. Though, what was mainly on my mind was getting a little bit of rest, even in this drafty dorm room with a window that didn’t quite shut all the way.

I opened up the blinds so that some pale light could enter the room after turning off the lights from above. I ran my hands through my hair for a moment as I looked out to the pond in front of the dorm, one of the few refuges for serenity when the weather was alright. However, this was Indiana in early December, so no such luck even with unpredictable bouts of mildness. I took the alarm on my clock and set it to 4:30 so I wouldn’t miss my next class as I took a nap to recover from another night wasted on TV Tropes. I checked my phone’s clock real quick to make sure the alarm clock was synchronized at 2:50. I slipped off my shoes, climbed into the loft, lied my head down in the pillow, and thought about the cup again.

I’m not sure why I thought about the cup. It was just a small insignificant piece of plastic blowing in the wind. Just a clear cup that I’d seen used in the dining halls as a small cup to put some water into to go with your food. Well, it was mostly clear with just a few brown and green stripes near the bottom for some reason. I guess those stripes were to let the cashiers know that it did indeed come from the dining hall. Either way, I was too tired to bother myself with thinking about it then of all times.
Just when I was beginning to get comfortable, I started hearing a vague shouting from outside the window. I couldn’t make out what the guy was saying, but he sounded mad. I don’t mean he was mad as in angry, but rather in the sense that he was mad as in crazy, but I suppose he was mad in both senses. It didn’t really matter, but it was really keeping me from getting a good rest. I drowsily sat up from bed and looked at the alarm clock, which showed that I’d only been on my bed for twelve minutes. I turned my body around so I could look out the window, my socked feet resting on my pillows.

There he was, a large tan man wearing a snug looking blue cap, black gloves, and a thick winter coat that was excessively heavy for this time of year standing on top of a bench by the pond and shouting at passersby holding a poster board with a single word in black block letters: “LISTEN.” Ironically, the people passing him on the street were doing the exact opposite.

“Take out those damn earbuds, and take your eyes off the phones!” the man with the sign shouted as I was able to make out upon focusing my attention. “You’re all sheep! Distracted by your loud music, constant texting, and absorption into trash television!”

He waved his right hand out to everyone as he shouted this generalization, falling backwards a little before catching himself on the back of the bench. I could see that the bottom of his brown shoes were coated in snow.

After regaining his balance for a while, he returned to his rambling. “Read the papers, watch the news, and see what’s happening in the real world! We live in a time of oppression, where we consume for the sake of consumption! Do you not see it? ”

I saw that girl with the grey hoodie from a while ago pass him by without a glance, walking straight without hearing the mad man, her eyes on her phone, gloved hands pressing buttons.

“Of course not! How can you hear the call for revolution when your ears are assaulted by engineered distractions?” The man’s tone was getting harsher, the volume louder. “How can you see the truth when you can’t look up from the pretty lights from your earthly possessions? Why, no one can even greet friends on the streets anymore thanks to those destructive machines.”

The girl left my sight, but I can tell he was still looking at her, throwing his hands into the air in defeat, the toes of this shoes raising up a bit.

“Can’t you see that we should relish in the simple things? The cool air hitting a warm face! The leafless trees against a pale blue sky! This beautiful pond that stirs behind me!” He motioned one hand toward the pond, sticking his sign out in front of him.

Suddenly, a bicyclist who wasn’t paying attention accidently bumped into the man’s arm, the man failed about for a little while as his feet were slipping. He fell backwards into the snow.

The man rolled down the powdery white hill for a little bit, gaining momentum before flying off the short stony cliffs coated in black ice and into the choppy pond. The water splashed violently, but my first reaction to chuckle as his misfortune. Then, I saw him struggling in the water, his heavy coat soaking it up like a sponge before he was able to get back to shore. He was a good ten feet away from the edge, and I could tell he didn’t know how to swim as his short breath condensed in the freezing air. He hollered and splashed around, looking like a fool as his sign floated on the water.

Fascinated by the sight, I watched to see if a mass of pedestrians was coming to his aid, but to my surprise, these people kept to their predetermined paths on the sidewalk. They didn’t see the disaster that was going on because it was somebody else’s problem.

Shit! Someone should do something, I thought.

I reached for my pocket to get my phone, but it was empty. I then remembered that I put it on the far side of the alarm clock, which would force me to get out of my loft to call someone. Well, out of a hundred or so students, someone is bound to get some help, I thought. At a quarter after three, I turned away from my window and put my blanket over my face.

I stirred out of my nap again as a blaring siren penetrated from beyond my window, and my mind went straight to the man with the sign. I looked at the time on the clock, finding it to be just a few minutes before four. I estimated to myself that the man with the sign was in freezing water for at least thirty minutes before the ambulance got there.

I saw the professionals go in with a long pole to pull his body to the shore, a blue gurney ready at the edge of the pond. When his arms and head were on the snow, they dragged the rest of him to the surface before placing his lifeless body on the gurney and making the short snowy trek to the ambulance. I didn’t see him move. He could have been in shock though, so that gave me piece of mind as I got out of bed and turned off my alarm. Either way, I wasn’t going back to my nap, so I just went about the rest of my day doing a little extra work before class.

The next morning, I did the same routine as with any Thursday. I got eggs and bacon for breakfast and drank a tall mocha on the way to class. While I was on my way though, I saw an abandoned newspaper on a bench. I picked it up with the intent of recycling it, but I decided to at least take a glance of the first page. That was when I read the headline buried at the bottom of the page: “Man drowns in pond accident.”

I took my eyes off the paper to look at the path ahead, and a clear plastic cup blew in the wind, stopping as it hit the leg of the bench and slid underneath it.