However It Might Fall

There are two sides to every coin. The one you can see, and the one you can’t. Really, we only ever focus on the one side we can see. That’s why, when one flips a coin, the side they see is what it is considered to have landed on. Even though that other side, that side hidden from sight, in a very real sense was landed on as well. Arguably even more so. But we focus on what is visible. What we can see. And for all we know, in that moment between when the coin lands on the ground and when we say the face that is pointing upwards, that other face is gone completely.

That right there is what I’ve relied on for the last year or so. People aren’t generally the sort to care about that second side, and I have a bit of a knack for that being me. Three hundred and eighty one days ago, I was in a bit of a crash. I should have died, but I didn’t. The shrapnel and glass and the rest of the mess that whipped about the car as it tumbled tore through me alright, but I was fortunate enough that it just knocked me out and nearly killed me. The doctors said it was damned near a miracle. They said if the surgery had no complications, I might even be up and about again in a month. Then they knocked me out and dug around to get the stuff that wasn’t supposed to be in my body out of it.

When I woke up, they told me it was done. No complications during the surgery, and I should be on the road to recovery already. But they were wrong about the recovery. By the beginning of the second week, I was already functional enough to be discharged. Something to do with my bones and muscles happening to have been lined up in just the right way that the surgery wasn’t as invasive as they expected. Unfortunately, that was the last day I had to relax. I went home. I lay on the couch. I got some takeout from the diner three blocks over. It was incredibly relaxing if I do say so myself.

Then, my smoke alarm went off for absolutely no reason. When I got up to turn it off, I could see out my window down to the street. There, some people in not quite standard military gear, like a militia but from a decade or two in the future, were approaching my apartment. Had I not spotted them, who knows where I’d be now. Now, at the time, I didn’t know much, but what I did know was my apartment definitely had some illegal substances in it, and those could very well be some weird new swat uniform for the city, so I headed into my bathroom and out through the small window beside the shower. My pant leg snagged on the sill and I tripped, sailing headlong directly downwards from my bathroom and into a dumpster. I tried to get out, but all I succeeded in doing was sinking myself further into the trash. It’s like quicksand, and I was stuck. For that moment. Some people came by and, without giving it a second glance, they threw their own trash bags into the dumpster right on top of me. And that, folks, is why I always check the garbage before putting bags into it. Never know what you might find. With the trash like quicksand and the black plastic all in my face, I figured I needed to think about how to get out, rather than simply thrash until I was smothered. I don’t know if it was the exhaustion of a week and change in the hospital or the fumes of whatever was in all the trash around me, but I started feeling lethargy creeping in. And, as the more it started overtaking my brain, the harder it was for me to find a solution. So I made an executive decision: I’d wait until morning, figure it out then. If it was exhaustion, the rest would fix it. And if it wasn’t, well, maybe the answer would come to me in a dream.

I awoke with an uncomfortable sensation of being lifted off the ground, like when you were a kid and a relative snuck up on you to pick you up over their head. That queasiness in the stomach of sudden and unexpected vertical movement. Or the trash was getting to me. I figure the former because the next thing I knew, I was falling into a rather large garbage truck. Not wanting to be compacted, I threw my weight towards the back as it picked up the second dumpster. I scrambled my way up atop the compacted waste as the second dumpster’s contents joined me in the hopper. The truck started to move and the hydraulics started to compact, so I figured it was as good a time as any to skedaddle. Rolling to the back, I hopped the tiny wall thing at the tailgate and landed in the rocky alley. Which, if I’m entirely honest, did not feel great considering I braced myself to protect my face and landed fractured and scarred arm first in sharp rocks. Getting up, I thought about heading back into the apartment. Getting my stuff, living my life. But I knew better. Whatever those people were, they weren’t going to leave me alone. So I walked away. The first of many times.

I didn’t have my ID on me, so I walked to the bus station. This city isn’t small, to be sure, but it was too small and had too many people who knew me to hide in. At least, the parts of the city I was familiar with. I needed to go somewhere I could disappear into. I had seven bucks in one of my pockets and some coins. The change from my takeout. I also at that point realize my phone isn’t in my pocket anymore. It must have fallen out during my escape escapades. Not great, but assuming it was in the dumpster, it’s not like anyone would steal it. I also had a pack of minty chewing gum, a pair of sunglasses, and a pen. The sun was bright, I’m betting an after effect of whatever made me so sleepy the night before, so I put the glasses on. The bus station wasn’t close, but at the pace I was making, I’d be there in no time.

Not ideal, I thought to myself as I looked at the bus schedule. I had made it there in less than a half hour, but basically, I was screwed. The only ticket I could afford would take me to the next city over. And that one was even smaller than this city. Frustrated and hungry, I went to a fast food joint to think. Two dollars and a breakfast with coffee later, I headed to a nearby park to eat it. Well, park’s not quite right. It wasn’t really green enough in my book to be a park, but it was about the closest thing to one around the station and had benches I could sit at to eat. I sat down on a random bench, and ended up making one of the most important decisions of my life.

Up until that moment, I’d been a fairly well adjusted and law abiding sort. Sure, I enjoyed partaking in certain less than legal things from time to time, but I never did anything big. It was part of the reason I was so unprepared for the full assault on my home. But sitting on that bench changed everything. I finished my breakfast and was sipping my coffee when my foot felt something in the underbrush beside the bench. A bag. Beside a random bench in a rarely frequented park. Picking it up, I looked inside. I expected a homeless person’s belongings, or maybe someone’s luggage that fell from an airplane. If I’m really honest, I don’t know what I thought it might be. It made no sense. And yet, it still surprised me in the moment when I unzipped the duffel to find a go-bag straight out of a spy thriller. Literal pounds of cash in neat bundles. A gun with some ammo. And several different passports. The pictures look nothing like me, so the passports are useless. And I didn’t know how to use the gun. But that money. It could well help me vanish. And so I did something I honestly can say I’d never have even considered doing before. This was someone else’s money. But I needed it to survive. So, I committed grand larceny.

I took a wad of tens out from the bag and removed it from the strap. Shuffling them a bit, I put it in my pocket. Then, I zipped back up the duffel and put it over my shoulder. Finishing off my coffee before I left, I headed back for the bus station. After all, I had enough money for a proper ticket. I just needed to figure out where I wanted to end up. Wherever I was going, starting from somewhere other than where people were looking for me would be ideal. So I needed to first decide: Chicago or Not Chicago. Which wasn’t much of a choice. I don’t like the wind much. And with the field chosen, I got myself a ticket south.

The ticket was for the evening, which left me a day with enemies I didn’t know and money that wasn’t mine in a city that was so open that from the right vantage point, you could see the whole damned thing. I headed to a nearby motel, meant for people who just arrived in town or had layovers at the train station. There, I booked the night under the name that the passports in my new duffel bag had. Hopefully that would throw people off the trail some. Make whoever eventually comes looking for this bag think I was on one of the morning trains or buses tomorrow. Heading to the room, I settled in, keeping an eye outside for any weirdos in future-cop uniforms. Not that I thought they were coming. Whatever they had been wearing last night would probably stand out in the daylight. Meanwhile, I settled in for the very important task of figuring out exactly how bad my thievery was.

It was bad. More than sixty thousand dollars bad. Which, to be fair, meant I was pretty much set for a while. Still coasting off it even now. But it also meant whoever I took it from was gonna be pissed. Taking my duffel of money with me, I headed out for an early dinner. At a bar and grill style restaurant, I ordered a burger. The place was empty. Not because of the quality, but because no one in their right mind would go to a bar at six in the afternoon. I audibly enough for the waitstaff to hear it, muttered a curse, then asked one of them, “Hey, I left my phone charging in my room, would you mind looking up the weather in Chicago the day after tomorrow?”

After a moment, the guy behind the bar replied, “Sure, man,” and looked it up. It was going to be cold and windy, because I was asking about Chicago.

I nodded. “Thanks. I wanted to know what to unpack once I’m back at my room.”

I never went back to that motel. After eating, I walked to the train station and dropped some more money on a ticket to Chicago. Then, I went back to the bus station and boarded my bus south. Eventually I made my way across the country. Even found some work here. But that’s another story. Seeing as it’s been more than a year and the mystery man hasn’t found me, I’m betting he’s found my bread trail and is searching for Chicago. It took a little more work to get the future swat team off my back, but I managed that, too. What can I say? However the coin might fall, sometimes it lands in just the right way.